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.
This 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.
Long story short: Those epic 50+ hour experiences you grew up playing will be replaced by episodic, DLC, subscription based, watered-down nonsense. The crux of the problem is, how do you provide incentive for players to pay to play your game? How do you deter piracy?
Enter Dark Souls. Any one who has played Dark Souls (or its predecessor, Demon's Souls), is aware of the unique multiplayer gameplay found within. While they are both predominantly single-player games, you are perpetually connected online via PSN (unless you manually choose not to be) with others who are playing the game. This grants you the option to invade their world and kill them (and be invaded yourself) at any time.
When Dark Souls broke street date by approximately 1 week, a few shrewd pirates jumped at the opportunity to download the game early for free. How did the developers respond? They invaded as level 999 black phantoms every world of every pirate, and slaughtered them repeatedly.
This anecdote sparked within me an idea: Imagine if such justice was dispensed by the user-base of paying players? What if not only the devs, but all honest gamers could invade and slaughter all of the pirates in their own game world? What better way to combat piracy than to empower those who legitimately pay to relentlessly slay and abuse those who would seek a free ride?
This idea can be taken in any number of directions. Post your thoughts and own ideas on player-driven and gameplay-driven DRM methods.
The Dark Souls example only worked because it was a console game. Any sort of similar security measure on PC could easily be circumvented by any decent scene group.
Many people who pirate do so because they want to try a game out. If they enjoy the game, they will buy it too support the developer. 4,5 million downloads becomes a useless figure since you can not in any way know how many of those 4,5 million purchased the game afterwards. I feel that piracy is a good way to get rid of shitty developers how make crappy games only for the sake of making money (Well all developers want to make money ofc, but i hope you get my point). Good developers get the money they need and then some. Piracy will not be the end of gaming.
On November 30 2011 22:24 Interloper wrote: Many people who pirate do so because they want to try a game out. If they enjoy the game, they will buy it too support the developer. 4,5 million downloads becomes a useless figure since you can not in any way know how many of those 4,5 million purchased the game afterwards. I feel that piracy is a good way to get rid of shitty developers how make crappy games only for the sake of making money (Well all developers want to make money ofc, but i hope you get my point). Good developers get the money they need and then some. Piracy will not be the end of gaming.
This is the most common reason that has been given to me but more than often the person is also an expert at procrastination and gives the "oh I'll buy it later excuse". In the case of single player games, what usually winds up happening is that they'll beat the game and it becomes forgotten on their computers. Either way, I'd be willing to be a huge chunk of those who pirated wouldn't have bothered buying the game if piracy wasn't an option in the first place (in which case nothing would have been lost anyway).
I would rather prefer to see game demos be more prominent to get rid of that whole "I wanted to try the game" excuse.
Any form of DRM/protection can and will be circumvented. This is a basic rule that software-developers will have to learn to live with. Especially those working with single-player games. In the end, DRM can become so deeply rooted into the game that the game becomes more frustrating to play as a legitimate player than for the player that pirates the game. This phenomenon began with the CD having to be present in the drive for the game to launch and has now carried over to requiring an internet connection at all times while playing the game.
The lack of demos for new games also doesn't help. In earlier times, most games had a demo that was time-limited or limited to the first level, or whatever. A way to try the game before buying it. These would often be released before the actual game came out. I've not really seen demos any more in recent years. Blizzard, with their guest passes and now starter editions for SC2 and WoW, is an exception to the rule. So people pirate the game to see if they like it. And many, out of pure laziness, will probably just keep playing the pirated version rather than buying the retail version.
On November 30 2011 22:24 Interloper wrote: Many people who pirate do so because they want to try a game out. If they enjoy the game, they will buy it too support the developer. 4,5 million downloads becomes a useless figure since you can not in any way know how many of those 4,5 million purchased the game afterwards. I feel that piracy is a good way to get rid of shitty developers how make crappy games only for the sake of making money (Well all developers want to make money ofc, but i hope you get my point). Good developers get the money they need and then some. Piracy will not be the end of gaming.
This is the most common reason that has been given to me but more than often the person is also an expert at procrastination and gives the "oh I'll buy it later excuse". In the case of single player games, what usually winds up happening is that they'll beat the game and it becomes forgotten on their computers.
I would rather prefer to see game demos be more prominent to get rid of that whole "I wanted to try the game" excuse.
Yeah, demos would work too but it's hard to get a feel for a game when you are only allowed to play 20mins of it. I'll just say that yes, i have pirated some stuff before, and every singel time i have enjoyed a game, i have bought it. I'm tired of buying a game, and it turns out it's a shitty port from some console which is so destroyed by bad control schemes and bugs that its un-playable. Companys only do this to squeez the last bits of $$$$ out of a game, not thinking of the players or the game anymore.
Piracy is not a problem that needs to be adressed. It's a miniscule thing that doesn't make any mentionable dent on sales.
Meanwhile the damage done to the internet when the free flow of information is stopped will be of such a degree that the internet will never ever be the same again.
Any solution to the tiny problem of piracy is of such a massive and invasive scale that it is never worth it. It's like suggesting we should impose big brother-esque laws if that means reducing the crime rate by 0.2%.
It is impossible to combat piracy without resorting to totalitarian measures. We have to ask ourselves, do we really want to fuck up the entire internet just so music companies can start charging 50 dollars for a CD?
out of those 4.5 million probably 3 million wouldnt have bought it full prized anyway. out of the other 1.5 millions maybe 500.000 feel bad about it and either bought it afterwards or will buy a witcher 3 for sure. the numbers look worse than they are regarding the sales of games imho.
So, let's say we have a perfect system of DRM, how many of those 4.5 million would go out and buy the game?
Too often these numbers are taken as the revenue lost, when it would not mostly have been gained anyway. Of course, if all the pirates who would buy the game did buy them then that's still a huge boost for developers and publishers, although there is the flipside of legitimate customers suffering from overzealous DRM that doesn't work very well as well (Ubisoft).
On November 30 2011 22:24 SonicTitan wrote: Minecraft has been downloaded illegally over twelve million times. The creator wants less DRM, not more. There are lessons to be learned here.
Completely agree with this guy. Also It would be difficult to spot who is a legit user and who is pirate. I don't want to get harassed just on a hunch.
The publishers make it hard to be sympathetic to their cause. The pricing scheme they use is... less than agreeable. A game that costs $60 in the US of A costs 60 Euro for me? Not only that, but I'm probably getting to get a digital download as well, cutting their costs in packaging, shipping and whatnot. What gives the cost discrepancy? Not to mention that the standard of life in my country is way lower than most, so putting the price at $60 is kind of heavy on the user to begin with.
On November 30 2011 22:50 ZtOzZ wrote: I think that game developers will slowly stop making the games for PC, since there is so much piracy compared to consoles.
There are pirated games for consoles as well. If all games were to move to consoles, all energy would shift from PC piracy to console, and the same thing would happen again.
On November 30 2011 22:50 ZtOzZ wrote: I think that game developers will slowly stop making the games for PC, since there is so much piracy compared to consoles.
There are pirated games for consoles as well. If all games were to move to consoles, all energy would shift from PC piracy to console, and the same thing would happen again.
True, but i doubt it would be just as many as it is now for PC.
Preorder content, DLC at relase content, all that stuff isnt helping the companies. When I order at amazon and get my amazon-preorder bonus, and another person orders at gamestop to get the gamestop preorder bonus. Also you can buy the premium edition with extra DLC at release. Then at release you can enter 4 different keys somewhere. And then the companies - more often than not - just fuck up at release. "Oh we didnt expect such a huge storm of customers, our servers are down, since they are never intended to support such a heavy load (and they never will handle the load of any release, because it's uneconomical to have enough resources to handle this "once in a lifetime" peaks) we will try our best to fix them".
Then there's the pirate: He has the game 2 days before release, has the amazon preorder stuff, the gamestop preorder stuff, the DLC and doesnt care if the servers work.
It's easier to pirate than it's to support the company.
On November 30 2011 22:16 LilClinkin wrote: Long story short: Those epic 50+ hour experiences you grew up playing will be replaced by episodic, DLC, subscription based, watered-down nonsense. The crux of the problem is, how do you provide incentive for players to pay to play your game? How do you deter piracy?
DLC has nothing to do with pirates. DLC gets pirated. They want more revenue from the normal consumers. Same goes for subscription based content - though how many subscription based games are there? MMOs? Have been subscription based since the early days (UO). watered-down nonsense - again just more money. Watered down content is easier to produce and probably more interesting to the general public compared to the small circle of hardcore gamers. Non of those things address the piracy problem.
On November 30 2011 22:50 ZtOzZ wrote: I think that game developers will slowly stop making the games for PC, since there is so much piracy compared to consoles.
They will only stop making pc games if there's no money in it anymore. Correct me if I'm wrong but the pc gaming industry is doing quite alright at the moment, despite all the pirating.
On November 30 2011 22:24 Interloper wrote: Many people who pirate do so because they want to try a game out. If they enjoy the game, they will buy it too support the developer. 4,5 million downloads becomes a useless figure since you can not in any way know how many of those 4,5 million purchased the game afterwards. I feel that piracy is a good way to get rid of shitty developers how make crappy games only for the sake of making money (Well all developers want to make money ofc, but i hope you get my point). Good developers get the money they need and then some. Piracy will not be the end of gaming.
This is the most common reason that has been given to me but more than often the person is also an expert at procrastination and gives the "oh I'll buy it later excuse". In the case of single player games, what usually winds up happening is that they'll beat the game and it becomes forgotten on their computers. Either way, I'd be willing to be a huge chunk of those who pirated wouldn't have bothered buying the game if piracy wasn't an option in the first place (in which case nothing would have been lost anyway).
I would rather prefer to see game demos be more prominent to get rid of that whole "I wanted to try the game" excuse.
But demos aren't the full game! They often don't give you enough experience to decide. Also the game can look promising in the beginning but turn out shitty.
For example. I pirated Portal 2. I liked it. I went out and bought it months after I completed the game just because I wanted to support Valve.
I pirated Amnesia. I liked it. I am planning on buying it soon (tight on cash).
I pirated CoD. It sucked. I didnt buy it. Everybody's happy (except Activision trying to steal my money).
On November 30 2011 22:50 ZtOzZ wrote: I think that game developers will slowly stop making the games for PC, since there is so much piracy compared to consoles.
There are pirated games for consoles as well. If all games were to move to consoles, all energy would shift from PC piracy to console, and the same thing would happen again.
True, but i doubt it would be just as many as it is now for PC.
you're right it wouldn't as many it would be more. Since you'd have all console pirates and PC pirates pirating console games.
Only way to "fight" is going the sc2 way. needing an internet connection to play which is a pretty shitty solution. At least sc2 offers decent functionality (b.net) for that trade off.
Good developers will get money and the teriible ones wont. I smile everytime i see a list of most pirated games and they are usually made up of 3 different types of games :
- very hardware intensive games - cause many people want to check if their pc can handle them or are they worth buying a new graphics card to play the game - yearly sequels and iterations of the same damn game - im not buying the same call of duty for the forth time and the addition of one new gameplay mode wont persuade me to shell out 50€ for a new FIFA game - EA games - cause fuck EA
The fact that a title has DRM or not doesnt matter, in fact if a title is very DRM restrictive some people will pirate them just to prove a point.
I would have been an average piece of shit person from my country, drinking beer every weekend, being fat and have 0 culture. You know what made me different? The internet. I downloaded so many movies and videogames I actually learned some decent english that then I used to read classic books like 1984 for free. Without the internet I would have been nothing because all these accesible culture really made me a whole lot different from the people around and I feel proud. Take down piracy and you take down a huge part of human culture too, just for some guys to make a few bucks because the people that really download things are from the third world and we don't have the money to pay even 5$, because our jobs pay 150$ a month, we barely fucking survive.
Cool article, made me feel slightly better for actually paying for games. I've never pirated games that arent like +15 years old already, if the games too expensive for the value I'l wait a few months till I can get it for 15€ or less, it's not like the game degenerates unless if it's an online game then you might be missing out if you wait and the community dies during that. This is just how I roll though and not trying to force it on anyone, other than my friends.
If I'm not even willing to pay for it, is it really even worth my time. However I do agree that the prices on games when they launch are ridiculous and due to this theres very few special games I buy on launch.
Fun idea, but if pirates can circumvent the DRM they can circumvent this too.
The real problem is that often pirates get a better experience than they would if they went through the 'proper' route. Buy a DVD and you must first watch the mandatory trailers **, followed by lengthy menus to load and navigate. Pirates just play. For PC games we get draconian DRM where we must register, sign up, enter logon details etc. Pirates just play. Some games now have "limited activations" - you are only allowed to install 3 times and then you're just not allowed to anymore. Pirates just play. Other games required "always on" internet connection, and if that connection failed your game would be closed ("From Dust" being a recent example), or you would lose (or not be able to access) your savegames. Pirates just play.
When the knock-off experience is substantially BETTER than the real experience, AND it's free, it's not hard to see why so many people pirate.
** the most ridiculous one being, of course, the "piracy is bad" trailer. The trailer that PAYING CUSTOMERS must endure, but the pirated version will conveniently omit.
Developers need to stop wasting their time with DRM, period. It only hurts customers, this has been proven with pretty much every piece of software from $50 games to $5.000 professional software.
You can't stop piracy, even somehow you could stop people from downloading it straight from the internet people will still sell pirated media (which is even worse).
You can only make people want to buy your game more by...
- Establishing a solid reputation as a developer: I can't imagine something worse than people not even wanting to pirate a game. This is the case for A LOT of game releases that are not even aimed at a niche market, they are simply bad games.
- Adding serious Coop modes for games that would make sense to have them on: Seriously how fucking awesome is playing Diablo 2 with your friends or over bnet rather than single player?
- Having worldwide release dates for boxed edition: Is some marketing / legal guy really expecting people not to pirate a game when they take weeks or even months to release a game on a different country after the US release date?
- Having Solid digital download platform: If you don't give a crap about the box / manuals why even bother walking to the store to buy it, or hell maybe you don't want to look around for an english copy of the game instead of the translated version the nearest store to you decided to import.
- Localized prices for countries that can't afford u$s / Euro prices of games. Strip them of box, manual (make a pdf in the dvd), cut the price.
There's many other things that can be done but stopping piracy cold turkey is not going to happen any time soon.
On November 30 2011 22:24 Interloper wrote: Many people who pirate do so because they want to try a game out. If they enjoy the game, they will buy it too support the developer. 4,5 million downloads becomes a useless figure since you can not in any way know how many of those 4,5 million purchased the game afterwards. I feel that piracy is a good way to get rid of shitty developers how make crappy games only for the sake of making money (Well all developers want to make money ofc, but i hope you get my point). Good developers get the money they need and then some. Piracy will not be the end of gaming.
This is the most common reason that has been given to me but more than often the person is also an expert at procrastination and gives the "oh I'll buy it later excuse". In the case of single player games, what usually winds up happening is that they'll beat the game and it becomes forgotten on their computers. Either way, I'd be willing to be a huge chunk of those who pirated wouldn't have bothered buying the game if piracy wasn't an option in the first place (in which case nothing would have been lost anyway).
I would rather prefer to see game demos be more prominent to get rid of that whole "I wanted to try the game" excuse.
But demos aren't the full game! They often don't give you enough experience to decide. Also the game can look promising in the beginning but turn out shitty.
For example. I pirated Portal 2. I liked it. I went out and bought it months after I completed the game just because I wanted to support Valve.
I pirated Amnesia. I liked it. I am planning on buying it soon (tight on cash).
I pirated CoD. It sucked. I didnt buy it. Everybody's happy (except Activision trying to steal my money).
While I'm happy to read that you actually buy the games after pirating them, you really think that majority of people who pirate games do the same? What is the rational incentive to do so?
On November 30 2011 23:18 Hairy wrote: Fun idea, but if pirates can circumvent the DRM they can circumvent this too.
The real problem is that often pirates get a better experience than they would if they went through the 'proper' route. Buy a DVD and you must first watch the mandatory trailers **, followed by lengthy menus to load and navigate. Pirates just play. For PC games we get draconian DRM where we must register, sign up, enter logon details etc. Pirates just play. Some games now have "limited activations" - you are only allowed to install 3 times and then you're just not allowed to anymore. Pirates just play. Other games required "always on" internet connection, and if that connection failed your game would be closed ("From Dust" being a recent example), or you would lose (or not be able to access) your savegames. Pirates just play.
When the knock-off experience is substantially BETTER than the real experience, AND it's free, it's not hard to see why so many people pirate.
** the most ridiculous one being, of course, the "piracy is bad" trailer. The trailer that PAYING CUSTOMERS must endure, but the pirated version will conveniently omit.
Oh god I hate that. I just recently spent an hour trying to get a game to work because of their retarded registration and activation process... And that was a single player game (that you had to be online to play as well).
I was reading an article about PC piracy a while ago.
"Finally, on the contentious topic of DRM, aside from Spore whose audience may well have fallen victim to DRM-induced hysteria, the presence of intrusive DRM appears not to increase piracy of a game. For example Call of Duty 4, Assassin's Creed and Crysis all have no intrusive DRM whatsoever: they all use basic SafeDisc copy protection with no install limits, no online activation, and no major reports of protection-related issues. Yet all were pirated heavily enough to have the dubious distinction of being in the Top 10 downloaded games list. But strangely absent from the list are several popular games which do use more intrusive DRM: BioShock, Crysis Warhead, and Mass Effect. This indicates quite clearly that intrusive DRM is not the main reason why some games are pirated more heavily than others. We examine this issue in more detail in the Copy Protection & DRM section."
"I've saved an excellent example for last. As an indication that not only is the scale of piracy generally high across all types of games, but more importantly, that it seems to have little to do with DRM, big greedy game companies, or the high price of games, let's take a look at a game called World of Goo, recently released by a small independent developer called 2D Boy consisting of a team of 3 people. It's available as a digital download, selling for less than $20 on Steam, it has no intrusive DRM, and it's received nothing but praise, reflected in a Metacritic Score of 90%/95%. This should be precisely the recipe for preventing piracy according to some, but unfortunately the truth is less convenient: the developer of the game has stated that World of Goo has an approximate piracy rate of 90%. Regardless of the precise level of piracy, the key point to consider is that World of Goo addresses every single item on the checklist of excuses which people usually present for pirating games - yet it is still being pirated quite heavily. Update: Just to show that World of Goo wasn't an isolated case, there is yet another example of the irrelevance of DRM, big greedy companies and high prices to piracy. The independent game Machinarium, released by a small Czech developer and priced at $20 with no DRM also has the dubious honor of a 90% piracy rate."
And piracy will only stop when developers and publishers give pirates incentives to actually buy the game, and have reasonable prices.What kind of money grabbing lunatic thinks people will pay 50 bucks a pop for a new reskin of CoD every year?
Look at Steam.Steam has solved piracy.Their profits are through the roof.
On November 30 2011 22:38 zalz wrote: Piracy is not a problem that needs to be adressed. It's a miniscule thing that doesn't make any mentionable dent on sales.
Meanwhile the damage done to the internet when the free flow of information is stopped will be of such a degree that the internet will never ever be the same again.
Any solution to the tiny problem of piracy is of such a massive and invasive scale that it is never worth it. It's like suggesting we should impose big brother-esque laws if that means reducing the crime rate by 0.2%.
It is impossible to combat piracy without resorting to totalitarian measures. We have to ask ourselves, do we really want to fuck up the entire internet just so music companies can start charging 50 dollars for a CD?
I heard modern warfare 2 had more than 10X the amount of people online as they sold games, more than 10X the people pirated the game than bought it on pc. This is an issue i would say.
I dont pirate games but I really don't like the DRM's that some company's have in place. I couldnt play any of my steam games because steam offline mode didn't work.
I'm always curious when numbers like these come up,
4.5 million downloads. - How many used it as a demo and bought it after trying it - How many didn't buy it - How many would not have bought anyway
I buy games I want to support and I think are worth the money, including Witcher 2 and something like Arkham City.
I downloaded Hard Reset because it looked kind of neat and the demo was ok, and while they may have not made any money on me pirating it, I was not impressed to the point by demos or reviews for Hard Reset that I would have purchased it anyway even if I could not download it.
The industry itself is feeding the pirating machine, plenty of good points in this topic.
Something is very, VERY wrong with the product if the pirated version is simpler, easier and more convenient to use than a legally purchased copy.
Pricing on products, especially some electronic vs physical products is downright retarded. Example from a well known, well loved(?) Blizzard Entertainment and none other than Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty:
The day or 2 before the digital game price was announced, it was, if memory serves, very much the release date of the physical box as well. Local shops were pricing it at the 30euros range, give or take a 5, but this time I decided, to hell with a box and all that crap, let's save the planet and not buy useless garbage coming with the box, but instead get a digital copy. And then the day dawns, when the digital copy pricing is revealed, 59.90 euros. For a digital copy. Vs a 29.90 from local store box. Hell, the collectors edition was priced 35.90. ... ... yea, I cancelled the "digital preorder" and legged to the store to buy a box for 29.90 instead.
I do agree with some above me that the lack of proper demo's are a problem. Either the game is gimped to the point where you can't get a decent feel for the game, or like in many cases of games I've been interested in, there is no demo at all.
As for DRM, they are not bad in themselves only bad when they are poorly implemented.
On November 30 2011 22:50 ZtOzZ wrote: I think that game developers will slowly stop making the games for PC, since there is so much piracy compared to consoles.
How will that stop anything with my modded wii and 360?
I don't pirate games, if I'm interested in a game, I'll buy it after I do research on it. I'll rarely buy a game on day one (maybe a week later after I see all the complaints about the gameplay) unless the company tends to make amazing games (Nintendo for example)
On November 30 2011 22:50 ZtOzZ wrote: I think that game developers will slowly stop making the games for PC, since there is so much piracy compared to consoles.
How will that stop anything with my modded wii and 360?
Wasn't Skyward Sword available a week before release if you pirated it?
On November 30 2011 23:59 2WeaK wrote: I don't pirate games, if I'm interested in a game, I'll buy it after I do research on it. I'll rarely buy a game on day one (maybe a week later after I see all the complaints about the gameplay) unless the company tends to make amazing games (Nintendo for example)
On November 30 2011 22:50 ZtOzZ wrote: I think that game developers will slowly stop making the games for PC, since there is so much piracy compared to consoles.
How will that stop anything with my modded wii and 360?
Wasn't Skyward Sword available a week before release if you pirated it?
Yes it was, which adds to the advantages of piracy, you get it (a lot) earlier.
I'm all about the free sharing of data and information. If you don't want your product pirated, make better security measures to ensure this doesn't happen. It's things like piracy that drives innovation and change, the world needs this to grow. Just look at how napster changed the technology world as we know it today. When I download music/movies now, I see myself as contributing to the technological advancement of mankind
I too have made the mistake of blindly buying a game based on good reviews. Actually, back in high school I did this with Vagrant Story. I bought the game because Gamepro (I think it was Gamepro at least) gave it an extremely high score, calling it one of the best games ever made. IGN also has rated in at something like 9.8/10, one of the highest rated games on IGN of all time.
I hated the game. I spent $50 on the stupid thing and I hated it to high heaven. I played like two hours of it, found absolutely nothing interesting, and just never played it again.
Another example was with FFX-2. Another extremely highly-rated game on pretty much all websites, but all in all, Squaresoft's (or Square-Enix's) biggest piece of trash to date. I was able to do about an hour of this game before I tried to take it back, where Best Buy refused to return my money. $59 gone. At this point I decided that Square-Enix owed me about $110 for the shitty ass games it sold me, and have since evened things out by downloading some of their better games. Fair is fair, I say.
Without downloading a game first, how am I supposed to know how good it really is? Game review websites are biased towards the companies for which they advertise, game demos are either too short to tell us anything or don't even exist at all, and game previews give next to no information about the game itself 90% of the time. We, the gamers, have paid high prices for games for years because we know it's necessary to support the industry. But I'll be damned if I'm going to get ripped off for my hard-earned money on a piece of crap.
On December 01 2011 00:01 zimz wrote: when people have extra income and feel secure about their future they will stop pirating.
Quite an optimistic view. However, I would think more people pirate because they can rather then because they have to. If money was the main reason then cheap indy games wouldn't be pirated like they are.
Of course, I think fighting piracy is a losing battle unless developers start using improved draconian methods like always-online and such. Even then, as shown by Ubisoft's scheme being cracked, those probably aren't full proof either. Developers need to worry more about what they can control, which is providing a high quality product at a reasonable price and without nuisances that are avoided when pirating. Too many times the pirates have a better quality product then people who bought the game legally.
I've never heard of someone buying a game after having downloaded and played (finished) it. Ever. I don't know who is spreading these platitudes but stuff like this is hurting any reasonable discussion. Stop kidding yourselves... if you pirate a game you either finish it and forget about it or decide you don't like it. None of those leads to a purchase.
On November 30 2011 23:42 daemir wrote: The industry itself is feeding the pirating machine, plenty of good points in this topic.
Something is very, VERY wrong with the product if the pirated version is simpler, easier and more convenient to use than a legally purchased copy.
Pricing on products, especially some electronic vs physical products is downright retarded. Example from a well known, well loved(?) Blizzard Entertainment and none other than Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty:
The day or 2 before the digital game price was announced, it was, if memory serves, very much the release date of the physical box as well. Local shops were pricing it at the 30euros range, give or take a 5, but this time I decided, to hell with a box and all that crap, let's save the planet and not buy useless garbage coming with the box, but instead get a digital copy. And then the day dawns, when the digital copy pricing is revealed, 59.90 euros. For a digital copy. Vs a 29.90 from local store box. Hell, the collectors edition was priced 35.90. ... ... yea, I cancelled the "digital preorder" and legged to the store to buy a box for 29.90 instead.
Wait, what? SC2 was 30 Euro on release in your local store? It's only down to 40 in here, and that's only now, it cost way more on release... That's not how you make loyal customers. Meh.
On December 01 2011 00:18 Kickboxer wrote: I've never heard of someone buying a game after having downloaded and played (finished) it. Ever. I don't know who is spreading these platitudes but stuff like this is hurting any reasonable discussion. Stop kidding yourselves... if you pirate a game you either finish it and forget about it or decide you don't like it. None of those leads to a purchase.
My mate, Dangerous Dave, he buys games he pirated after he finishes them. It leads to at least a couple of replays in any case.
On December 01 2011 00:18 Kickboxer wrote: I've never heard of someone buying a game after having downloaded and played (finished) it. Ever. I don't know who is spreading these platitudes but stuff like this is hurting any reasonable discussion. Stop kidding yourselves... if you pirate a game you either finish it and forget about it or decide you don't like it. None of those leads to a purchase.
I bought Skyrim after I played the pirated version for a weekend. I had never played an Elder Scrolls game before, nor any other free-roaming RPG, so I had no idea whether the game was going to be fun for me. Just recently Steam had a sale on Oblivion (the predecessor of Skyrim) and I bought it as well (not played it yet). 2 purchases that happened purely due to a single game downloaded.
I agree that most people that pirate games don't take the step in actually buying it, but it's a big exaggerated to claim that noone does.
There's no "battle". There's nothing to fight here. If developers will publish polished games, treating their customers with respect, rather than coming up with new and creative ways of making the playing experience worse and troublesome they will turn a profit. It doesn't matter how many time a title has been illegaly download, it does not correspond to the number of sales in any way whatsoever! Developers go about it the wrong way - packing their games with intrusive DRM (which does *NOTHING* to prevent piracy - every single game out there, on every platform, has been pirated; usually within hours after initial release). CD Projekt RED's stance is absolutely perfect in the situation at hand.
The Witcher 2 has been downloaded 4.5 million times not because it had no DRM, but because it was a good game. I will say this once more - DRM does nothing to protect games from being pirated; if anything it scares away potential customers.
I thought this thread was going to be about piracy on the seas, I'm a little disappointed
I download pretty much all films/TV/music I watch/listen to but I don't really pirate games, but then again I don't really play many games, it's been mainly BW for the past 8 years and most other games have been either on consoles or free to download games anyway...
I can see the problem with piracy for developers but I agree with zalz that it isn't that big a deal and keeping the internet as it is is more important.
On November 30 2011 22:50 ZtOzZ wrote: I think that game developers will slowly stop making the games for PC, since there is so much piracy compared to consoles.
There are pirated games for consoles as well. If all games were to move to consoles, all energy would shift from PC piracy to console, and the same thing would happen again.
True, but i doubt it would be just as many as it is now for PC.
I don't have exact numbers, but here in México City that statement is not true: Given consoles are generally much cheaper than gaming PC's, it's actually hard to get pirated PC CDs (guess they don't sell well), while LITERALLY you can get pirated CD's for every console by walking 5 blocks on any direction. Sad thing when you think about it. While the media stays digital, it will be pirated, no matter the format.
I will never pirat a PC game. If its not good enough to pay for its not worth playing. However music and movies I consider free domain after they hit the radio, tv or dvd.
I remember going to gamerevolution.com back in the day to check to see if a game had a high score, which would then lead me to buying it. Boy, that didn't always work out rofl.
Like others have said, pirating 4.5 million copies is kind of a wrong way to put the statement. I am pretty certain, that a lot of those 4.5 million people have bought the game after they pirated it (obviously not a huge number, probably not even half would have bought the game but its still a lot). Sure the initial piracy is a good idea to make it seem as if the company was robbed, but I know a couple people that would buy the game after pirating, myself included. However, I chose not to buy Witcher 2, because it just wasn't my type of game. Would have never bought it in the first place unless it was on a big sale, and I wanted something to test my graphics card on.
From past experiences, what really makes me want to buy a game is how well the developers promise not to "cheat" us out on game content. Which is what really makes me laugh in the end, how they kind of advertise this aspect of not cutting short on development. For example, Skyrim is one of those games where in their numerous ad's, they go on about how long it took to develop their game, and all the processes that took place, and even have this humongous collectors edition, with extra footage on the making of the game. If this game is getting that much content, has this many people vouching for its quality, and yet can be bought for the same price as every other game, with less content, why the hell should I pay for 60$ for every game when I could just test (and very likely not enjoy) some and then buy ones that I like?
I am going to be purchasing skyrim, without any pirating at all. Simply because all the good reviews I got from from friends and forums just makes me want to experience the entire thing without any hassle of cracks, and I am willing to wait to get the actual copy, which will be after school semester ends. Another cool small thing that makes me want skyrim is the little map that comes in the hard copy. I am curious as to why internet steam copies are the same price as hard copies with the box, map, and disc inside as well. This same concept goes for battlefield 3, which I purchased as well.
Points that convince me into buying a game is this: If the company wants to base it's game around multiplayer: [1] Are the developers known for providing quality patches regarding balance changes and proper connection? i.e. Blizzard not i.e. Relic [2] Are the developers going to create multiple re-hashes of the same game every year? i.e. EA Sports (Madden, etc), Activision (Call of Duty series), EA (Battlefield and Bad company series combined which follow along the same gameplay). [3] How good is the gameplay?
If the company wants to base it's game around singleplayer: [1] Are the developers known for providing bug support and quality patches? [2] How long is the game, and do I like the gameplay or storyline?
And here are some examples of games that would have made me sad, especially as a kid with no income at all, if I bought them. -Call of duty: MW2, Black Ops, World at War [I bought all the call of duties from the first and all its expansion packs the day of release, and call of duty 2, which was quite frankly, a call of duty 1 with better graphics, but at the time that was perfectly fine, since graphics went through a huge upgrade at that time period.] -World in Conflict [really bad multiplayer gameplay] -Mass Effect 1 -Dawn of War Soulstorm (which was a terrible shit-storm of a game). To be honest, Relic's Dawn of War series is what prompted me to start pirating games anyways, since they just create terrible sequels and try to milk a game out of their money as much as possible ditching all forms of game balance. -Hellgate London [This game was fucking horrible, and I bought it, I am so fucking pissed to this day that I bought this scam]. To this day, Hellgate London remains as the sole reminder of why I should not buy a game on release, and pirate it first, unless there are a shit ton of reviews on it. -Company of Heroes expansion packs. [I bought the original, never even bothered to play its expansions, because I learned from Relic's responsibility issues with games after Dawn of War]. -Fallout NV, that was horrible.
So pretty much, each developer has a checklist from me, and if I have to keep marking things off on how I felt I was fucked over, like Hellgate London and Dawn of War, I will buy less from that individual company, and it will simply reinforce the reason to pirate on initial release dates from other companies.
So far, Blizzard is the only company that really hasn't let me down. Except maybe WoW, my account got stolen, like three years ago, and I only found out now by trying to look-up my character, and finding out that it was deleted, and my password changed, but thats just internet douchbags.
If you want to reduce the amount of copies pirated on release dates of games (or prior), the only real way is to fix shit companies that release shit games with false advertisements like Hellgate London. However, if the developers make an awesome game, then a lot of people will buy them anyways.
The ones who don't are generally going to be the ones who would never buy games in the first place, without the chance to just get them for free.
EDIT: It might be a good idea if developers split their game's releases into multiplayer versions and singleplayer versions, and split the costs accordingly (with multiplayer being more expensive if thats their focus; like 40$ for multiplayer MW3, 20$ for singleplayer). That would probably make me buy some of the call of duties, since I like playing their single players more so than their multiplayer, but would rather not buy the entire package.
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.
This 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.
Long story short: Those epic 50+ hour experiences you grew up playing will be replaced by episodic, DLC, subscription based, watered-down nonsense. The crux of the problem is, how do you provide incentive for players to pay to play your game? How do you deter piracy?
Enter Dark Souls. Any one who has played Dark Souls (or its predecessor, Demon's Souls), is aware of the unique multiplayer gameplay found within. While they are both predominantly single-player games, you are perpetually connected online via PSN (unless you manually choose not to be) with others who are playing the game. This grants you the option to invade their world and kill them (and be invaded yourself) at any time.
When Dark Souls broke street date by approximately 1 week, a few shrewd pirates jumped at the opportunity to download the game early for free. How did the developers respond? They invaded as level 999 black phantoms every world of every pirate, and slaughtered them repeatedly.
This anecdote sparked within me an idea: Imagine if such justice was dispensed by the user-base of paying players? What if not only the devs, but all honest gamers could invade and slaughter all of the pirates in their own game world? What better way to combat piracy than to empower those who legitimately pay to relentlessly slay and abuse those who would seek a free ride?
This idea can be taken in any number of directions. Post your thoughts and own ideas on player-driven and gameplay-driven DRM methods.
I think the entire piracy discussion is kind of overblown out of proportion. Here's why.
Most of the torrent numbers are not filtered for country from which the request originates. Why is this important? The highest piracy numbers are from countries like India, Russia, China and other countries in Asia/Eastern europe. These countries have traditionally never been the biggest markets for games and the pricing strategy for most of these games has been literally converting the dollar/euro price in the game directly to the local currency. This leads to massively overpriced games (in proportion to the salary of an average individual) and correspondingly lower sales. People pirate games here without any guilt or remorse simply because the games are massively overpriced, and there is very little done here to alleviate the problem.
The point I'm trying to get at is this : How many of those 4.5 million downloads are actually from people who would have otherwise purchased the game? I'm pretty sure the people in the countries that I mentioned were not going to purchase the game in the first place given the atrocious pricing. Given that, I might say that in terms of lost sales, the number is more around 1/5th of the number. Don't get me wrong, its still a significant number. But I'm just saying that without analyzing the data more clearly its hard to say that every pirated copy leads to a lost sale.
Disclaimer : I am not in any way supporting pirating (I have a huge collection of games on steam half of which I haven't even gotten around to playing T_T). I'm just trying to give some perspective on those numbers from my personal experiences with people around me.
On November 30 2011 22:50 ZtOzZ wrote: I think that game developers will slowly stop making the games for PC, since there is so much piracy compared to consoles.
How will that stop anything with my modded wii and 360?
Softmodding a wii and removing traces of it (if you want it repaired) is stupid easy and basically requires an sd card. On another note, I have bought BW twice, Downloaded it at least 5 times, Wc3+TFT bought once, downloaded at least 20-30 times.
On November 30 2011 23:42 daemir wrote: The industry itself is feeding the pirating machine, plenty of good points in this topic.
Something is very, VERY wrong with the product if the pirated version is simpler, easier and more convenient to use than a legally purchased copy.
Pricing on products, especially some electronic vs physical products is downright retarded. Example from a well known, well loved(?) Blizzard Entertainment and none other than Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty:
The day or 2 before the digital game price was announced, it was, if memory serves, very much the release date of the physical box as well. Local shops were pricing it at the 30euros range, give or take a 5, but this time I decided, to hell with a box and all that crap, let's save the planet and not buy useless garbage coming with the box, but instead get a digital copy. And then the day dawns, when the digital copy pricing is revealed, 59.90 euros. For a digital copy. Vs a 29.90 from local store box. Hell, the collectors edition was priced 35.90. ... ... yea, I cancelled the "digital preorder" and legged to the store to buy a box for 29.90 instead.
Wait, what? SC2 was 30 Euro on release in your local store? It's only down to 40 in here, and that's only now, it cost way more on release... That's not how you make loyal customers. Meh.
On December 01 2011 00:18 Kickboxer wrote: I've never heard of someone buying a game after having downloaded and played (finished) it. Ever. I don't know who is spreading these platitudes but stuff like this is hurting any reasonable discussion. Stop kidding yourselves... if you pirate a game you either finish it and forget about it or decide you don't like it. None of those leads to a purchase.
My mate, Dangerous Dave, he buys games he pirated after he finishes them. It leads to at least a couple of replays in any case.
Just an example of F'd up pricing. How can you justify shit like this to an end user? How can the customer with common sense understand that a printed, packaged and shipped version costs HALF of what a digital download does.
On December 01 2011 00:18 Kickboxer wrote: I've never heard of someone buying a game after having downloaded and played (finished) it. Ever. I don't know who is spreading these platitudes but stuff like this is hurting any reasonable discussion. Stop kidding yourselves... if you pirate a game you either finish it and forget about it or decide you don't like it. None of those leads to a purchase.
What are you even saying? That anyone who pirates have absolutley no intrest in a sequel for the game they pirated? They have no moral fiber what so ever? Give people some credit.
On December 01 2011 00:18 Kickboxer wrote: I've never heard of someone buying a game after having downloaded and played (finished) it. Ever. I don't know who is spreading these platitudes but stuff like this is hurting any reasonable discussion. Stop kidding yourselves... if you pirate a game you either finish it and forget about it or decide you don't like it. None of those leads to a purchase.
That wasn't the case for me and Dawn of War 2, and the first CoD Modern Warfare.
On December 01 2011 00:18 Kickboxer wrote: I've never heard of someone buying a game after having downloaded and played (finished) it. Ever. I don't know who is spreading these platitudes but stuff like this is hurting any reasonable discussion. Stop kidding yourselves... if you pirate a game you either finish it and forget about it or decide you don't like it. None of those leads to a purchase.
funny because you can read about such people right here, me for example games include: warcraft3+tft (ok, so i get to play the multiplayer but i could have gotten a friends key just as easily) civilization4(depending on what you mean by finnished, i played alot before i bought it, multiplayer civ4 doesn't seem fun at all for me i just bought it cause the game's frickin awesome) warhammer40k:space marine(hmm, probably didn't completely finished it but i still got a long way through before i bought it) starcraft:broodwar i have both pirated(to play on iccup when i lost key) and bought more than one copy due to losing cdkeys and stuff ^^. Also sure there are bunch of games i enjoyed but never bought because i can't justify spending all my money on videogames. But also alot of extremely shitty games i might have bought if i didn't get the chance to pirate them first, TES: oblivion is my best example of that, worst game i have ever spent time on they should pay me for wasting my life for that piece of shit they call a game(also a particularly devious trap since the demo wouldn't have revealed any of the shittyness and reviews were for some reason positive) personally i feel justified pirating just for oblivion alone, and anyone who would call me a thief is wrong, maybe pirating is morally wrong and i certainly feel it's a problem that should be dealt with somehow but it's still not the same thing as thieving(which btw also can be justified depending on circumstances).
On November 30 2011 23:42 daemir wrote: The industry itself is feeding the pirating machine, plenty of good points in this topic.
Something is very, VERY wrong with the product if the pirated version is simpler, easier and more convenient to use than a legally purchased copy.
Pricing on products, especially some electronic vs physical products is downright retarded. Example from a well known, well loved(?) Blizzard Entertainment and none other than Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty:
The day or 2 before the digital game price was announced, it was, if memory serves, very much the release date of the physical box as well. Local shops were pricing it at the 30euros range, give or take a 5, but this time I decided, to hell with a box and all that crap, let's save the planet and not buy useless garbage coming with the box, but instead get a digital copy. And then the day dawns, when the digital copy pricing is revealed, 59.90 euros. For a digital copy. Vs a 29.90 from local store box. Hell, the collectors edition was priced 35.90. ... ... yea, I cancelled the "digital preorder" and legged to the store to buy a box for 29.90 instead.
Wait, what? SC2 was 30 Euro on release in your local store? It's only down to 40 in here, and that's only now, it cost way more on release... That's not how you make loyal customers. Meh.
On December 01 2011 00:18 Kickboxer wrote: I've never heard of someone buying a game after having downloaded and played (finished) it. Ever. I don't know who is spreading these platitudes but stuff like this is hurting any reasonable discussion. Stop kidding yourselves... if you pirate a game you either finish it and forget about it or decide you don't like it. None of those leads to a purchase.
My mate, Dangerous Dave, he buys games he pirated after he finishes them. It leads to at least a couple of replays in any case.
Just an example of F'd up pricing. How can you justify shit like this to an end user? How can the customer with common sense understand that a printed, packaged and shipped version costs HALF of what a digital download does.
Yeah, I can't wrap my head around this either. Digital download platforms are a great idea and they can actually work to lower piracy and boost sales. But if the games are more expensive as digital download than they are as a hardcopy, it just takes away almost all the appeal.
It seems that the game developers are being pressured by retails organizations to not make digital downloads competitive, because as soon as digital downloads compete on price with hardcopy versions, I expect hardcopy sales to plummet.
It's important to note that out of those 4.5 million for The Witcher 2, a lot of them would not have bought it if it was the only way to get ahold of it. Just like with music, if you are downloading it you're getting a lot that you would not otherwise. I myself, and I guess a lot of others, download games first to try them out before deciding to buy. Needless to say, I bought Skyrim about a day later
I downloaded TW2, would I have bought this game if I didn't download it? No. Friend told me it was a great game so I downloaded, really liked it and recommended to like 10 other friends who bought it. By this "flawless logic" I guess you could say piracy made 10 extra customers who otherwise wouldn't have bought this game?
The companies obviously lose some cash to people who download the games, but I think this is evened out since more people have the game, so if the game is good people will recommend it and some of those will buy it. Obviously that's just my opinion and not supported by facts.
On December 01 2011 00:18 Kickboxer wrote: I've never heard of someone buying a game after having downloaded and played (finished) it. Ever. I don't know who is spreading these platitudes but stuff like this is hurting any reasonable discussion. Stop kidding yourselves... if you pirate a game you either finish it and forget about it or decide you don't like it. None of those leads to a purchase.
It only really applies to multiplayer. As I understand it (never pirated a game beyond SNES emulator since most of my cartridges were broke anyways) you cant MP on pirate copies for most modern games. I dunno how tough it is to get a legit cd key and have it work tho.
On November 30 2011 23:42 daemir wrote: The industry itself is feeding the pirating machine, plenty of good points in this topic.
Something is very, VERY wrong with the product if the pirated version is simpler, easier and more convenient to use than a legally purchased copy.
Pricing on products, especially some electronic vs physical products is downright retarded. Example from a well known, well loved(?) Blizzard Entertainment and none other than Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty:
The day or 2 before the digital game price was announced, it was, if memory serves, very much the release date of the physical box as well. Local shops were pricing it at the 30euros range, give or take a 5, but this time I decided, to hell with a box and all that crap, let's save the planet and not buy useless garbage coming with the box, but instead get a digital copy. And then the day dawns, when the digital copy pricing is revealed, 59.90 euros. For a digital copy. Vs a 29.90 from local store box. Hell, the collectors edition was priced 35.90. ... ... yea, I cancelled the "digital preorder" and legged to the store to buy a box for 29.90 instead.
Wait, what? SC2 was 30 Euro on release in your local store? It's only down to 40 in here, and that's only now, it cost way more on release... That's not how you make loyal customers. Meh.
On December 01 2011 00:18 Kickboxer wrote: I've never heard of someone buying a game after having downloaded and played (finished) it. Ever. I don't know who is spreading these platitudes but stuff like this is hurting any reasonable discussion. Stop kidding yourselves... if you pirate a game you either finish it and forget about it or decide you don't like it. None of those leads to a purchase.
My mate, Dangerous Dave, he buys games he pirated after he finishes them. It leads to at least a couple of replays in any case.
Just an example of F'd up pricing. How can you justify shit like this to an end user? How can the customer with common sense understand that a printed, packaged and shipped version costs HALF of what a digital download does.
Yeah, I can't wrap my head around this either. Digital download platforms are a great idea and they can actually work to lower piracy and boost sales. But if the games are more expensive as digital download than they are as a hardcopy, it just takes away almost all the appeal.
It seems that the game developers are being pressured by retails organizations to not make digital downloads competitive, because as soon as digital downloads compete on price with hardcopy versions, I expect hardcopy sales to plummet.
Oh and to continue this SC2 example further, you buy this hardcopy, get the CD key out of it, enter it into your battle.net account and get access to the aforementioned 60e digital copy anyway, as you can dl clients from bnet acc.
So if piracy is a problem, game houses and publishers can look into the mirror first before throwing too heavy rocks around.
On December 01 2011 00:18 Kickboxer wrote: I've never heard of someone buying a game after having downloaded and played (finished) it. Ever. I don't know who is spreading these platitudes but stuff like this is hurting any reasonable discussion. Stop kidding yourselves... if you pirate a game you either finish it and forget about it or decide you don't like it. None of those leads to a purchase.
It only really applies to multiplayer. As I understand it (never pirated a game beyond SNES emulator since most of my cartridges were broke anyways) you cant MP on pirate copies for most modern games. I dunno how tough it is to get a legit cd key and have it work tho.
You can't get CD keys, period. The algorithm can't be emulated once it reaches a certain complexity. The only way would be to have someone on the inside to provide the algorithm. I'd even assume they're multi-layered in case it's leaked (mathematically possible, dunno about the implementation today).
Usually you get near perfect copy protection for MP games with the CD key. SP games are a whole different matter. The way I see it the only really uncrackable DRM would be to stream certain code through a cloud (as done with Assassin's Creed). Cracking that can be made so incredibly hard if you only provide results from code executed on the servers that no group should manage it in time to be relevant. With movies and music and eventually games I'm also looking at streaming. The Frauenhofer Institute has proven that it's possible to embed unique water marks into the actual data of video and audio without that alteration being noticeable, even through analogue copies and reencodes. Now while that may not seem like a big deal they could for example cut people off if a file with the correspondent unique water mark appears on some filesharing network. Yes, this is legally shady but possible. Not to mention how OnLive and Gaikai make it impossible to copy any game from them.
The whole problem will disappear the sooner we get massive streaming capabilities. Maybe the companies shold just stick with the basic, easy DRM they already have and instead throw their money at clouds.
I'm hoping that alll major Internet providers enact blockades that simply don't allow access to torrent/p2p sites. It's the only way to stop stealing on such a large scale.
On December 01 2011 00:18 Kickboxer wrote: I've never heard of someone buying a game after having downloaded and played (finished) it. Ever. I don't know who is spreading these platitudes but stuff like this is hurting any reasonable discussion. Stop kidding yourselves... if you pirate a game you either finish it and forget about it or decide you don't like it. None of those leads to a purchase.
On December 01 2011 01:24 SoLaR[i.C] wrote: I'm hoping that alll major Internet providers enact blockades that simply don't allow access to torrent/p2p sites. It's the only way to stop stealing on such a large scale.
Good way to prevent sharing legal information as well. Talk about a cutting off ones nose to spite the face.
DRM does not stop piracy. All DRM does, all it EVER has done is hurt the buyers. Pirates copy and paste a crack and they play the game no problem, even on Multiplayer in a lot of cases. DRM that makes it so you can only DL it on 3 computers, or that you must be online at all times, or uses intrusive spyware to scan your computer -- it does NOTHING to stop Piracy. It ONLY hurts the buyers.
Gabe Newell states it best. 1:05 in.
Also, many pirates DL games they enjoy. EVERY game torrent has "If you enjoy the game, support the developers and buy it!" I know on Bitgamer there was a poll of like 14,000 people and roughly 88% said they purchase games they enjoy. It's not conclusive evidence, but come on.
There's ways to stop piracy. Gabe Newell gets it right.
Long story short: Those epic 50+ hour experiences you grew up playing will be replaced by episodic, DLC, subscription based, watered-down nonsense. The crux of the problem is, how do you provide incentive for players to pay to play your game? How do you deter piracy?
Piracy is for the game developers what terrorism is for the US government: just an excuse to expoloit innocent people.
The "I pirated it and then bought it" model Could be used by the industry... but only if buying it gives the consumer something they wouldn't have otherwise.
With something like WoW they can sort of do that, subscription base allows a cheaper initial game. You could also have demo versions. (released for free, but limited)
The opinion of a company who has sold over a million copies of a game despite piracy is meaningless. The Witcher 2 is successful, but they're passing their success as "proof" that piracy is an avoidable factor.
How about an interview of a fledgling indie game designer who has sold less than 1000 copies of their game, but has seen it pirated more than 10000 times? That's what piracy hurts, not the big guys.
On December 01 2011 01:32 andrea20 wrote: The opinion of a company who has sold over a million copies of a game despite piracy is meaningless. The Witcher 2 is successful, but they're passing their success as "proof" that piracy is an avoidable factor.
How about an interview of a fledgling indie game designer who has sold less than 1000 copies of their game, but has seen it pirated more than 10000 times? That's what piracy hurts, not the big guys.
If the indie game designers game is truely an amazing piece of work, people will buy it.
On November 30 2011 22:24 Interloper wrote: Many people who pirate do so because they want to try a game out. If they enjoy the game, they will buy it too support the developer. 4,5 million downloads becomes a useless figure since you can not in any way know how many of those 4,5 million purchased the game afterwards. I feel that piracy is a good way to get rid of shitty developers how make crappy games only for the sake of making money (Well all developers want to make money ofc, but i hope you get my point). Good developers get the money they need and then some. Piracy will not be the end of gaming.
...thats fucking bullshit lol.
Piracy will eventually change the video game scene alot though. Developers are accustomed to making shitloads of money, they will do something, like the OP said.
DLC, subscribe games, etc, are already becoming way more common
On December 01 2011 01:24 SoLaR[i.C] wrote: I'm hoping that alll major Internet providers enact blockades that simply don't allow access to torrent/p2p sites. It's the only way to stop stealing on such a large scale.
Good way to prevent sharing legal information as well. Talk about a cutting off ones nose to spite the face.
The 0.01% of torrents that constitute actual legal material are always available on academic journal repositories, indie publisher/artist webpages, and through sites like Wikipedia. Don't kid yourself by equating piracy with some global sharing of information for the good of mankind. It's young folks with no regard for the livelihood of others who refuse to pay for stuff because they are removed from seeing the implications of their stealing. I will actively vote for any legislation blocking torrents sites.
On December 01 2011 01:32 andrea20 wrote: The opinion of a company who has sold over a million copies of a game despite piracy is meaningless. The Witcher 2 is successful, but they're passing their success as "proof" that piracy is an avoidable factor.
How about an interview of a fledgling indie game designer who has sold less than 1000 copies of their game, but has seen it pirated more than 10000 times? That's what piracy hurts, not the big guys.
If the indie game designers game is truely an amazing piece of work, people will buy it.
On December 01 2011 01:24 SoLaR[i.C] wrote: I'm hoping that alll major Internet providers enact blockades that simply don't allow access to torrent/p2p sites. It's the only way to stop stealing on such a large scale.
Good way to prevent sharing legal information as well. Talk about a cutting off ones nose to spite the face.
The 0.01% of torrents that constitute actual legal material are always available on academic journal repositories, indie publisher/artist webpages, and through sites like Wikipedia. Don't kid yourself by equating piracy with some global sharing of information for the good of mankind. It's young folks with no regard for the livelihood of others who refuse to pay for stuff because they are removed from seeing the implications of their stealing. I will actively vote for any legislation blocking torrents sites.
Trust me, I'm not confusing piracy with the sharing of information, but stopping p2p won't stop pirating and will harm legal sharing, even if it constitutes a small amount of whats actually shared. I will never support a measure such as that.
On November 30 2011 22:24 Interloper wrote: Many people who pirate do so because they want to try a game out. If they enjoy the game, they will buy it too support the developer. 4,5 million downloads becomes a useless figure since you can not in any way know how many of those 4,5 million purchased the game afterwards. I feel that piracy is a good way to get rid of shitty developers how make crappy games only for the sake of making money (Well all developers want to make money ofc, but i hope you get my point). Good developers get the money they need and then some. Piracy will not be the end of gaming.
...thats fucking bullshit lol.
Piracy will eventually change the video game scene alot though. Developers are accustomed to making shitloads of money, they will do something, like the OP said.
DLC, subscribe games, etc, are already becoming way more common
Well, good thing there's anecdotal evidence showing that DRM, subscribe games, forced online, and limited access to games in all forms REDUCE sales even more than what piracy does.
Also, I've pirated ~20 games in the past 12 months. I've bought 16 of them. I wouldn't have bought them otherwise, as I believe I have the right to try out a game before I am forced to spend $60 on it. That's the mentality of a lot of "pirates." I know my friend pirated a game because the fucking DRM on it said he had to rebuy the game he BOUGHT because he reinstalled his OS. I've pirated games that I've bought in the past and couldn't find the disc or couldn't remember the passwords to the accounts that they were on.
There are hundreds of reasons for piracy, a lot are legitimate. A lot are assholes and just doing it because they're lazy or greedy. Nonetheless, there is proof in the numbers that DRM in all shapes and sizes only hurts the game more than if they didn't have it. Systems like Gabe Newell describes in the video I linked last page improve sales, with his analogy to the issue in Russia. Putting all forms of piracy under the umbrella of "GREEDY CHILDREN WHO DONT WANT TO BUY GAMES" is extremely immature.
It's just as much fault of the service the developer provides as it is the customers fault. It's hilarious how people think that we should, as a community, pay $60 for every game that looks remotely interesting to us with no way to try it out previously and have to rebuy it every time we break their arbitrary rules on their DRM, allow intrusive spyware onto our computer to scan it, and generally get total shit service. Give us good service and we pay for games, it's that simple. Ubisoft is the prime example of how NOT to handle piracy. A game is released with such ridiculous DRM that it takes ~40 minutes just to get started on the game and basically makes it impossible to play the game you BOUGHT, but if you apply a 20mb crack to it instead, you don't have to do ANY of that stupid crap and you're set for life. Which one would you choose? The choice is clear.
When developers and producers provide good service, people buy their service. When they provide shitty service, we pirate their service. It's that fucking simple.
It blows my mind that people are actually encouraging developers to provide them with less and shittier service in the name of stopping something that isn't even an issue when something is handled correcty.
On December 01 2011 01:24 SoLaR[i.C] wrote: I'm hoping that alll major Internet providers enact blockades that simply don't allow access to torrent/p2p sites. It's the only way to stop stealing on such a large scale.
On December 01 2011 01:24 SoLaR[i.C] wrote: I'm hoping that alll major Internet providers enact blockades that simply don't allow access to torrent/p2p sites. It's the only way to stop stealing on such a large scale.
Good way to prevent sharing legal information as well. Talk about a cutting off ones nose to spite the face.
The 0.01% of torrents that constitute actual legal material are always available on academic journal repositories, indie publisher/artist webpages, and through sites like Wikipedia. Don't kid yourself by equating piracy with some global sharing of information for the good of mankind. It's young folks with no regard for the livelihood of others who refuse to pay for stuff because they are removed from seeing the implications of their stealing. I will actively vote for any legislation blocking torrents sites.
Man, you're really uninformed... I mean, I just realised that Activison actually STOLE 30 Euro from me, since I got a boxed set of SC2 on release - which just happens to be available at half price in another country at the same point of time. Just for clarification, the wages in said country are at least 10 times higher than in mine. Somehow in your mind, however, they're the victim. Surely, I'm a young folk with no regards of other's livelyhood. Not only that they make an infinitely larger amounts of money than I could hope to make, but they also employ pant-on-head retarded pricing schemes, which actually steal from ME.
On December 01 2011 01:42 Garnet wrote: Same price for everyone makes poor people become pirates.
That's bullshit and you know it. I have a somewhat normal income (upper middle class whatever), I love to ski. Lift tickets are fucking expensive ($70+ a day in Summit County in Colorado). I go skiing once or twice a year, because I know it gets more expensive than I can afford to go out there, get a place to stay, ski, eat, etc.
If something doesn't fit in your budget, sorry. Be realistic, not a pirate.
How much do you make per month? Tell me, and I'll tell you how much I make as well.
On December 01 2011 01:42 Garnet wrote: Same price for everyone makes poor people become pirates.
That's bullshit and you know it. I have a somewhat normal income (upper middle class whatever), I love to ski. Lift tickets are fucking expensive ($70+ a day in Summit County in Colorado). I go skiing once or twice a year, because I know it gets more expensive than I can afford to go out there, get a place to stay, ski, eat, etc.
If something doesn't fit in your budget, sorry. Be realistic, not a pirate.
Anyone trying to justify or defend piracy is a scumbag. Its exactly the same as walking into a store and stealing music, movies, or videogames. It is fundamentally wrong, but more or less completely free from prosecution.
On November 30 2011 22:24 Interloper wrote: Many people who pirate do so because they want to try a game out. If they enjoy the game, they will buy it too support the developer. 4,5 million downloads becomes a useless figure since you can not in any way know how many of those 4,5 million purchased the game afterwards. I feel that piracy is a good way to get rid of shitty developers how make crappy games only for the sake of making money (Well all developers want to make money ofc, but i hope you get my point). Good developers get the money they need and then some. Piracy will not be the end of gaming.
...thats fucking bullshit lol.
Piracy will eventually change the video game scene alot though. Developers are accustomed to making shitloads of money, they will do something, like the OP said.
DLC, subscribe games, etc, are already becoming way more common
Well, good thing there's anecdotal evidence showing that DRM, subscribe games, forced online, and limited access to games in all forms REDUCE sales even more than what piracy does.
Also, I've pirated ~20 games in the past 12 months. I've bought 16 of them. I wouldn't have bought them otherwise, as I believe I have the right to try out a game before I am forced to spend $60 on it. That's the mentality of a lot of "pirates." I know my friend pirated a game because the fucking DRM on it said he had to rebuy the game he BOUGHT because he reinstalled his OS. I've pirated games that I've bought in the past and couldn't find the disc or couldn't remember the passwords to the accounts that they were on.
There are hundreds of reasons for piracy, a lot are legitimate. A lot are assholes and just doing it because they're lazy or greedy. Nonetheless, there is proof in the numbers that DRM in all shapes and sizes only hurts the game more than if they didn't have it. Systems like Gabe Newell describes in the video I linked last page improve sales, with his analogy to the issue in Russia. Putting all forms of piracy under the umbrella of "GREEDY CHILDREN WHO DONT WANT TO BUY GAMES" is extremely immature.
It's just as much fault of the service the developer provides as it is the customers fault. It's hilarious how people think that we should, as a community, pay $60 for every game that looks remotely interesting to us with no way to try it out previously and have to rebuy it every time we break their arbitrary rules on their DRM, allow intrusive spyware onto our computer to scan it, and generally get total shit service. Give us good service and we pay for games, it's that simple. Ubisoft is the prime example of how NOT to handle piracy. A game is released with such ridiculous DRM that it takes ~40 minutes just to get started on the game and basically makes it impossible to play the game you BOUGHT, but if you apply a 20mb crack to it instead, you don't have to do ANY of that stupid crap and you're set for life. Which one would you choose? The choice is clear.
When developers and producers provide good service, people buy their service. When they provide shitty service, we pirate their service. It's that fucking simple.
Likewise, putting all piracy under the umbrella of "internet heroes who just want to try games before buying" is extremely misinformed, or blinding yourself to the truth. For every person that pirates to try-before-I-buy, there are a hundred who just pirate because they don't want to pay.
There are a large amount of ways to try a game without pirating. You could play a friend's version, try a demo on some games, have a Gamefly/Blockbuster account, use Redbox, hit the demo stands at your local retailer. Stop pretending you're saving the game industry by pirating.
On December 01 2011 01:57 subzer0 wrote: Anyone trying to justify or defend piracy is a scumbag. Its exactly the same as walking into a store and stealing music, movies, or videogames. It is fundamentally wrong, but more or less completely free from prosecution.
This is exactly the form of complete ignorance of the situation and total misinformation provided that lets the shit that developers are trying to pull on their paying customers go unhindered.
Want to know how to "combat piracy"? Provide good service. Provide a good service and people will buy your shit. That's just the fact of life. If you are releasing shit that only hurts those whom buy the game, people are going to "steal" them (even though comparing downloading a digital representation of something is laughable to compare to walking into a store and taking something tangible.)
On November 30 2011 22:24 Interloper wrote: Many people who pirate do so because they want to try a game out. If they enjoy the game, they will buy it too support the developer. 4,5 million downloads becomes a useless figure since you can not in any way know how many of those 4,5 million purchased the game afterwards. I feel that piracy is a good way to get rid of shitty developers how make crappy games only for the sake of making money (Well all developers want to make money ofc, but i hope you get my point). Good developers get the money they need and then some. Piracy will not be the end of gaming.
...thats fucking bullshit lol.
Piracy will eventually change the video game scene alot though. Developers are accustomed to making shitloads of money, they will do something, like the OP said.
DLC, subscribe games, etc, are already becoming way more common
Well, good thing there's anecdotal evidence showing that DRM, subscribe games, forced online, and limited access to games in all forms REDUCE sales even more than what piracy does.
Also, I've pirated ~20 games in the past 12 months. I've bought 16 of them. I wouldn't have bought them otherwise, as I believe I have the right to try out a game before I am forced to spend $60 on it. That's the mentality of a lot of "pirates." I know my friend pirated a game because the fucking DRM on it said he had to rebuy the game he BOUGHT because he reinstalled his OS. I've pirated games that I've bought in the past and couldn't find the disc or couldn't remember the passwords to the accounts that they were on.
There are hundreds of reasons for piracy, a lot are legitimate. A lot are assholes and just doing it because they're lazy or greedy. Nonetheless, there is proof in the numbers that DRM in all shapes and sizes only hurts the game more than if they didn't have it. Systems like Gabe Newell describes in the video I linked last page improve sales, with his analogy to the issue in Russia. Putting all forms of piracy under the umbrella of "GREEDY CHILDREN WHO DONT WANT TO BUY GAMES" is extremely immature.
It's just as much fault of the service the developer provides as it is the customers fault. It's hilarious how people think that we should, as a community, pay $60 for every game that looks remotely interesting to us with no way to try it out previously and have to rebuy it every time we break their arbitrary rules on their DRM, allow intrusive spyware onto our computer to scan it, and generally get total shit service. Give us good service and we pay for games, it's that simple. Ubisoft is the prime example of how NOT to handle piracy. A game is released with such ridiculous DRM that it takes ~40 minutes just to get started on the game and basically makes it impossible to play the game you BOUGHT, but if you apply a 20mb crack to it instead, you don't have to do ANY of that stupid crap and you're set for life. Which one would you choose? The choice is clear.
When developers and producers provide good service, people buy their service. When they provide shitty service, we pirate their service. It's that fucking simple.
Likewise, putting all piracy under the umbrella of "internet heroes who just want to try games before buying"
On December 01 2011 01:49 Fruscainte wrote: A lot are assholes and just doing it because they're lazy or greedy.
On December 01 2011 01:30 Krikkitone wrote: The "I pirated it and then bought it" model Could be used by the industry... but only if buying it gives the consumer something they wouldn't have otherwise.
No. This assumes that pirates are evil and simply want to use something for free, while in reality pirates either can't afford buying it in the first place (in which case offering extra stuff won't change anything) or pirate the product before buying it because they want to be sure of its quality (a perfecly reasonable motive, considering how much is given for PR and shiny trailers and that the critics only post good reviews). There's also a lot of people who are in a situation that is a combination of the two: for example you can only afford 2 games but are interested in 5, so you pirate all five and then buy the two you like the most.
Pirates will always justify their piracy, no matter what anyone does. Whether its price, convenience, no demo, taking a stand against something blah blah blah. People on the internet think they are entitled to everything, so if they have the capabilities, they'll take it. The percentage of people who pirate something and then purchase it right afterward is very small.
On November 30 2011 23:46 nihlon wrote: I do agree with some above me that the lack of proper demo's are a problem. Either the game is gimped to the point where you can't get a decent feel for the game, or like in many cases of games I've been interested in, there is no demo at all.
As for DRM, they are not bad in themselves only bad when they are poorly implemented.
Yeah what ever happened to demos? I know they exist in some cases, but as you stated, they are horribly gimped or don't exist. I remember going onto gamespy or fileplanet to check out the demos for worms, driving games that I'd never buy typically, or quake - having a good time with them and picking up the game. Even guest passes or trials aren't really around much anymore.
On a sidenote, stuff like Driver San Francisco or Skyrim, games I'd never be into or consider buying (since I didn't play their predecessors), I've been pleasantly surprised by and ended up buying.
Also, people need to stop misconstruing the points being made here. It's not about being "internet superheroes" or whatever. It's about not paying for shitty service.
I do encourage you to watch Gabe Newell's take on it, since it got lost away in the spam last page. It really makes a good point on not defending piracy, which is not what I'm doing, but rather explaining how it can be logically reduced without using intrusive forms of DRM.
On December 01 2011 01:57 subzer0 wrote: Anyone trying to justify or defend piracy is a scumbag. Its exactly the same as walking into a store and stealing music, movies, or videogames. It is fundamentally wrong, but more or less completely free from prosecution.
This is exactly the form of complete ignorance of the situation and total misinformation provided that lets the shit that developers are trying to pull on their paying customers go unhindered.
Want to know how to "combat piracy"? Provide good service. Provide a good service and people will buy your shit. That's just the fact of life. If you are releasing shit that only hurts those whom buy the game, people are going to "steal" them (even though comparing downloading a digital representation of something is laughable to compare to walking into a store and taking something tangible.)
No, that's dumb. DRM and online-only were put in place BECAUSE people were pirating shit. If you don't like the way the service works now, well tough, that's what your actions caused in the first place.
And don't use the "piracy isn't the same thing as theft" argument. There is no physical object other than data for PC games anymore, as everyone downloads their PC games from Steam/whatever. In essence, you're getting the exact same thing without paying the provider, which is stealing.
There are ways to win against piracy if that's what you are asking about. It's hardware-level code authentication, which would drastically reduce the amount of people with the equipment and skills required for cracking a DRM scheme.
You probably don't want that to happen though. It basically means turning everything into an iphone which can't be jailbreaked.
The alternative of blocking "torrent sites" also works in a similar fashion. There will always be workarounds unless you block everything except a list of explicitly allowed internet services.
On December 01 2011 01:57 subzer0 wrote: Anyone trying to justify or defend piracy is a scumbag. Its exactly the same as walking into a store and stealing music, movies, or videogames. It is fundamentally wrong, but more or less completely free from prosecution.
This is exactly the form of complete ignorance of the situation and total misinformation provided that lets the shit that developers are trying to pull on their paying customers go unhindered.
Want to know how to "combat piracy"? Provide good service. Provide a good service and people will buy your shit. That's just the fact of life. If you are releasing shit that only hurts those whom buy the game, people are going to "steal" them (even though comparing downloading a digital representation of something is laughable to compare to walking into a store and taking something tangible.)
No, that's dumb. DRM and online-only were put in place BECAUSE people were pirating shit.
And yet it doesn't stop it at all and only hurts the buyers, causing even MORE people to pirate the game because they dont' want to deal with intrusive programs.
See how that works?
You'll never remove piracy. However, DRM only hurts it more. Every game gets cracked, and pirates still continue to play. And when buyers are stuck between the choice of having intrusive programs on their computer that limit their ability to play and have fun, and a version that has none of that which they should be getting when they buy the game, they choose the latter.
You see, that's the issue. Pirated versions of games get better service than bought versions of the game. THAT is the issue that causes piracy. It's not about "HOW DO WE BLOCK ALL THE TORRENT SITES EVER", it's about providing a good service. When the pirated version is a better service than the bought version, more people will pirate. It's that fucking simple, I don't know how this can't be grasped.
Aren't younger generations the biggest pirating party? Those people can't really afford games even in first place. I remember long ago I had to skip many games because I couldn't afford. If I was at that age and piracy was like this, I would've played all games I wanted.
Most of adults I've met buy games and only pirate it because it's easier to pirate than buy in legit way.
It's another question whether you should or should not experience games you can't afford.
E: I was going to say that my friends don't pirate indie games but now when I think about it, most of them do... Like that's in my opinion even worse when you pirate games like Magicka or Age of Stone etc =(. ( or was it rock? lol can't remember).
On December 01 2011 01:42 Garnet wrote: Same price for everyone makes poor people become pirates.
That's bullshit and you know it. I have a somewhat normal income (upper middle class whatever), I love to ski. Lift tickets are fucking expensive ($70+ a day in Summit County in Colorado). I go skiing once or twice a year, because I know it gets more expensive than I can afford to go out there, get a place to stay, ski, eat, etc.
If something doesn't fit in your budget, sorry. Be realistic, not a pirate.
I believe that you don't understand the situation in many countries in the world. There are tons of people who couldn't possibly afford to buy even a single original game due to ridiculously high prices. Take a look at Bulgaria for example. The average wage is 320 €. Original games cost about 60€. That's more than most people's monthly rent. There is no way in hell that the average Bulgarian could afford more than one or two games in an year. That's the reason why piracy is rampant there. However, the millions of pirated games/movies/programmes don't constitute a loss for the developers since those people couldn't afford them anyway. There are tons of countries in the world where the situation is even worse and where it's absolutely impossible to afford original software. That's why statistics claiming that the developers' loss from 4.5 mio illegal downloads equals the price of 4.5 mio sold copies is utter bullshit. I don't endorse piracy but one should always consider that conclusions derived from statistics tend to be completely misleading and/or plain wrong.
On December 01 2011 02:03 Fruscainte wrote: Also, people need to stop misconstruing the points being made here. It's not about being "internet superheroes" or whatever. It's about not paying for shitty service.
I do encourage you to watch Gabe Newell's take on it, since it got lost away in the spam last page. It really makes a good point on not defending piracy, which is not what I'm doing, but rather explaining how it can be logically reduced without using intrusive forms of DRM.
However, it's also severely limited. Gaben isn't worried about pirating because he provides a good service. You're telling me that there aren't people who would pirate from a good service anyway? I know some pirates see themselves as "noble rogues, trying to combat an evil system", but if it came down to brass tacks, there was no DRM, online-only, or anything like that, people would still pirate games.
It's not like people would stop pirating games if every company was like Steam. Hell, people did it before, I knew a guy who had 6 copies of BW with CD Key broken installs. Almost no one ever payed for that game after like, the first year.
So don't try to play it off as "yeah, pirates are just fighting against the problems". No, that's just justification.
Most pirates are not greedy at all, they just don't like paying for a shit service like Gabe Newell said, or they want to try out the product. I know guys who pirate alot and most of them have spent retarded amounts on their computers(talking 4-5k usd), and in general they like to buy pointless thing, yet they pirate games. Most people who actually enjoy a game will buy it. I've pirated quite a few games, but it's all games I would never have bought anyway. I'm a big fan of the fallout and elder scrolls series and guess what, when fallout 3 and skyrim came out, I bought the games. The thought of downloading them didn't even hit my mind once.
On December 01 2011 01:57 subzer0 wrote: Anyone trying to justify or defend piracy is a scumbag. Its exactly the same as walking into a store and stealing music, movies, or videogames. It is fundamentally wrong, but more or less completely free from prosecution.
This is exactly the form of complete ignorance of the situation and total misinformation provided that lets the shit that developers are trying to pull on their paying customers go unhindered.
Want to know how to "combat piracy"? Provide good service. Provide a good service and people will buy your shit. That's just the fact of life. If you are releasing shit that only hurts those whom buy the game, people are going to "steal" them (even though comparing downloading a digital representation of something is laughable to compare to walking into a store and taking something tangible.)
No, that's dumb. DRM and online-only were put in place BECAUSE people were pirating shit.
And yet it doesn't stop it at all and only hurts the buyers, causing even MORE people to pirate the game because they dont' want to deal with intrusive programs.
See how that works?
You'll never remove piracy. However, DRM only hurts it more. Every game gets cracked, and pirates still continue to play. And when buyers are stuck between the choice of having intrusive programs on their computer that limit their ability to play and have fun, and a version that has none of that which they should be getting when they buy the game, they choose the latter.
You see, that's the issue. Pirated versions of games get better service than bought versions of the game. THAT is the issue that causes piracy. It's not about "HOW DO WE BLOCK ALL THE TORRENT SITES EVER", it's about providing a good service. When the pirated version is a better service than the bought version, more people will pirate. It's that fucking simple, I don't know how this can't be grasped.
You're defending pirates a little too much. I agree that adding DRM only encourages people to pirate so they don't have to deal with the bullshit, but people were pirating games before all the crazy DRM though. For many, the simple logic of 'if you can get something for free why would you pay for it' is reason enough.
It's worth remembering that many people also download games that they wouldn't normally buy. I know it's been mentioned hundreds of times that people download games to try before they buy, but that's not quite what I mean, as a lot of people will just down load the latest installment of the series they enjoy, just to see if it's ok and maybe to test if it runs on their current machine.
What I mean is, that people will pirate a game in a genre that they don't usually play, or a game with a concept/premise that they aren't familiar with, so they can see first-hand what the fuss is all about. For example, for people who aren't really familiar with Diablo-style RPGs might download Torchlight and give it a go, because the reviews/opinions they've come across don't really explain what compels people to play them.
This can be an excellent thing for developers as it can serve as another means of marketing their game. I remember hearing the Torchlight developers saying that they were actually pleased that their game was pirated over 2million (or was it 1?) times in China, because they viewed that as 2 million (and more, if you count word of mouth and viral interest) more potential buyers for that game and for their subsequent games.
edit - I mean to say that in the circumstances I'm talking about, no one can refer to those downloads as 'lost sales', but rather potential sales.
Most of my friends will pirate a game if they don't have to buy it. The only games they will buy are the games that you have to register online to play (Battlefield 3, SC2, etc..).
For me it is different. I will buy ALL games I plan to play for a while (I also collect games so...) but yes I will download games sometimes that I just want to fool around with (Skyrim for exemple... not my type of game but I want to see what the fuzz is about).
games are larger now than ever before more peiople are buying games than ever before more people are pirating games than before
the computer games industry is MASSIVE
piracy really is not a problem
traditionally games where shareware adn then you bought the rest ... At the end of the day the biggest games get played by everyone and bought by those that can afford it.
THats the way its always been ... nothing wrong with it. I spent £300 on games last year because i am 30 and can afford it ... when i was 16 i spent 0 (a lie i bought the second 2 episodes of doom). So there you go.
You need to differentiate between franchise games games liek EA games that are churned out year after year as well as games that are purley there to make money (EG battlefield and cod) vs games designed for well ... community. I pick those 2 games as they are iterations rather than *new games*. It is the capitalist idea of making someone go out and buy an upgrade... its like DLC.
You can usually tell from all the marketing ...
Look at skyrim ... VERY cool game ... butr thats because of all the work put into the world. As an rpg sure its iterated a few things ... but how is it really different to fallout3? Very similar idea. But look at it the other way with all the work most of the quests do not overlap or progress the story. Its clearly been built by a great number of people many of whom have probably never had to speak to each other. Games used to be 1 single small vision that was well executed. Hence why games like binding of issaac / plants vs zombies are highly deserving of my cash.
In 1988 i was playign a game called bards tale for £15 by EA. It was an rpg game with 6 party memebers a full class system a 70 page manual of spells items levels a map. Sure skyrim has a lot more than that in *SOME* ways, but at the end of the day we ahvent had a full paty rpg since baldurs gate (bethesda again). I probably put hundreds of hours into bards tale.
There are MANY more games being made now, most of them will be released early and need patching. There is no way you should pay fo ra game that needs a 0 day patch. It wasnt fit for purpose and igf you do buy them then games will be released because of the date not the quality.
PIRACY BUILT THE COMPUTER GAME INDUSTRY IN THE 80'S AND 90'S because games were so expensive. I was buying games at a rate of 1 per year for my megadrive as £40 for a game in 1990's was probably like buying a £80 game now.
Consoles have also killed UI in games .. so piracy? yeah its fine because PC owners are getting fucking in the ass wrt quality because of all the console owners out there.
I modified an imp image in a doom2 game once. Went to uni 3 yerra later and its already on the network there ... that means it went all the way accross the country being copied to beat me to uni. Piracy has ALWAYS existed on a large scale.
EG photoshop ... EVERYONE has some kills in this program because everyone has downloaded it adn used it. The result? It is the defacto standard for everyone. Dreamweaver got popular because they ahd a license that said use for free, pay us if you get paid using it. Microsoft have a similar approach now as they realised its the best way to get a new generation of developers. When i was 16 getting a IDE like visual studio cost thousands so you ripped it off. It snot liek you will ever get value from it ... the result of it is that i now own several high end visual studio licenses so they made their money back many tiems over from me.
If i ever manage to release one of my games which have taken thousands of hours of work btw, I will be happy if i see it getting pirated. That way more peopel will know about me - and hopefully in a good way.
On December 01 2011 02:03 Fruscainte wrote: Also, people need to stop misconstruing the points being made here. It's not about being "internet superheroes" or whatever. It's about not paying for shitty service.
I do encourage you to watch Gabe Newell's take on it, since it got lost away in the spam last page. It really makes a good point on not defending piracy, which is not what I'm doing, but rather explaining how it can be logically reduced without using intrusive forms of DRM.
However, it's also severely limited. Gaben isn't worried about pirating because he provides a good service. You're telling me that there aren't people who would pirate from a good service anyway? I know some pirates see themselves as "noble rogues, trying to combat an evil system", but if it came down to brass tacks, there was no DRM, online-only, or anything like that, people would still pirate games.
It's not like people would stop pirating games if every company was like Steam. Hell, people did it before, I knew a guy who had 6 copies of BW with CD Key broken installs. Almost no one ever payed for that game after like, the first year.
So don't try to play it off as "yeah, pirates are just fighting against the problems". No, that's just justification.
I never, ever, ever said that all pirates are trying to be FIGHT DA SYSTEM ROBIN HOOD YAAAR. In fact, a lot are just, as you say, douchebags. However, in an age where pirated versions are starting to be BETTER in terms of service and overall experience than the bought version, more and more people are pirating them. That's the issue here. There will ALWAYS be piracy, however, it can be made a non-issue when you make a great service. When you have something like Steam and Steam Cloud that provides the service that it does, all for free, it encourages people to buy games rather than torrent and re-torrent all the time.
You see, the issue isn't "How to stop pirates 4ever!!!!" or "PIRATES R EVUL", that is not the issue at all. The issue is how to reduce piracy to an acceptable level. The only way to do that is to remove intrusive DRM and to provide a service in a way that buying the game gives a better experience than pirating a game, which simply is not the case with most releases these days in age unfortunately. A lot of games I pirated and bought, I just kept playing the pirated version. Why? I didn't want to deal with the bullshit that comes with having to work with the shitty service with buying the game. Anno 2070 is a prime example of this, in recent time.
On December 01 2011 01:57 subzer0 wrote: Anyone trying to justify or defend piracy is a scumbag. Its exactly the same as walking into a store and stealing music, movies, or videogames. It is fundamentally wrong, but more or less completely free from prosecution.
This is exactly the form of complete ignorance of the situation and total misinformation provided that lets the shit that developers are trying to pull on their paying customers go unhindered.
Want to know how to "combat piracy"? Provide good service. Provide a good service and people will buy your shit. That's just the fact of life. If you are releasing shit that only hurts those whom buy the game, people are going to "steal" them (even though comparing downloading a digital representation of something is laughable to compare to walking into a store and taking something tangible.)
No, that's dumb. DRM and online-only were put in place BECAUSE people were pirating shit.
And yet it doesn't stop it at all and only hurts the buyers, causing even MORE people to pirate the game because they dont' want to deal with intrusive programs.
See how that works?
You'll never remove piracy. However, DRM only hurts it more. Every game gets cracked, and pirates still continue to play. And when buyers are stuck between the choice of having intrusive programs on their computer that limit their ability to play and have fun, and a version that has none of that which they should be getting when they buy the game, they choose the latter.
You see, that's the issue. Pirated versions of games get better service than bought versions of the game. THAT is the issue that causes piracy. It's not about "HOW DO WE BLOCK ALL THE TORRENT SITES EVER", it's about providing a good service. When the pirated version is a better service than the bought version, more people will pirate. It's that fucking simple, I don't know how this can't be grasped.
But that's completely immoral justification. Take that as you will, of course.
Your argument is "I'm having more fun this way, I don't care if it's illegal". What the fuck? Can you honestly tell me that this is your justification for not buying games? I can understand the guy from Bulgaria who can't afford them (seriously, never saw those prices before, holy crap), but crying because the bought version is trying to verify itself is dumb.
On December 01 2011 01:57 subzer0 wrote: Anyone trying to justify or defend piracy is a scumbag. Its exactly the same as walking into a store and stealing music, movies, or videogames. It is fundamentally wrong, but more or less completely free from prosecution.
This is exactly the form of complete ignorance of the situation and total misinformation provided that lets the shit that developers are trying to pull on their paying customers go unhindered.
Want to know how to "combat piracy"? Provide good service. Provide a good service and people will buy your shit. That's just the fact of life. If you are releasing shit that only hurts those whom buy the game, people are going to "steal" them (even though comparing downloading a digital representation of something is laughable to compare to walking into a store and taking something tangible.)
No, that's dumb. DRM and online-only were put in place BECAUSE people were pirating shit.
And yet it doesn't stop it at all and only hurts the buyers, causing even MORE people to pirate the game because they dont' want to deal with intrusive programs.
See how that works?
You'll never remove piracy. However, DRM only hurts it more. Every game gets cracked, and pirates still continue to play. And when buyers are stuck between the choice of having intrusive programs on their computer that limit their ability to play and have fun, and a version that has none of that which they should be getting when they buy the game, they choose the latter.
You see, that's the issue. Pirated versions of games get better service than bought versions of the game. THAT is the issue that causes piracy. It's not about "HOW DO WE BLOCK ALL THE TORRENT SITES EVER", it's about providing a good service. When the pirated version is a better service than the bought version, more people will pirate. It's that fucking simple, I don't know how this can't be grasped.
You're defending pirates a little too much. I agree that adding DRM only encourages people to pirate so they don't have to deal with the bullshit, but people were pirating games before all the crazy DRM though. For many, the simple logic of 'if you can get something for free why would you pay for it' is reason enough.
I'm not defending piracy, I'm attacking developers. Piracy is reduced with good service. I'm a pirate, and I buy games with great service. Where I get a better experience with the bought version than the pirated version. I outright refuse to download Ubisoft games because of how fucking bullshit 99% of their DRM is. It's not about me defending piracy, I'm actually providing the best way to STOP it almost entirely from an insiders point of view.
I'm a pirate, I pirated 1TB worth of shit in the past two years. It blows my mind that when pirates, not only just me, but all over the internet, are coming out with legitimate ways that are not hard nor costly at all to negate piracy to a level of non-issue people just go "STOP DEFENDNIG PIRACY YOU SCUMBAG WE'LL JUST KEEP PUTTING MORE DRM ON GAMES THAT CAUSES PEOPLE TO PIRATE IN THE FIRST PLACE"
On December 01 2011 01:36 daemir wrote: If the indie game designers game is truely an amazing piece of work, people will buy it.
You'd like to believe that, but that is almost never the case. For every indie game that gets recognized, there are hundreds more that'll never sniff any success. Okay, maybe most of them aren't that great to begin with. But there are some niche appeal titles that should have more success than they currently have.
This problem also affects handheld games to a degree. Ghost Trick (DS) is a phenomenal niche game but it had less than 50000 sales in its opening months. Just because a game is good doesn't mean it'll sell. It'll sell only if it caters to the masses.
Gabe Newell is swimming in money so of course he doesn't care too much about piracy.
On December 01 2011 01:57 subzer0 wrote: Anyone trying to justify or defend piracy is a scumbag. Its exactly the same as walking into a store and stealing music, movies, or videogames. It is fundamentally wrong, but more or less completely free from prosecution.
This is exactly the form of complete ignorance of the situation and total misinformation provided that lets the shit that developers are trying to pull on their paying customers go unhindered.
Want to know how to "combat piracy"? Provide good service. Provide a good service and people will buy your shit. That's just the fact of life. If you are releasing shit that only hurts those whom buy the game, people are going to "steal" them (even though comparing downloading a digital representation of something is laughable to compare to walking into a store and taking something tangible.)
No, that's dumb. DRM and online-only were put in place BECAUSE people were pirating shit.
And yet it doesn't stop it at all and only hurts the buyers, causing even MORE people to pirate the game because they dont' want to deal with intrusive programs.
See how that works?
You'll never remove piracy. However, DRM only hurts it more. Every game gets cracked, and pirates still continue to play. And when buyers are stuck between the choice of having intrusive programs on their computer that limit their ability to play and have fun, and a version that has none of that which they should be getting when they buy the game, they choose the latter.
You see, that's the issue. Pirated versions of games get better service than bought versions of the game. THAT is the issue that causes piracy. It's not about "HOW DO WE BLOCK ALL THE TORRENT SITES EVER", it's about providing a good service. When the pirated version is a better service than the bought version, more people will pirate. It's that fucking simple, I don't know how this can't be grasped.
It does and doesn't work the more work people have to do to pirate a game the less likely they will wait around for a good version that's easy for them to work with and thus more likely to go out and buy the game. You want to say it doesn't wok? look at sc2 there are pirated online servers but with only a few hundred people on at a given time becuase it took so long everyone who wanted to play multi-player bought the game. The point at game companies is that they spend say 2 mil developing a game maybe 5 mil(random number) once it comes to producing and adverting a game etc and they get to sell you a game once for 50-60 dollars and the game will only sell well for maybe a year, this isn't an iron that they developed and can sell for 10 years pretty much with little alteration and they can't adjust their price really because everyone sells games at the same price this is a very ruff business model very similar to movies.
And talking to people i would say most pirate not to see if a game is worthy to buy but becuase they don't want to go out and buy the game. It's usually a combination of lazyness and paying for something, why pay for something when you can get it for free. Which brings up the moral argument why do some people claim it's a right to pirate to test out games, with that logic all people should be allowed to play the games for free and IF IF they feel like paying for it they can. Which is an absurd model, do you pay for movies after you've already enjoyed them? Do you pay for tickets to something after you've already done it? This is business money up front no bums
On November 30 2011 22:24 Interloper wrote: Many people who pirate do so because they want to try a game out. If they enjoy the game, they will buy it too support the developer. 4,5 million downloads becomes a useless figure since you can not in any way know how many of those 4,5 million purchased the game afterwards. I feel that piracy is a good way to get rid of shitty developers how make crappy games only for the sake of making money (Well all developers want to make money ofc, but i hope you get my point). Good developers get the money they need and then some. Piracy will not be the end of gaming.
This is the most common reason that has been given to me but more than often the person is also an expert at procrastination and gives the "oh I'll buy it later excuse". In the case of single player games, what usually winds up happening is that they'll beat the game and it becomes forgotten on their computers. Either way, I'd be willing to be a huge chunk of those who pirated wouldn't have bothered buying the game if piracy wasn't an option in the first place (in which case nothing would have been lost anyway).
I would rather prefer to see game demos be more prominent to get rid of that whole "I wanted to try the game" excuse.
But demos aren't the full game! They often don't give you enough experience to decide. Also the game can look promising in the beginning but turn out shitty.
For example. I pirated Portal 2. I liked it. I went out and bought it months after I completed the game just because I wanted to support Valve.
I pirated Amnesia. I liked it. I am planning on buying it soon (tight on cash).
I pirated CoD. It sucked. I didnt buy it. Everybody's happy (except Activision trying to steal my money).
While I'm happy to read that you actually buy the games after pirating them, you really think that majority of people who pirate games do the same? What is the rational incentive to do so?
I tend to do this also, especially for games I'm on the fence about. I've picked up several games after having tried them through piracy. I have also NOT picked up several games because I didn't like them when I tried them.
I am all about supporting developers and furthering the game industry, but I am not blindly shelling out full retail price for a game I don't even know if I'll enjoy... it's just silly.
That said, most pirates probably fall into one of three categories:
1) People who wouldn't buy the game anyway: this was me for a long time in grade school as I couldn't afford / parents wouldn't buy me the games I wanted to play... aka this is not revenue lost. (Not that I believe games should be free, but saying 1 pirated copy = 1 lost sale is utter nonsense)
2) People who want to try the game: Testing the hardware requirements, trialing the game before they buy, etc. are all valid in this category... and again, this is not revenue lost, only potential revenue gained. I'm fairly certain most in this category are in my boat (don't want to shell out $50-60 for a new title blindly without even trying it or receiving hearty recommendations)
3) People who can buy the game, but pirate it anyway - This is really the only group I object to and these ARE directly lost sales. I would almost argue this group is the minority to the above two.
On December 01 2011 01:57 subzer0 wrote: Anyone trying to justify or defend piracy is a scumbag. Its exactly the same as walking into a store and stealing music, movies, or videogames. It is fundamentally wrong, but more or less completely free from prosecution.
This is exactly the form of complete ignorance of the situation and total misinformation provided that lets the shit that developers are trying to pull on their paying customers go unhindered.
Want to know how to "combat piracy"? Provide good service. Provide a good service and people will buy your shit. That's just the fact of life. If you are releasing shit that only hurts those whom buy the game, people are going to "steal" them (even though comparing downloading a digital representation of something is laughable to compare to walking into a store and taking something tangible.)
No, that's dumb. DRM and online-only were put in place BECAUSE people were pirating shit.
And yet it doesn't stop it at all and only hurts the buyers, causing even MORE people to pirate the game because they dont' want to deal with intrusive programs.
See how that works?
You'll never remove piracy. However, DRM only hurts it more. Every game gets cracked, and pirates still continue to play. And when buyers are stuck between the choice of having intrusive programs on their computer that limit their ability to play and have fun, and a version that has none of that which they should be getting when they buy the game, they choose the latter.
You see, that's the issue. Pirated versions of games get better service than bought versions of the game. THAT is the issue that causes piracy. It's not about "HOW DO WE BLOCK ALL THE TORRENT SITES EVER", it's about providing a good service. When the pirated version is a better service than the bought version, more people will pirate. It's that fucking simple, I don't know how this can't be grasped.
You're defending pirates a little too much. I agree that adding DRM only encourages people to pirate so they don't have to deal with the bullshit, but people were pirating games before all the crazy DRM though. For many, the simple logic of 'if you can get something for free why would you pay for it' is reason enough.
I'm not defending piracy, I'm attacking developers. Piracy is reduced with good service. I'm a pirate, and I buy games with great service. Where I get a better experience with the bought version than the pirated version. I outright refuse to download Ubisoft games because of how fucking bullshit 99% of their DRM is. It's not about me defending piracy, I'm actually providing the best way to STOP it almost entirely from an insiders point of view.
I'm a pirate, I pirated 1TB worth of shit in the past two years. It blows my mind that when pirates, not only just me, but all over the internet, are coming out with legitimate ways that are not hard nor costly at all to negate piracy to a level of non-issue people just go "STOP DEFENDNIG PIRACY YOU SCUMBAG WE'LL JUST KEEP PUTTING MORE DRM ON GAMES THAT CAUSES PEOPLE TO PIRATE IN THE FIRST PLACE"
It just outright blows my mind.
Wait, so you're just saying "I want to have the same game experience but not go through the motions because it's annoying".
Product and service go hand in hand. You want one without the other, that makes you a pirate. It also makes you a fucking criminal.
On December 01 2011 01:57 subzer0 wrote: Anyone trying to justify or defend piracy is a scumbag. Its exactly the same as walking into a store and stealing music, movies, or videogames. It is fundamentally wrong, but more or less completely free from prosecution.
This is exactly the form of complete ignorance of the situation and total misinformation provided that lets the shit that developers are trying to pull on their paying customers go unhindered.
Want to know how to "combat piracy"? Provide good service. Provide a good service and people will buy your shit. That's just the fact of life. If you are releasing shit that only hurts those whom buy the game, people are going to "steal" them (even though comparing downloading a digital representation of something is laughable to compare to walking into a store and taking something tangible.)
No, that's dumb. DRM and online-only were put in place BECAUSE people were pirating shit.
And yet it doesn't stop it at all and only hurts the buyers, causing even MORE people to pirate the game because they dont' want to deal with intrusive programs.
See how that works?
You'll never remove piracy. However, DRM only hurts it more. Every game gets cracked, and pirates still continue to play. And when buyers are stuck between the choice of having intrusive programs on their computer that limit their ability to play and have fun, and a version that has none of that which they should be getting when they buy the game, they choose the latter.
You see, that's the issue. Pirated versions of games get better service than bought versions of the game. THAT is the issue that causes piracy. It's not about "HOW DO WE BLOCK ALL THE TORRENT SITES EVER", it's about providing a good service. When the pirated version is a better service than the bought version, more people will pirate. It's that fucking simple, I don't know how this can't be grasped.
But that's completely immoral justification. Take that as you will, of course.
Your argument is "I'm having more fun this way, I don't care if it's illegal". What the fuck? Can you honestly tell me that this is your justification for not buying games? I can understand the guy from Bulgaria who can't afford them (seriously, never saw those prices before, holy crap), but crying because the bought version is trying to verify itself is dumb.
It's actually not completely immoral, whether you agree with it or not. That situation could actually be described as 'taking a stand' against certain developers' decision as regards DRM for the sake of the games industry and the future of DRM.
Whether or not you think that works, or if you think that's the reason people are doing it, however, is a different issue.
On December 01 2011 01:57 subzer0 wrote: Anyone trying to justify or defend piracy is a scumbag. Its exactly the same as walking into a store and stealing music, movies, or videogames. It is fundamentally wrong, but more or less completely free from prosecution.
This is exactly the form of complete ignorance of the situation and total misinformation provided that lets the shit that developers are trying to pull on their paying customers go unhindered.
Want to know how to "combat piracy"? Provide good service. Provide a good service and people will buy your shit. That's just the fact of life. If you are releasing shit that only hurts those whom buy the game, people are going to "steal" them (even though comparing downloading a digital representation of something is laughable to compare to walking into a store and taking something tangible.)
No, that's dumb. DRM and online-only were put in place BECAUSE people were pirating shit.
And yet it doesn't stop it at all and only hurts the buyers, causing even MORE people to pirate the game because they dont' want to deal with intrusive programs.
See how that works?
You'll never remove piracy. However, DRM only hurts it more. Every game gets cracked, and pirates still continue to play. And when buyers are stuck between the choice of having intrusive programs on their computer that limit their ability to play and have fun, and a version that has none of that which they should be getting when they buy the game, they choose the latter.
You see, that's the issue. Pirated versions of games get better service than bought versions of the game. THAT is the issue that causes piracy. It's not about "HOW DO WE BLOCK ALL THE TORRENT SITES EVER", it's about providing a good service. When the pirated version is a better service than the bought version, more people will pirate. It's that fucking simple, I don't know how this can't be grasped.
It does and doesn't work the more work people have to do to pirate a game the less likely they will wait around for a good version that's easy for them to work with and thus more likely to go out and buy the game. You want to say it doesn't wok? look at sc2 there are pirated online servers but with only a few hundred people on at a given time becuase it took so long everyone who wanted to play multi-player bought the game. The point at game companies is that they spend say 2 mil developing a game maybe 5 mil(random number) once it comes to producing and adverting a game etc and they get to sell you a game once for 50-60 dollars and the game will only sell well for maybe a year, this isn't an iron that they developed and can sell for 10 years pretty much with little alteration and they can't adjust their price really because everyone sells games at the same price this is a very ruff business model very similar to movies.
And talking to people i would say most pirate not to see if a game is worthy to buy but becuase they don't want to go out and buy the game. It's usually a combination of lazyness and paying for something, why pay for something when you can get it for free. Which brings up the moral argument why do some people claim it's a right to pirate to test out games, with that logic all people should be allowed to play the games for free and IF IF they feel like paying for it they can. Which is an absurd model, do you pay for movies after you've already enjoyed them? Do you pay for tickets to something after you've already done it? This is business money up front no bums
You only reaffirmed my point. Blizzard provides an OUTSTANDING service to their community and their game, so people BUY their game. If Battle.net was the worst DRM ever, everyone would be playing on pirate servers (much like ICCUP was back in the day). A good service was provided and people, including me, bought it. And a very small number of people play the pirated version because well, they're douchebags.
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
Here's a BETTER analogy.
You go into a car dealership with said magic gun. You have the choice of a shitty Camaro. One with torn seats, half the paint scratched off, the glass broken, and 100,000 miles. If you use the magic gun on said Camaro, you get a pristine, brand new Camaro. Which one would most people do?
Now imagine if the car dealership (or "developers") did what Pirates want them to do. Provide a service better than the copied version. If the Camaro you can buy is significantly better in every way than the Pirated version. Would more people buy the car, or use the version to copy the significantly inferior version? I think the choice is clear, my friend. Yeah, people will still take the worse version because they're cheap and douchebags -- but it will be much in the buyers favor.
This thread isn't about the moral implications of piracy, stop implying it is. The thread is about how to combat piracy. Piracy will ALWAYS exist, however, there are ways to significantly reduce its implications and impact on the market. That is what is being discussed here, how to make more people stop pirating the games and start buying them. That starts from the bottom up with better service.
The second developers stop labeling their customers as criminals by pre-emptively putting DRM on their computers, and start treating them as CUSTOMERS and providing good service, is when people start buying games.
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
On December 01 2011 02:17 semantics wrote: Which is an absurd model, do you pay for movies after you've already enjoyed them? Do you pay for tickets to something after you've already done it? This is business money up front no bums
Actually, the way retail has been for decades now, outside of the entertainment industry has been that model. Most products now, electronics, furniture, vehicles, etc. are actually available to 'buy now, pay later' because that model works.
It's not absurd and I think that you're ignoring a massive part of business if you think that.
On December 01 2011 01:57 subzer0 wrote: Anyone trying to justify or defend piracy is a scumbag. Its exactly the same as walking into a store and stealing music, movies, or videogames. It is fundamentally wrong, but more or less completely free from prosecution.
This is exactly the form of complete ignorance of the situation and total misinformation provided that lets the shit that developers are trying to pull on their paying customers go unhindered.
Want to know how to "combat piracy"? Provide good service. Provide a good service and people will buy your shit. That's just the fact of life. If you are releasing shit that only hurts those whom buy the game, people are going to "steal" them (even though comparing downloading a digital representation of something is laughable to compare to walking into a store and taking something tangible.)
No, that's dumb. DRM and online-only were put in place BECAUSE people were pirating shit.
And yet it doesn't stop it at all and only hurts the buyers, causing even MORE people to pirate the game because they dont' want to deal with intrusive programs.
See how that works?
You'll never remove piracy. However, DRM only hurts it more. Every game gets cracked, and pirates still continue to play. And when buyers are stuck between the choice of having intrusive programs on their computer that limit their ability to play and have fun, and a version that has none of that which they should be getting when they buy the game, they choose the latter.
You see, that's the issue. Pirated versions of games get better service than bought versions of the game. THAT is the issue that causes piracy. It's not about "HOW DO WE BLOCK ALL THE TORRENT SITES EVER", it's about providing a good service. When the pirated version is a better service than the bought version, more people will pirate. It's that fucking simple, I don't know how this can't be grasped.
It does and doesn't work the more work people have to do to pirate a game the less likely they will wait around for a good version that's easy for them to work with and thus more likely to go out and buy the game. You want to say it doesn't wok? look at sc2 there are pirated online servers but with only a few hundred people on at a given time becuase it took so long everyone who wanted to play multi-player bought the game. The point at game companies is that they spend say 2 mil developing a game maybe 5 mil(random number) once it comes to producing and adverting a game etc and they get to sell you a game once for 50-60 dollars and the game will only sell well for maybe a year, this isn't an iron that they developed and can sell for 10 years pretty much with little alteration and they can't adjust their price really because everyone sells games at the same price this is a very ruff business model very similar to movies.
And talking to people i would say most pirate not to see if a game is worthy to buy but becuase they don't want to go out and buy the game. It's usually a combination of lazyness and paying for something, why pay for something when you can get it for free. Which brings up the moral argument why do some people claim it's a right to pirate to test out games, with that logic all people should be allowed to play the games for free and IF IF they feel like paying for it they can. Which is an absurd model, do you pay for movies after you've already enjoyed them? Do you pay for tickets to something after you've already done it? This is business money up front no bums
You only reaffirmed my point. Blizzard provides an OUTSTANDING service to their community and their game, so people BUY their game. If Battle.net was the worst DRM ever, everyone would be playing on pirate servers (much like ICCUP was back in the day). A good service was provided and people, including me, bought it. And a very small number of people play the pirated version because well, they're douchebags.
You literally helped my point even more.
Is it a good service? my point is that it took very long for pirated servers to get up nearly half a year after release which has nothing to do with if battle.net was a good service, as both were not up during week of release so people didn't chose, now people chose to flock to the area with the most people which would be battle.net. People played iccup for better service, mostly to be playing with everyone with lat changer, yes, but that's 6-8 years after the game was release most people on iccup bought sc1 by then. The point of DRM and online only sort of deals is to prevent release week piracy, and weed out those pirates who pirate becuase they are too lazy to drive out and buy the game, or don't have little money so rather use it to spend on things they can't get for free.
Dont blame developers for DRM ... developers dont put drm on things its publishers that do that. Developers get paid for the work they did by the hour usually.
blizzards service is apalling from all my experiences much like steam. Yes their servers are up but thats pretty much a requirement not a bonus. If you have a technical problem you post on here or on another forum, NOT blizzard.
to all you people trying to make analogies with physical objects ... you are forgetting one thing ... games are DIGITAL there is no physical representation except the ordering of electrons. That seriously breaks ALL of your analogies beause the cost of reproduction is a big fat ZERO (and by cost i mean the mining of minerals,the time, their manufacter, the transportation of them the carious factories processing the products of other factories to get to the next step of the product that eventually ends up being the thing that is being 'stolen' in the analogy)
At least the film+music industry is esentially defending its capital locked up in distribution and production mechanisms as they bought their whole supply chain ... the games industry doesnt have that overhead (unless you are EA or equiv who bought pproduction facilities)
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
Here's a BETTER analogy.
You go into a car dealership with said magic gun. You have the choice of a shitty Camaro. One with torn seats, half the paint scratched off, the glass broken, and 100,000 miles. If you use the magic gun on said Camaro, you get a pristine, brand new Camaro. Which one would most people do?
Now imagine if the car dealership (or "developers") did what Pirates want them to do. Provide a service better than the copied version. If the Camaro you can buy is significantly better in every way than the Pirated version. Would more people buy the car, or use the version to copy the significantly inferior version? I think the choice is clear, my friend.
This thread isn't about the moral implications of piracy, stop implying it is. The thread is about how to combat piracy. Piracy will ALWAYS exist, however, there are ways to significantly reduce its implications and impact on the market. That is what is being discussed here, how to make more people stop pirating the games and start buying them. That starts from the bottom up with better service.
The game you buy is the exact same fucking thing as the one you pirate, unless you mod the hell out of it, which isn't fun anymore. If it's the service you're complaining about, it's more like cloning a manual transmission into an automatic because you're too impatient and cheap to learn how to use the clutch.
Combatting piracy has a lot to do with the moral obligations. As long as pirates see nothing morally wrong to them about pirating games, they're going to pirate them. If they honestly thought it was wrong and felt bad about it, they'd do it less. Which is why most pirates try to justify it with all the points that always come up (I'm just trying it! I wasn't going to buy it anyway! I'm sticking it to the man!). As long as you can justify pirating and feel ok about it, you're not going to stop.
On December 01 2011 01:57 subzer0 wrote: Anyone trying to justify or defend piracy is a scumbag. Its exactly the same as walking into a store and stealing music, movies, or videogames. It is fundamentally wrong, but more or less completely free from prosecution.
This is exactly the form of complete ignorance of the situation and total misinformation provided that lets the shit that developers are trying to pull on their paying customers go unhindered.
Want to know how to "combat piracy"? Provide good service. Provide a good service and people will buy your shit. That's just the fact of life. If you are releasing shit that only hurts those whom buy the game, people are going to "steal" them (even though comparing downloading a digital representation of something is laughable to compare to walking into a store and taking something tangible.)
No, that's dumb. DRM and online-only were put in place BECAUSE people were pirating shit.
And yet it doesn't stop it at all and only hurts the buyers, causing even MORE people to pirate the game because they dont' want to deal with intrusive programs.
See how that works?
You'll never remove piracy. However, DRM only hurts it more. Every game gets cracked, and pirates still continue to play. And when buyers are stuck between the choice of having intrusive programs on their computer that limit their ability to play and have fun, and a version that has none of that which they should be getting when they buy the game, they choose the latter.
You see, that's the issue. Pirated versions of games get better service than bought versions of the game. THAT is the issue that causes piracy. It's not about "HOW DO WE BLOCK ALL THE TORRENT SITES EVER", it's about providing a good service. When the pirated version is a better service than the bought version, more people will pirate. It's that fucking simple, I don't know how this can't be grasped.
It does and doesn't work the more work people have to do to pirate a game the less likely they will wait around for a good version that's easy for them to work with and thus more likely to go out and buy the game. You want to say it doesn't wok? look at sc2 there are pirated online servers but with only a few hundred people on at a given time becuase it took so long everyone who wanted to play multi-player bought the game. The point at game companies is that they spend say 2 mil developing a game maybe 5 mil(random number) once it comes to producing and adverting a game etc and they get to sell you a game once for 50-60 dollars and the game will only sell well for maybe a year, this isn't an iron that they developed and can sell for 10 years pretty much with little alteration and they can't adjust their price really because everyone sells games at the same price this is a very ruff business model very similar to movies.
And talking to people i would say most pirate not to see if a game is worthy to buy but becuase they don't want to go out and buy the game. It's usually a combination of lazyness and paying for something, why pay for something when you can get it for free. Which brings up the moral argument why do some people claim it's a right to pirate to test out games, with that logic all people should be allowed to play the games for free and IF IF they feel like paying for it they can. Which is an absurd model, do you pay for movies after you've already enjoyed them? Do you pay for tickets to something after you've already done it? This is business money up front no bums
You only reaffirmed my point. Blizzard provides an OUTSTANDING service to their community and their game, so people BUY their game. If Battle.net was the worst DRM ever, everyone would be playing on pirate servers (much like ICCUP was back in the day). A good service was provided and people, including me, bought it. And a very small number of people play the pirated version because well, they're douchebags.
You literally helped my point even more.
Is it a good service? my point is that it took very long for pirated servers to get up nearly half a year after release which has nothing to do with if battle.net was a good service, as both were not up during week of release so people didn't chose, now people chose to flock to the area with the most people which would be battle.net. People played iccup for better service, mostly to be playing with everyone with lat changer, yes, but that's 6-8 years after the game was release most people on iccup bought sc1 by then. The point of DRM and online only sort of deals is to prevent release week piracy, and weed out those pirates who pirate becuase they are too lazy to drive out and buy the game, or don't have little money so rather use it to spend on things they can't get for free.
Fundamental proof that DRM does NOT EVER work: Assassins Creed: Revelations. Some of the most intrusive DRM I have ever seen, and the PC version was cracked ~3 1/2 weeks before it has been officially released on PC.
take this then. You have a brain tumor. You need $1,000,000 to heal yourself at your local hospital. Instead you go to Norway where you get health care for free. How much did you steal from your local hospital?
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
Here's a BETTER analogy.
You go into a car dealership with said magic gun. You have the choice of a shitty Camaro. One with torn seats, half the paint scratched off, the glass broken, and 100,000 miles. If you use the magic gun on said Camaro, you get a pristine, brand new Camaro. Which one would most people do?
Now imagine if the car dealership (or "developers") did what Pirates want them to do. Provide a service better than the copied version. If the Camaro you can buy is significantly better in every way than the Pirated version. Would more people buy the car, or use the version to copy the significantly inferior version? I think the choice is clear, my friend.
This thread isn't about the moral implications of piracy, stop implying it is. The thread is about how to combat piracy. Piracy will ALWAYS exist, however, there are ways to significantly reduce its implications and impact on the market. That is what is being discussed here, how to make more people stop pirating the games and start buying them. That starts from the bottom up with better service.
The game you buy is the exact same fucking thing as the one you pirate,
Not when there is intrusive DRM that makes it so that you MUST be online at all times to get the same experience, can only install it twice on any computer (IE: Reinstalling OS makes you have to rebuy the game), or takes away from the general experience in any way.
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
Here's a BETTER analogy.
You go into a car dealership with said magic gun. You have the choice of a shitty Camaro. One with torn seats, half the paint scratched off, the glass broken, and 100,000 miles. If you use the magic gun on said Camaro, you get a pristine, brand new Camaro. Which one would most people do?
Now imagine if the car dealership (or "developers") did what Pirates want them to do. Provide a service better than the copied version. If the Camaro you can buy is significantly better in every way than the Pirated version. Would more people buy the car, or use the version to copy the significantly inferior version? I think the choice is clear, my friend.
This thread isn't about the moral implications of piracy, stop implying it is. The thread is about how to combat piracy. Piracy will ALWAYS exist, however, there are ways to significantly reduce its implications and impact on the market. That is what is being discussed here, how to make more people stop pirating the games and start buying them. That starts from the bottom up with better service.
The game you buy is the exact same fucking thing as the one you pirate, unless you mod the hell out of it, which isn't fun anymore. If it's the service you're complaining about, it's more like cloning a manual transmission into an automatic because you're too impatient and cheap to learn how to use the clutch.
Combatting piracy has a lot to do with the moral obligations. As long as pirates see nothing morally wrong to them about pirating games, they're going to pirate them. If they honestly thought it was wrong and felt bad about it, they'd do it less. Which is why most pirates try to justify it with all the points that always come up (I'm just trying it! I wasn't going to buy it anyway! I'm sticking it to the man!). As long as you can justify pirating and feel ok about it, you're not going to stop.
I think these analogies are getting a bit out of hand and starting to lose any meaning whatsoever.
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
Here's a BETTER analogy.
You go into a car dealership with said magic gun. You have the choice of a shitty Camaro. One with torn seats, half the paint scratched off, the glass broken, and 100,000 miles. If you use the magic gun on said Camaro, you get a pristine, brand new Camaro. Which one would most people do?
Now imagine if the car dealership (or "developers") did what Pirates want them to do. Provide a service better than the copied version. If the Camaro you can buy is significantly better in every way than the Pirated version. Would more people buy the car, or use the version to copy the significantly inferior version? I think the choice is clear, my friend.
This thread isn't about the moral implications of piracy, stop implying it is. The thread is about how to combat piracy. Piracy will ALWAYS exist, however, there are ways to significantly reduce its implications and impact on the market. That is what is being discussed here, how to make more people stop pirating the games and start buying them. That starts from the bottom up with better service.
The game you buy is the exact same fucking thing as the one you pirate, unless you mod the hell out of it, which isn't fun anymore. If it's the service you're complaining about, it's more like cloning a manual transmission into an automatic because you're too impatient and cheap to learn how to use the clutch.
Combatting piracy has a lot to do with the moral obligations. As long as pirates see nothing morally wrong to them about pirating games, they're going to pirate them. If they honestly thought it was wrong and felt bad about it, they'd do it less. Which is why most pirates try to justify it with all the points that always come up (I'm just trying it! I wasn't going to buy it anyway! I'm sticking it to the man!). As long as you can justify pirating and feel ok about it, you're not going to stop.
I think these analogies are getting a bit out of hand and starting to lose any meaning whatsoever.
There's no point of analogies in this subject. Piracy should be addressed as piracy, not as buying a car. They are completely separate things.
This thread isn't even on the moral implications of piracy. It's about how to cut down on piracy. The answer to that is clear.
On December 01 2011 02:30 dementrio wrote: guys you suck so much at analogies
take this then. You have a brain tumor. You need $1,000,000 to heal yourself at your local hospital. Instead you go to Norway where you get health care for free. How much did you steal from your local hospital?
geez
Die of tumor or die of destitution are the best choices because Norway is morally reprehensible. Now do I get a prize?
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
People pirated the software because they are expensive. For example, microsoft office 2010 cost around $130-350 US. Generally, the method of pirating a software is easy. You just click download, then done.
On December 01 2011 01:57 subzer0 wrote: Anyone trying to justify or defend piracy is a scumbag. Its exactly the same as walking into a store and stealing music, movies, or videogames. It is fundamentally wrong, but more or less completely free from prosecution.
This is exactly the form of complete ignorance of the situation and total misinformation provided that lets the shit that developers are trying to pull on their paying customers go unhindered.
Want to know how to "combat piracy"? Provide good service. Provide a good service and people will buy your shit. That's just the fact of life. If you are releasing shit that only hurts those whom buy the game, people are going to "steal" them (even though comparing downloading a digital representation of something is laughable to compare to walking into a store and taking something tangible.)
No, that's dumb. DRM and online-only were put in place BECAUSE people were pirating shit.
And yet it doesn't stop it at all and only hurts the buyers, causing even MORE people to pirate the game because they dont' want to deal with intrusive programs.
See how that works?
You'll never remove piracy. However, DRM only hurts it more. Every game gets cracked, and pirates still continue to play. And when buyers are stuck between the choice of having intrusive programs on their computer that limit their ability to play and have fun, and a version that has none of that which they should be getting when they buy the game, they choose the latter.
You see, that's the issue. Pirated versions of games get better service than bought versions of the game. THAT is the issue that causes piracy. It's not about "HOW DO WE BLOCK ALL THE TORRENT SITES EVER", it's about providing a good service. When the pirated version is a better service than the bought version, more people will pirate. It's that fucking simple, I don't know how this can't be grasped.
It does and doesn't work the more work people have to do to pirate a game the less likely they will wait around for a good version that's easy for them to work with and thus more likely to go out and buy the game. You want to say it doesn't wok? look at sc2 there are pirated online servers but with only a few hundred people on at a given time becuase it took so long everyone who wanted to play multi-player bought the game. The point at game companies is that they spend say 2 mil developing a game maybe 5 mil(random number) once it comes to producing and adverting a game etc and they get to sell you a game once for 50-60 dollars and the game will only sell well for maybe a year, this isn't an iron that they developed and can sell for 10 years pretty much with little alteration and they can't adjust their price really because everyone sells games at the same price this is a very ruff business model very similar to movies.
And talking to people i would say most pirate not to see if a game is worthy to buy but becuase they don't want to go out and buy the game. It's usually a combination of lazyness and paying for something, why pay for something when you can get it for free. Which brings up the moral argument why do some people claim it's a right to pirate to test out games, with that logic all people should be allowed to play the games for free and IF IF they feel like paying for it they can. Which is an absurd model, do you pay for movies after you've already enjoyed them? Do you pay for tickets to something after you've already done it? This is business money up front no bums
You only reaffirmed my point. Blizzard provides an OUTSTANDING service to their community and their game, so people BUY their game. If Battle.net was the worst DRM ever, everyone would be playing on pirate servers (much like ICCUP was back in the day). A good service was provided and people, including me, bought it. And a very small number of people play the pirated version because well, they're douchebags.
You literally helped my point even more.
Is it a good service? my point is that it took very long for pirated servers to get up nearly half a year after release which has nothing to do with if battle.net was a good service, as both were not up during week of release so people didn't chose, now people chose to flock to the area with the most people which would be battle.net. People played iccup for better service, mostly to be playing with everyone with lat changer, yes, but that's 6-8 years after the game was release most people on iccup bought sc1 by then. The point of DRM and online only sort of deals is to prevent release week piracy, and weed out those pirates who pirate becuase they are too lazy to drive out and buy the game, or don't have little money so rather use it to spend on things they can't get for free.
Fundamental proof that DRM does NOT EVER work: Assassins Creed: Revelations. Some of the most intrusive DRM I have ever seen, and the PC version was cracked ~3 1/2 weeks before it has been officially released on PC.
? How i that not working, it told you the point is to prevent week of release piracy, the longer a game is out the more likely people will buy the game instead of pirate it, when their only choice is to buy the game. To which some drm does just fine. Yes look at it fail to bring in revenue http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/uk-charts-modern-warfare-3-resists-new-release-rivals/087444
Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Revelations was the strongest newcomer, debuting at No.2. Its week one numbers better those of predecessor Brotherhood by four per cent in unit terms and eight per cent in revenue, making it the best performing title both in the series and in Ubisoft’s history to date.
On December 01 2011 02:17 semantics wrote: Which is an absurd model, do you pay for movies after you've already enjoyed them? Do you pay for tickets to something after you've already done it? This is business money up front no bums
Actually, the way retail has been for decades now, outside of the entertainment industry has been that model. Most products now, electronics, furniture, vehicles, etc. are actually available to 'buy now, pay later' because that model works.
It's not absurd and I think that you're ignoring a massive part of business if you think that.
Except you are putting money down and paying interest, go out and buy for no money down a car or couch. Guess what you have to pay for it else you lose it, and unlike entertainment which usually is only played/viewed once and people are content, you kind of need a couch to sit on all the time. You seem to not understand why the entertainment industry doesn't work on that model and why it's pushing to a subscription model like cable(which btw is the most profitable of all entertainment industry outside of gambling, video games and i think it's... i forget video games at near the bottom(not the actual bottom though) in terms of profit margins though, doesn't mean they make money just means their profits are thin)
If you want to combat piracy you need to create a game with compelling online multiplayer that makes people have to buy the game to access. Like our beloved SC2.
Another thing I can think of is to release games on console and delay the PC release so that the people who really want the game will get it on console first instead of waiting for a PC version to pirate. This can help a little bit I think as not as many people have modded consoles and will lead to a little less pirating.
Piracy these days on PC is probably less problematic than second-hand sales on the Xbox,” commented Fable III lead combat designer Mike West. He added, “”I’ve been working on PC games for many years and piracy is always a problem. There are a lot of honest people out there as well, and if they like your game they’ll buy it.
I am the person he described. If you decide to call me a criminal that's fine. I am. I also don't give a shit what you think of me and others opinions on how I demo games will not affect my choices.
I'm sorry you think it's such a big deal that bad game developers are not paid for games found to be not worth purchasing. I buy many games. If I can't afford them I don't buy them. But if I'm on the fence about EAs new formulaic game- I'll pirate it and test it out. And 9/10 times it was not worth purchasing.
The video games industry is so massive that refusing to buy a bad product does not change it from being successful. People will buy it anyway. You can't force EA/Activision/et cetera to strive for better games through not purchasing.
So what's the problem with piracy? Tell you what, I'll meet you half way. How about they stop using DLC as a way to milk the consumer even further, releasing 7/10ths of a game and selling the extra 3 parts for half of the game price in total and I'll start buying their games!
On December 01 2011 01:57 subzer0 wrote: Anyone trying to justify or defend piracy is a scumbag. Its exactly the same as walking into a store and stealing music, movies, or videogames. It is fundamentally wrong, but more or less completely free from prosecution.
This is exactly the form of complete ignorance of the situation and total misinformation provided that lets the shit that developers are trying to pull on their paying customers go unhindered.
Want to know how to "combat piracy"? Provide good service. Provide a good service and people will buy your shit. That's just the fact of life. If you are releasing shit that only hurts those whom buy the game, people are going to "steal" them (even though comparing downloading a digital representation of something is laughable to compare to walking into a store and taking something tangible.)
No, that's dumb. DRM and online-only were put in place BECAUSE people were pirating shit.
And yet it doesn't stop it at all and only hurts the buyers, causing even MORE people to pirate the game because they dont' want to deal with intrusive programs.
See how that works?
Every one of your posts reeks of self-entitlement. Not unexpected I suppose, it's a common trait among people who support stealing. You know that you don't get to have something for free just because it doesn't meet your supposed standards right?
I love seeing the same people who torrent games explain to me that they want to become game developers or software engineers. Gives me a hearty chuckle of irony.
You'll never remove piracy. However, DRM only hurts it more. Every game gets cracked, and pirates still continue to play. And when buyers are stuck between the choice of having intrusive programs on their computer that limit their ability to play and have fun, and a version that has none of that which they should be getting when they buy the game, they choose the latter.
You see, that's the issue. Pirated versions of games get better service than bought versions of the game. THAT is the issue that causes piracy. It's not about "HOW DO WE BLOCK ALL THE TORRENT SITES EVER", it's about providing a good service. When the pirated version is a better service than the bought version, more people will pirate. It's that fucking simple, I don't know how this can't be grasped.
It does and doesn't work the more work people have to do to pirate a game the less likely they will wait around for a good version that's easy for them to work with and thus more likely to go out and buy the game. You want to say it doesn't wok? look at sc2 there are pirated online servers but with only a few hundred people on at a given time becuase it took so long everyone who wanted to play multi-player bought the game. The point at game companies is that they spend say 2 mil developing a game maybe 5 mil(random number) once it comes to producing and adverting a game etc and they get to sell you a game once for 50-60 dollars and the game will only sell well for maybe a year, this isn't an iron that they developed and can sell for 10 years pretty much with little alteration and they can't adjust their price really because everyone sells games at the same price this is a very ruff business model very similar to movies.
And talking to people i would say most pirate not to see if a game is worthy to buy but becuase they don't want to go out and buy the game. It's usually a combination of lazyness and paying for something, why pay for something when you can get it for free. Which brings up the moral argument why do some people claim it's a right to pirate to test out games, with that logic all people should be allowed to play the games for free and IF IF they feel like paying for it they can. Which is an absurd model, do you pay for movies after you've already enjoyed them? Do you pay for tickets to something after you've already done it? This is business money up front no bums
You only reaffirmed my point. Blizzard provides an OUTSTANDING service to their community and their game, so people BUY their game. If Battle.net was the worst DRM ever, everyone would be playing on pirate servers (much like ICCUP was back in the day). A good service was provided and people, including me, bought it. And a very small number of people play the pirated version because well, they're douchebags.
You literally helped my point even more.
Is it a good service? my point is that it took very long for pirated servers to get up nearly half a year after release which has nothing to do with if battle.net was a good service, as both were not up during week of release so people didn't chose, now people chose to flock to the area with the most people which would be battle.net. People played iccup for better service, mostly to be playing with everyone with lat changer, yes, but that's 6-8 years after the game was release most people on iccup bought sc1 by then. The point of DRM and online only sort of deals is to prevent release week piracy, and weed out those pirates who pirate becuase they are too lazy to drive out and buy the game, or don't have little money so rather use it to spend on things they can't get for free.
Fundamental proof that DRM does NOT EVER work: Assassins Creed: Revelations. Some of the most intrusive DRM I have ever seen, and the PC version was cracked ~3 1/2 weeks before it has been officially released on PC.
Every one of your posts reeks of self-entitlement. Not unexpected I suppose, it's a common trait among people who support stealing. You know that you don't get to have something for free just because it doesn't meet your supposed standards right?
On December 01 2011 02:30 dementrio wrote: guys you suck so much at analogies
take this then. You have a brain tumor. You need $1,000,000 to heal yourself at your local hospital. Instead you go to Norway where you get health care for free. How much did you steal from your local hospital?
geez
And then the local hospital closes down or starts charging exorbitant fees for simple procedures.
But why did their service get so shitty? You ask.
Because you didn't pay them.
People have no idea of the worth of money now. You just want what you want and don't want to pay for it, you act like children who don't realize that the people you're not paying are suffering from it.
On November 30 2011 22:33 Yuljan wrote: I pirate games to see if theyd run on my computer. I bet there are alot of guys like me. Witcher 2 was unplayable for example.
You just have to make your games only for PS3, bribe all the major critics into giving you 11/10 then piracy is not a problem. and neither is the quality of your work. :p
If the thread is about reducing piracy then ther is a need to establish that it is actually a problem
Here is a question
How is piracy harming you? The game, music and film industries are larger than ever. They are doing great ... sure the big ones that invbested in now out of date technology infrastructure are fucked but really how doe sthat harm YOU?
it doesnt piracy helps you, why the hell are you trying to help the interestes of multi billion dollar companies that want *your* money?
Piracy is great. If everyone was allowed to pirate everything they needed then a lot of inequality would vanish. a $20 game in us maybe cheap but if you goto poland its relatively a lot more (or used to be dunno abotu now)
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
IMO pirating games is more like speeding on a road that is empty 99.9% of the time. Yes, by the people that enforce the laws, it is illegal. Is it hurting anybody? 99.9% of the time it isn't. 0.1% of the time it is. Should you stop doing it on account of that 0.1 percent? Or should you be more discerning to make sure that 0.1% eventuality doesn't occur? How could you know when you are going to hurt someone, or who it will be?
The answer isn't really knowable. Most people will go a little bit over the speed limit if they feel it is safe to do so. Some may even believe that it's better for the nation's infrastructure to increase the speed limits and not restrict them so much.
There may be statistics to prove that more people die in areas with 70 mph limits than 20mph limits. There may be statistics to prove the opposite.
On December 01 2011 02:37 MrTortoise wrote: If the thread is about reducing piracy then ther is a need to establish that it is actually a problem
Here is a question
How is piracy harming you? The game, music and film industries are larger than ever. They are doing great ... sure the big ones that invbested in now out of date technology infrastructure are fucked but really how doe sthat harm YOU?
it doesnt piracy helps you, why the hell are you trying to help the interestes of multi billion dollar companies that want *your* money?
Piracy is great. If everyone was allowed to pirate everything they needed then a lot of inequality would vanish. a $20 game in us maybe cheap but if you goto poland its relatively a lot more (or used to be dunno abotu now)
Corporations are comprised of people. And in this case, many of which are software engineers or developers who take pride in their work and expect it to be valued at their set price. Making infinite copies of something devalues it. Period.
Gives me a hearty laugh whenever I hear the same people who torrent games explain to me that they want to become software engineers.
On December 01 2011 02:30 dementrio wrote: guys you suck so much at analogies
take this then. You have a brain tumor. You need $1,000,000 to heal yourself at your local hospital. Instead you go to Norway where you get health care for free. How much did you steal from your local hospital?
geez
And then the local hospital closes down or starts charging exorbitant fees for simple procedures.
Personally, I see a constant connection to the internet a good way to begin war on piracy.
Also, with the popularity of software like Steam which provides you with automated patches and easy access to purchase thousands of games, it gives programmers a feeling of security since Steam requires a constant connection as well as being registered. Furthermore, many requires a subscription to their game too meaning double registration.
I see this as an easy for smaller companies to provide their services with some security features without needing to invest money in it.
On December 01 2011 01:57 subzer0 wrote: Anyone trying to justify or defend piracy is a scumbag. Its exactly the same as walking into a store and stealing music, movies, or videogames. It is fundamentally wrong, but more or less completely free from prosecution.
This is exactly the form of complete ignorance of the situation and total misinformation provided that lets the shit that developers are trying to pull on their paying customers go unhindered.
Want to know how to "combat piracy"? Provide good service. Provide a good service and people will buy your shit. That's just the fact of life. If you are releasing shit that only hurts those whom buy the game, people are going to "steal" them (even though comparing downloading a digital representation of something is laughable to compare to walking into a store and taking something tangible.)
No, that's dumb. DRM and online-only were put in place BECAUSE people were pirating shit.
And yet it doesn't stop it at all and only hurts the buyers, causing even MORE people to pirate the game because they dont' want to deal with intrusive programs.
See how that works?
Every one of your posts reeks of self-entitlement. Not unexpected I suppose, it's a common trait among people who support stealing. You know that you don't get to have something for free just because it doesn't meet your supposed standards right?
I love seeing the same people who torrent games explain to me that they want to become game developers or software engineers. Gives me a hearty chuckle of irony.
You'll never remove piracy. However, DRM only hurts it more. Every game gets cracked, and pirates still continue to play. And when buyers are stuck between the choice of having intrusive programs on their computer that limit their ability to play and have fun, and a version that has none of that which they should be getting when they buy the game, they choose the latter.
You see, that's the issue. Pirated versions of games get better service than bought versions of the game. THAT is the issue that causes piracy. It's not about "HOW DO WE BLOCK ALL THE TORRENT SITES EVER", it's about providing a good service. When the pirated version is a better service than the bought version, more people will pirate. It's that fucking simple, I don't know how this can't be grasped.
It does and doesn't work the more work people have to do to pirate a game the less likely they will wait around for a good version that's easy for them to work with and thus more likely to go out and buy the game. You want to say it doesn't wok? look at sc2 there are pirated online servers but with only a few hundred people on at a given time becuase it took so long everyone who wanted to play multi-player bought the game. The point at game companies is that they spend say 2 mil developing a game maybe 5 mil(random number) once it comes to producing and adverting a game etc and they get to sell you a game once for 50-60 dollars and the game will only sell well for maybe a year, this isn't an iron that they developed and can sell for 10 years pretty much with little alteration and they can't adjust their price really because everyone sells games at the same price this is a very ruff business model very similar to movies.
And talking to people i would say most pirate not to see if a game is worthy to buy but becuase they don't want to go out and buy the game. It's usually a combination of lazyness and paying for something, why pay for something when you can get it for free. Which brings up the moral argument why do some people claim it's a right to pirate to test out games, with that logic all people should be allowed to play the games for free and IF IF they feel like paying for it they can. Which is an absurd model, do you pay for movies after you've already enjoyed them? Do you pay for tickets to something after you've already done it? This is business money up front no bums
You only reaffirmed my point. Blizzard provides an OUTSTANDING service to their community and their game, so people BUY their game. If Battle.net was the worst DRM ever, everyone would be playing on pirate servers (much like ICCUP was back in the day). A good service was provided and people, including me, bought it. And a very small number of people play the pirated version because well, they're douchebags.
You literally helped my point even more.
Is it a good service? my point is that it took very long for pirated servers to get up nearly half a year after release which has nothing to do with if battle.net was a good service, as both were not up during week of release so people didn't chose, now people chose to flock to the area with the most people which would be battle.net. People played iccup for better service, mostly to be playing with everyone with lat changer, yes, but that's 6-8 years after the game was release most people on iccup bought sc1 by then. The point of DRM and online only sort of deals is to prevent release week piracy, and weed out those pirates who pirate becuase they are too lazy to drive out and buy the game, or don't have little money so rather use it to spend on things they can't get for free.
Fundamental proof that DRM does NOT EVER work: Assassins Creed: Revelations. Some of the most intrusive DRM I have ever seen, and the PC version was cracked ~3 1/2 weeks before it has been officially released on PC.
Every one of your posts reeks of self-entitlement. Not unexpected I suppose, it's a common trait among people who support stealing. You know that you don't get to have something for free just because it doesn't meet your supposed standards right?
and your post reeks of being unable to pin a logical argument together. His point is that if its in some way gimped to death why pay for it? There are many many games that have been ruined by attempts at DRM ... the command and conquer games are a poignant example for me ... lots of video in them but you have to have cd in to play even though you copy it onto your machine ... that means one scratch and you cannot enjoy the game anymore. The result ... you are entitled under many laws to have a digital copy to preserve your data - drm violates that law ... why should i pay someone for a product that is legally contentious? When you buy a game you are not buying that particular instance of iit on that particular medium you are buyign the right to play that game unmolested.
You get in the way of that ... you dont deserve my money. If thats entitled fine, but your just plain delusional if you think whjat you said makes any sense in the context of what he said. the answer is 'yes, so what?'
On December 01 2011 02:37 MrTortoise wrote: If the thread is about reducing piracy then ther is a need to establish that it is actually a problem
Here is a question
How is piracy harming you? The game, music and film industries are larger than ever. They are doing great ... sure the big ones that invbested in now out of date technology infrastructure are fucked but really how doe sthat harm YOU?
it doesnt piracy helps you, why the hell are you trying to help the interestes of multi billion dollar companies that want *your* money?
Piracy is great. If everyone was allowed to pirate everything they needed then a lot of inequality would vanish. a $20 game in us maybe cheap but if you goto poland its relatively a lot more (or used to be dunno abotu now)
This is the victimless crime syndrome. Look at the movie The Perfect Score (not a great movie, but good for this example).
If you cheat on your SAT, and get into a good college knowing that you don't belong there, and your attendance didn't prevent someone else from going, would you cheat to get a higher score? You're not hurting anyone, right?
No. It's still wrong. And while you might say that this thread isn't about moral issues and is about DRM and what not, it is a moral issue, because that's all you can talk about as far as this goes.
On December 01 2011 02:37 MrTortoise wrote: If the thread is about reducing piracy then ther is a need to establish that it is actually a problem
Here is a question
How is piracy harming you? The game, music and film industries are larger than ever. They are doing great ... sure the big ones that invbested in now out of date technology infrastructure are fucked but really how doe sthat harm YOU?
it doesnt piracy helps you, why the hell are you trying to help the interestes of multi billion dollar companies that want *your* money?
Piracy is great. If everyone was allowed to pirate everything they needed then a lot of inequality would vanish. a $20 game in us maybe cheap but if you goto poland its relatively a lot more (or used to be dunno abotu now)
Piracy is a problem. Many gaming companies have closed over the years due to piracy blocking their incomes.
Piracy, no matter the amount saved, shouldn't exists. The companies that sell these products invests millions of dollars on what seems like a shaky idea at first simply for the possibility of profit. Piracy will eventually just make changes like Diablo 3's constant connection a must. I see more drastic changes in the future too which might impact more than just what you outlined with an ever improved speed of inter connectivity between companies and hardware.
Also, your argument about Poland is irelevant. Playing computer games is not a necessity nor a need but a luxury and hobby. If you dont have money to be an F1 pilot, do you go stealing F1 racing cars and say its fine because you dont have the money for it?
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
On December 01 2011 02:39 StatX wrote: Personally, I see a constant connection to the internet a good way to begin war on piracy.
Also, with the popularity of software like Steam which provides you with automated patches and easy access to purchase thousands of games, it gives programmers a feeling of security since Steam requires a constant connection as well as being registered. Furthermore, many requires a subscription to their game too meaning double registration.
I see this as an easy for smaller companies to provide their services with some security features without needing to invest money in it.
You do realize that the "constant connection"-protection is bypassed with a copy&paste crack?
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
How is it wasted? Did a person who would otherwise buy the car, not buy it? Will that car never be sold at all?
I don't quite know how you're drawing these conclusions.
On December 01 2011 02:30 dementrio wrote: guys you suck so much at analogies
take this then. You have a brain tumor. You need $1,000,000 to heal yourself at your local hospital. Instead you go to Norway where you get health care for free. How much did you steal from your local hospital?
geez
And then the local hospital closes down or starts charging exorbitant fees for simple procedures.
But why did their service get so shitty? You ask.
No. I ask, how much did you steal?
You stole business. The same reason home-run businesses close down because you go to Wal-Mart to get stuff cheaper: it doesn't matter if you're not stealing, you're not paying, so they don't have money. You're putting them in the red via negligence.
It's not about lost potential income, it's about developers avoiding making PC titles in the first place, due to fear of piracy or indie studios having a problem getting anywhere at all.
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.
On December 01 2011 02:30 dementrio wrote: guys you suck so much at analogies
take this then. You have a brain tumor. You need $1,000,000 to heal yourself at your local hospital. Instead you go to Norway where you get health care for free. How much did you steal from your local hospital?
geez
And then the local hospital closes down or starts charging exorbitant fees for simple procedures.
But why did their service get so shitty? You ask.
No. I ask, how much did you steal?
You stole business. The same reason home-run businesses close down because you go to Wal-Mart to get stuff cheaper: it doesn't matter if you're not stealing, you're not paying, so they don't have money. You're putting them in the red via negligence.
I have the right to choose how I spend my money. if the local hospital is shit, it's clients should move on. If your local shop can't keep up with Wal-Marts prices, it either needs to find another way of attracting the clients, or shut down. If game company is shit, it deserves the piracy.
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
Do you even read what I write?
People that pirate games can't afford them, due to poor pricing in most of the cases. If pirating was impossible, they still wouldn't have bought them. You can't magically wish more money into existance.
On December 01 2011 02:30 dementrio wrote: guys you suck so much at analogies
take this then. You have a brain tumor. You need $1,000,000 to heal yourself at your local hospital. Instead you go to Norway where you get health care for free. How much did you steal from your local hospital?
geez
And then the local hospital closes down or starts charging exorbitant fees for simple procedures.
But why did their service get so shitty? You ask.
No. I ask, how much did you steal?
You stole business. The same reason home-run businesses close down because you go to Wal-Mart to get stuff cheaper: it doesn't matter if you're not stealing, you're not paying, so they don't have money. You're putting them in the red via negligence.
Now that's a completely different issue. By your logic, we should buy Torchlight and boycott Diablo 3 because one is made by a massive company and one isn't.
To look at this in a different view. Lets say your house is on the market to sell. And lets say I am looking to buy a house. So according to a lot of "logic" in this thread, it would be completely acceptable for me to move into your house and "Try it out" and "see if I like it" before I determine if I even really want to buy your house. Isn't that the same concept being used to rationalize pirating any software? Plan and simple, your stealing if you pirate. The "Well they have a lot of money anyways. They don't need my money." line is so full of crap. Developers need money to keep production going. Developers need money to pay the bills to keep programmers employed. These companies need money to pay their employees, so they can feed their kids. Oh course most people don't care about other people. Not really. Our (U.S.) society is so based on individualism that we worry only about "me and mine." So if a family suffers due to millions of pirates, those pirates don't care. They don't know the people at the gaming company or developers. Its much easier to hurt someone you don't know and well never know. I'm sure some of you are rolling your eyes and saying "No way does my $60 affect a persons family." Lets say it's 3 million copies of a game (retails at $60) are pirated. That's how much? $18 million. Now take into account all the costs to create, develop, market, distribute the game. So now that $18 million can't be used by the company now. And the company actually doesn't have enough money to produce more content for that game, can't secure future investors to help fund a new project. People get fired, to "streamline" the production. And eventually the company ceases. Of course this is an extreme example, but it's not that far off from the truth. Piracy in my opinion boils down to one thing.... People don't want to work for what they want. People want things given to them with as little output of effort given. "You supply me because I'm "owed" something for everything I have to deal with." I think this is because of the period of capitalism we are in. The U.S.(along with much of Europe) is a fully developed country and has become a consumer state. Goods aren't produced in the U.S. like they were in the 40s, 50, 60s. Therefore the children of the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s expect that all things are easily accumulated. They days of "doing an honest day's work for an honest day's pay" are completely gone. Getting the most pay for the least amount of work is the norm in most industrial countries (in my opinion). So this ends up leading to many downfalls of society, piracy being just one of the visible. Taking what isn't mine and using it for my own purposes, simply because I want it. No one is making anyone purchase any game, music, photoshop, etc. If you want to know if something is good...Ask. The internet is a big wide world where you can find opinions and critiques on anything. And if your already on TL, you should certainly be able to find other sites to find the information you are looking for. If you really want something, you'll work for it.
On December 01 2011 02:39 StatX wrote: Personally, I see a constant connection to the internet a good way to begin war on piracy.
Also, with the popularity of software like Steam which provides you with automated patches and easy access to purchase thousands of games, it gives programmers a feeling of security since Steam requires a constant connection as well as being registered. Furthermore, many requires a subscription to their game too meaning double registration.
I see this as an easy for smaller companies to provide their services with some security features without needing to invest money in it.
You do realize that the "constant connection"-protection is bypassed with a copy&paste crack?
It's not perfect but it does reduce it.
Furthermore, if it doesn,t work, we all know Blizzard will take it a step further again the next time orthey may just stop making games.
People say they make millions which is true but one needs to remember they invest millions of dollars too. If at the end of the year they made 12 millions on sales for a gamebut had to spend 10.5 millions and lost 4.5 millions to piracy, they may still shutdown operations because the invest/reward balance is broken and will most likely prevent investors to invest since the return on investment is too low.
On December 01 2011 02:37 MrTortoise wrote: If the thread is about reducing piracy then ther is a need to establish that it is actually a problem
Here is a question
How is piracy harming you? The game, music and film industries are larger than ever. They are doing great ... sure the big ones that invbested in now out of date technology infrastructure are fucked but really how doe sthat harm YOU?
it doesnt piracy helps you, why the hell are you trying to help the interestes of multi billion dollar companies that want *your* money?
Piracy is great. If everyone was allowed to pirate everything they needed then a lot of inequality would vanish. a $20 game in us maybe cheap but if you goto poland its relatively a lot more (or used to be dunno abotu now)
This is the victimless crime syndrome. Look at the movie The Perfect Score (not a great movie, but good for this example).
If you cheat on your SAT, and get into a good college knowing that you don't belong there, and your attendance didn't prevent someone else from going, would you cheat to get a higher score? You're not hurting anyone, right?
No. It's still wrong. And while you might say that this thread isn't about moral issues and is about DRM and what not, it is a moral issue, because that's all you can talk about as far as this goes.
sorry i dont understand right and wrong
You see they are broken. If you cared about right and wrong you would be solving homelessness and starvation ... you dont. So really you are only using them selectivley.
Ie right and wrong are really luxuaries of the rich. You want me to watch a 2 hour movie just to understand a point you made? Sorry mate but ai really dont care that much - explain it and i will read.
If you cheat on your tests at school yes you will get a good grade .. the problem is when you then try and work for a living you will be fucked. Stop making crappy analogies and argue the point.
Im not saying its a victimless crime, im sayign the software industry is where it is BECAUSE of piracy. why do you think id software are heralded as gods? because EVERYBODY played doom as it was shareware then EVERYONE played doom2 then EVERYONE played quake, then EVERYONE played quake2 because there was a good demo.
Now people dont do that ... so we pirate. They lose for not knowing about market segmentation.
Also i wasnt arguing for a victimless crime ... im sayign the cost of the crime is almost zero to the industry and is zero for you. Moreover why are you trying to use an abstract concept with no reference to reality to argue my point which is very much rooted in reality.
On November 30 2011 23:12 Nevermind86 wrote: I would have been an average piece of shit person from my country, drinking beer every weekend, being fat and have 0 culture. You know what made me different? The internet. I downloaded so many movies and videogames I actually learned some decent english that then I used to read classic books like 1984 for free. Without the internet I would have been nothing because all these accesible culture really made me a whole lot different from the people around and I feel proud. Take down piracy and you take down a huge part of human culture too, just for some guys to make a few bucks because the people that really download things are from the third world and we don't have the money to pay even 5$, because our jobs pay 150$ a month, we barely fucking survive.
There are not enough people quoting you. You are absolutely right.
I live in a richer country then yours. Yet it is still third-world, as most of the world is. The middle class (which would correspond to poor people in the first world) and the poor sometimes figure out a way to pay for a computer and internet, because they have multiple uses, but are we going to pay for games?
I have an excelent paid job. I make 3000 reais a month (about 2000 dollars). Starcraft 2 costed me 100 reais (equivalent to US' $59). It kinda hurted my wallet thou. And Blizzard had done an excellent job, launching the game in Brazil for a price that's equivalent of the US. The games are generally MORE here because of taxes.
(That's why Starcraft 2 is the only new game I own)
My dad makes like three times what I earn a month. Even so, all of my little brother's PS2 games are pirated. How the hell is my father gonna pay 150 reais in each game the boy wants? Nein nein nein, there is no way.
If someone argues, your father makes so much money (he does), he can get other kinds of enterntainment for you brother if he wants to, there is no excuse for pirating games, or music, or movies, or whatever - I'd agree to that. But most people pirate because its the only way they can have access to entertainment. You may find this surreal, but I know a lot of 40-yo people who had never watched a movie in a theater in their whole lives. And Im talking about urban poor people, not starving countrysiders.
Just how many of those 4.5 million downloads were from South America, India, China and Africa? Ethical issues apart, how many of those people would buy the game if they had to?
PS: Buying a game to support a company is a hardcore gamer thing. Casual gamers just don't understand/don't care. Its not even related to procrastination, they just stealed it, play half or the whole of it and delete it.
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
How is it wasted? Did a person who would otherwise buy the car, not buy it? Will that car never be sold at all?
I don't quite know how you're drawing these conclusions.
It costs months to years and billions of dollars to design a car. It costs thousands of dollars to build said car. That money is gained back by selling.
When you make a product, you are FAR in the red. You expect sales to bring you back to profit. By choosing to not pay, you are keeping them in the red.
On December 01 2011 02:30 dementrio wrote: guys you suck so much at analogies
take this then. You have a brain tumor. You need $1,000,000 to heal yourself at your local hospital. Instead you go to Norway where you get health care for free. How much did you steal from your local hospital?
geez
And then the local hospital closes down or starts charging exorbitant fees for simple procedures.
But why did their service get so shitty? You ask.
No. I ask, how much did you steal?
You stole business. The same reason home-run businesses close down because you go to Wal-Mart to get stuff cheaper: it doesn't matter if you're not stealing, you're not paying, so they don't have money. You're putting them in the red via negligence.
AHA! so you're not stealing. PIRACY IS NOT STEALING. If it doesn't matter, why do you keep to call it stealing? Because stealing is a crime. Going to wal-mart is not. It does matter after all.
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
Do you even read what I write?
People that pirate games can't afford them, due to poor pricing in most of the cases. If pirating was impossible, they still wouldn't have bought them. You can't magically wish more money into existance.
Stop throwing out absolutes. Yes, some people who pirate stuff wouldn't be able to buy if they wanted to. There are others though who simply don't want to pay. As well as people who want a good demo, or are 'making a statement'. So again, stop posting absolutes as to why pirating happens - there are a variety of reasons.
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
How is it wasted? Did a person who would otherwise buy the car, not buy it? Will that car never be sold at all?
I don't quite know how you're drawing these conclusions.
It costs months to years and billions of dollars to design a car. It costs thousands of dollars to build said car. That money is gained back by selling.
When you make a product, you are FAR in the red. You expect sales to bring you back to profit. By choosing to not pay, you are keeping them in the red.
I think developers should try releasing demos that lets you play like 20% of the game. the usual demo doesn't even come close to letting you know how it will play... and if its a good game then people will be enticed to buying after trying it to finish the story
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.
That's the other lame excuse. I tried it didn't like it, won't pay. Or the fact they're too expensive, wtf? Cars a fucking expensive too, but you don't use that as an excuse to steal it do you?
Nor do you demand money back after trying the new doctor pepper flavour?
On December 01 2011 02:30 dementrio wrote: guys you suck so much at analogies
take this then. You have a brain tumor. You need $1,000,000 to heal yourself at your local hospital. Instead you go to Norway where you get health care for free. How much did you steal from your local hospital?
geez
And then the local hospital closes down or starts charging exorbitant fees for simple procedures.
But why did their service get so shitty? You ask.
No. I ask, how much did you steal?
You stole business. The same reason home-run businesses close down because you go to Wal-Mart to get stuff cheaper: it doesn't matter if you're not stealing, you're not paying, so they don't have money. You're putting them in the red via negligence.
AHA! so you're not stealing. PIRACY IS NOT STEALING. If it doesn't matter, why do you keep to call it stealing? Because stealing is a crime. Going to wal-mart is not. It does matter after all.
I was playign poker last night ... i has a flush on the flop ... then the turn came and i lost the pot ... it was stolen from me. Looking at ideals and aiming for them is great ... but they are just hypotheticals to attempt to measure total possible size fo a market ... economics really isnt a science ... to then attempt to say the market is the size you calculated woudl be like saying that all of physics is a realist description of the world. Maybe it is, maybe it isnt ... who knows ... but the world behaves liek the world and physics tries to copy it. velocity is not speed over time and gravity is not an attractive force proportional to mass and inversley proportional to the square of the distance .. however they are our best attempts to understand it ... but dont ever think it IS those equations.
Its like atoms and electrons and visible representations of them ... that is NOT what they are like that is simply the representation of a psecific kind of signal usually the interation of the photon.
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
How is it wasted? Did a person who would otherwise buy the car, not buy it? Will that car never be sold at all?
I don't quite know how you're drawing these conclusions.
It costs months to years and billions of dollars to design a car. It costs thousands of dollars to build said car. That money is gained back by selling.
When you make a product, you are FAR in the red. You expect sales to bring you back to profit. By choosing to not pay, you are keeping them in the red.
So we should buy everything from everyone?
No, but you should pay for products that you use if they're not intended to be free.
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
Do you even read what I write?
People that pirate games can't afford them, due to poor pricing in most of the cases. If pirating was impossible, they still wouldn't have bought them. You can't magically wish more money into existance.
Actually, why am I wasting my time on a troll....
Dude, shut the fuck up. If you really think every pirate is just some poor kid who really likes games but can't afford them, you're deluding yourself. A lot, if not most, are people who have enough income but are too cheap or lazy to buy the game. Pirating isn't saving the starving children in Africa, it's mostly douchebags.
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.
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
How is it wasted? Did a person who would otherwise buy the car, not buy it? Will that car never be sold at all?
I don't quite know how you're drawing these conclusions.
It costs months to years and billions of dollars to design a car. It costs thousands of dollars to build said car. That money is gained back by selling.
When you make a product, you are FAR in the red. You expect sales to bring you back to profit. By choosing to not pay, you are keeping them in the red.
So we should buy everything from everyone?
No, but you should pay for products that you use if they're not intended to be free.
What if I took said product for a test-drive, didn't like it and never used it again? Should I pay full price for the product?
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
Do you even read what I write?
People that pirate games can't afford them, due to poor pricing in most of the cases. If pirating was impossible, they still wouldn't have bought them. You can't magically wish more money into existance.
Stop throwing out absolutes. Yes, some people who pirate stuff wouldn't be able to buy if they wanted to. There are others though who simply don't want to pay. As well as people who want a good demo, or are 'making a statement'. So again, stop posting absolutes as to why pirating happens - there are a variety of reasons.
Come over here and try living for 1 year on our salaries. I promise you, my "absolutes" will seem exactly right to you after that period.
I've repeated the same concern about inadequate pricing a couple of times, but it seems that people are willing to ignore it... np,
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
Do you even read what I write?
People that pirate games can't afford them, due to poor pricing in most of the cases. If pirating was impossible, they still wouldn't have bought them. You can't magically wish more money into existance.
Stop throwing out absolutes. Yes, some people who pirate stuff wouldn't be able to buy if they wanted to. There are others though who simply don't want to pay. As well as people who want a good demo, or are 'making a statement'. So again, stop posting absolutes as to why pirating happens - there are a variety of reasons.
Come over here and try living for 1 year on our salaries. I promise you, my "absolutes" will seem exactly right to you after that period.
This is going to be crass, but I don't give a shit. Your economic situation is not the situation of all pirates. Stop throwing out absolutes.
Going to say it again. Come over here and live on a salary for 1 year. Let's see if you still have the same views about piracy then.
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
Do you even read what I write?
People that pirate games can't afford them, due to poor pricing in most of the cases. If pirating was impossible, they still wouldn't have bought them. You can't magically wish more money into existance.
Actually, why am I wasting my time on a troll....
Dude, shut the fuck up. If you really think every pirate is just some poor kid who really likes games but can't afford them, you're deluding yourself. A lot, if not most, are people who have enough income but are too cheap or lazy to buy the game. Pirating isn't saving the starving children in Africa, it's mostly douchebags.
Hey, you're the one who's willing to call me a thief with zero regard of what the actual situation in some parts of the world is.
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
Do you even read what I write?
People that pirate games can't afford them, due to poor pricing in most of the cases. If pirating was impossible, they still wouldn't have bought them. You can't magically wish more money into existance.
Stop throwing out absolutes. Yes, some people who pirate stuff wouldn't be able to buy if they wanted to. There are others though who simply don't want to pay. As well as people who want a good demo, or are 'making a statement'. So again, stop posting absolutes as to why pirating happens - there are a variety of reasons.
Come over here and try living for 1 year on our salaries. I promise you, my "absolutes" will seem exactly right to you after that period.
This is going to be crass, but I don't give a shit. Your economic situation is not the situation of all pirates. Stop throwing out absolutes.
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
Do you even read what I write?
People that pirate games can't afford them, due to poor pricing in most of the cases. If pirating was impossible, they still wouldn't have bought them. You can't magically wish more money into existance.
Actually, why am I wasting my time on a troll....
Dude, shut the fuck up. If you really think every pirate is just some poor kid who really likes games but can't afford them, you're deluding yourself. A lot, if not most, are people who have enough income but are too cheap or lazy to buy the game. Pirating isn't saving the starving children in Africa, it's mostly douchebags.
the only douche bag here is you. If someone decides to download it instead of paying for it ... that means by defitiion they are not willing to pay for it (or its easier and the games company hasn't found the right delivery mechanism as my time is more precious than money) and so cannot afford it
why not learn some logical interpretation. ps stop being a douche adn shut the fuck up.
Having £40 in your account doesn't mean you can afford to spend £40 ... its not like we all have pocket money from mommy and daddy.
On December 01 2011 02:37 MrTortoise wrote: If the thread is about reducing piracy then ther is a need to establish that it is actually a problem
Here is a question
How is piracy harming you? The game, music and film industries are larger than ever. They are doing great ... sure the big ones that invbested in now out of date technology infrastructure are fucked but really how doe sthat harm YOU?
it doesnt piracy helps you, why the hell are you trying to help the interestes of multi billion dollar companies that want *your* money?
Piracy is great. If everyone was allowed to pirate everything they needed then a lot of inequality would vanish. a $20 game in us maybe cheap but if you goto poland its relatively a lot more (or used to be dunno abotu now)
This is the victimless crime syndrome. Look at the movie The Perfect Score (not a great movie, but good for this example).
If you cheat on your SAT, and get into a good college knowing that you don't belong there, and your attendance didn't prevent someone else from going, would you cheat to get a higher score? You're not hurting anyone, right?
No. It's still wrong. And while you might say that this thread isn't about moral issues and is about DRM and what not, it is a moral issue, because that's all you can talk about as far as this goes.
sorry i dont understand right and wrong
You see they are broken. If you cared about right and wrong you would be solving homelessness and starvation ... you dont. So really you are only using them selectivley.
Ie right and wrong are really luxuaries of the rich. You want me to watch a 2 hour movie just to understand a point you made? Sorry mate but ai really dont care that much - explain it and i will read.
If you cheat on your tests at school yes you will get a good grade .. the problem is when you then try and work for a living you will be fucked. Stop making crappy analogies and argue the point.
Im not saying its a victimless crime, im sayign the software industry is where it is BECAUSE of piracy. why do you think id software are heralded as gods? because EVERYBODY played doom as it was shareware then EVERYONE played doom2 then EVERYONE played quake, then EVERYONE played quake2 because there was a good demo.
Now people dont do that ... so we pirate. They lose for not knowing about market segmentation.
Also i wasnt arguing for a victimless crime ... im sayign the cost of the crime is almost zero to the industry and is zero for you. Moreover why are you trying to use an abstract concept with no reference to reality to argue my point which is very much rooted in reality.
Why dont you want more stuff for free?
There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you don't get that concept, you're a child.
Any job requires money. Lets say you work at a restaurant. You make food. But no one buys your food. You go out of business. That's how money works.
Games don't just fucking show up out of nowhere for no cost. It is wrong to take them without paying. If you can't afford them, don't play games. It's not a necessity in life, you can get by without games, bought or pirated.
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
Do you even read what I write?
People that pirate games can't afford them, due to poor pricing in most of the cases. If pirating was impossible, they still wouldn't have bought them. You can't magically wish more money into existance.
Actually, why am I wasting my time on a troll....
Dude, shut the fuck up. If you really think every pirate is just some poor kid who really likes games but can't afford them, you're deluding yourself. A lot, if not most, are people who have enough income but are too cheap or lazy to buy the game. Pirating isn't saving the starving children in Africa, it's mostly douchebags.
the only douche bag here is you. If someone decides to download it instead of paying for it ... that means by defitiion they are not willing to pay for it (or its easier and the games company hasn't found the right delivery mechanism as my time is more precious than money) and so cannot afford it.
why not learn some logical interpretation. ps stop being a douche adn shut the fuck up.
Having £40 in your account doesn't mean you can afford to spend £40 ... its not liek we all have pocket money from mommy and daddy.
You tell him to use logic when you assume that because someone is not willing to buy something, but are willing to use it for free, that they automatically can't afford it. That's horrible logic.
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.
Actually that's not a fact. Games aren't crap because developers are working on a small budget. Games could be bad because developers are realizing how much money there actually is to be made in just pumping out endless sequels to game franchises every few months.
If you'd noticed the boom in the last 2-3 years in the indie development scene, you'd know that your argument had some holes in it.
I was one of those 4.5 million. A few friends and I heard about the lack of DRM and decided to chip in to buy a game that none of us were interested in before hand. We bought a copy and set it up on all 4 of our computers. Two of us liked it, two of us (including me) did not.
The lack of DRM is why we bought in the first place. If they had a standard DRM system, they would have gotten exactly 0 sales out of my group. Without DRM, they got 1 sale for 2 people who enjoyed it. Even though I didn't like the game, they still got my attention and I will pay attention to future games from them.
If you were an executive, would you prefer to get 50% of the sales you could have gotten, or 0%? Lack of DRM got them 50%.
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'
Moreover this whole developers on a budget thing is really pissing me off. I learnt to program to build games when i was a kid. Developers in the games world are TRET LIKE SHIT AND BURN OUT AFTER 5 YEARS USUALLY. developers have VERY little say in a game and literally take a list of requirements and implement them - the problem is everyone wants to write games so the hours are really long and the pay is low. The result i now spend most of my time working for private companies.
Developers deserve sympathy and money sent to them directly instead of to publishers. When a game is released do you think the developers are on commission? NO they were paid by the hour (and then probably made to work a crap ton of unpaid overtime) - the point is they have already been paid by the time the game is released in the VAST majority of cases.
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
Do you even read what I write?
People that pirate games can't afford them, due to poor pricing in most of the cases. If pirating was impossible, they still wouldn't have bought them. You can't magically wish more money into existance.
Actually, why am I wasting my time on a troll....
Dude, shut the fuck up. If you really think every pirate is just some poor kid who really likes games but can't afford them, you're deluding yourself. A lot, if not most, are people who have enough income but are too cheap or lazy to buy the game. Pirating isn't saving the starving children in Africa, it's mostly douchebags.
the only douche bag here is you. If someone decides to download it instead of paying for it ... that means by defitiion they are not willing to pay for it (or its easier and the games company hasn't found the right delivery mechanism as my time is more precious than money) and so cannot afford it
why not learn some logical interpretation. ps stop being a douche adn shut the fuck up.
Having £40 in your account doesn't mean you can afford to spend £40 ... its not like we all have pocket money from mommy and daddy.
I have a fucking job. I sit at a desk for 8 hours. I get paid, because people buy my product. If they all pirated it (yes, I work for a software company), then I'd be out of a job. See how that works?
You don't NEED games. If you can't afford them, tough shit. The answer isn't "lulz just pirate it", it's actually get a better job or don't worry about superfluous shit like games.
some piracy is defensible. some is not. if you are a working 25+ year old living in a western country, pirating is pretty.. petty. games give an immense amount of entertainment per buck spent compared virtually every other activity we can engage in - for example I've played 85 hours of skyrim already, a game which I paid $60 or so for. but if you're younger than 18, you prolly couldn't afford the game anyway if you didn't pirate it, so just do it - nobody loses anything from your piracy, if anything a good game will get slightly more publicity and thus a miniscule increase in sales numbers.
as for the example from OP; the 4.5 million number is obviously inflated and I'd be surprised if the amount of actual sales lost due to piracy were higher than 500000 (still a high number.) but as for the witcher 2, they've sold more than a million copies - 250k online and at least 750k box packages. now, even with a huge development team, and even with using a small figure like say, $30 as an average cost per game (it's obviously higher), then they've certainly made a lot of money, because I can't imagine production costs exceeding 30 million dollars.. if anything, piracy is a problem for smaller indie games.
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
Do you even read what I write?
People that pirate games can't afford them, due to poor pricing in most of the cases. If pirating was impossible, they still wouldn't have bought them. You can't magically wish more money into existance.
Stop throwing out absolutes. Yes, some people who pirate stuff wouldn't be able to buy if they wanted to. There are others though who simply don't want to pay. As well as people who want a good demo, or are 'making a statement'. So again, stop posting absolutes as to why pirating happens - there are a variety of reasons.
I would say the majority of people who download games illegally either 1. Can't afford them, or 2. Wouldn't buy them in the first place. I have friends with hundreds of GB of illegal games on their hard drives that they just download compulsively, because they can, same with music/movies. They never watch the movies, listen to the music, or play the games most of the time. Pirating games and getting them to work properly can be a pain in the butt if you actually spend a lot of time with the game(and depending on the game). Obviously this is just my experience, but people seeing "millions of illegal downloads" and them thinking that is millions in lost sales are delusional. And stupid, considering that an illegal download from someone that would never be able to buy it/just won't buy it in the first place doesn't affect them in the slightest other than free publicity.
Everybody who complains about the developers ripping us off and DRM as causes of pirating are talking out of their ass tbh. I was born in 1987, at the border of the internet generation. My family got connected to the internet when I was 12, a slow 56k modem where it took 20 minutes to download a 2 MB Snes rom, but pirating didn't really hit it big until 2001, when I was 14. This was back when more and more ppl started getting broadband internet, which increased the speed ten-fold. Suddenly we had access to everything for free and we started downloading games and music regularly. I remember how pirating changed the outlook that me and my friends had on media, including music, games and movies.
You who were born in 88/89 or the 90's have not seen the other side, unless you were major geeks at a really early age, so you don't really have a clue about what your outlook on games would have been if the internet hadn't existed. Even if you can remember "the offline days", you didn't really experience it fully, like the ppl who were born around 85 or earlier did.
In 2001 we were pirating for 1 reason only, because we could. There was no such thing as DRM and we didn't start pirating because we felt cheated by the companies. The ppl who say things like that are contradicting themselves. If you really think a game is terrible you wouldn't even be playing it, no matter if it's free or not. Just downloading a game shows that you're atleast interested in it, and many of you would have bought or rented the game if things were differently.
Why waste money on renting a movie, when you could just download it and spend the money on snacks instead?
I can understand both sides. I agree that the media industries are overestimating their losses, and that they haven't been fighting pirating in the most ideal way, but you're pretty much asking them to walk on water.
Games don't just fucking show up out of nowhere for no cost. It is wrong to take them without paying. If you can't afford them, don't play games. It's not a necessity in life, you can get by without games, bought or pirated.
I'm poor. I can't afford any games. I pirate them. Developer lost nothing. I gained. The world just gained happiness without losing any. Something is only wrong when someone else gets hurt. A victimless crime cannot be wrong.
note: I don't actually do this as I am able to buy games
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.
So you really think that sales revenue is the only way businesses grow? What about marketing? What about free trials?
Are those things meaningless? What value do you put on the 2 million people who downloaded Torchlight illegally in China? Do you view them all as thieves? Or do you recognize that that's 2 million potential customers in an untapped market?
some piracy is defensible. some is not. if you are a working 25+ year old living in a western country, pirating is pretty.. petty. games give an immense amount of entertainment per buck spent compared virtually every other activity we can engage in - for example I've played 85 hours of skyrim already, a game which I paid $60 or so for. but if you're younger than 18, you prolly couldn't afford the game anyway if you didn't pirate it, so just do it - nobody loses anything from your piracy, if anything a good game will get slightly more publicity and thus a miniscule increase in sales numbers.
as for the example from OP; the 4.5 million number is obviously inflated and I'd be surprised if the amount of actual sales lost due to piracy were higher than 500000 (still a high number.) but as for the witcher 2, they've sold more than a million copies - 250k online and at least 750k box packages. now, even with a huge development team, and even with using a small figure like say, $30 as an average cost per game (it's obviously higher), then they've certainly made a lot of money, because I can't imagine production costs exceeding 30 million dollars..
if anything, piracy is a problem for smaller indie games.
Which I always buy regardless for that exact reason. Supreme Ruler Cold War sucks and doesn't fix the problems of Supreme Ruler 2020 but I still bought it (granted- while it was on steam sale last weekend) because there is no other strategy game like it (Aside from Hearts of Iron, by the same publisher).
Granted this isn't an indie company but more of a small one. Still I agree with your point completely.
Piracy is in fact like stealing. It's just that you're stealing intellectual property. But that doesn't really matter, since society has evolved in a way that piracy is far, far more acceptable than, let's say, shoplifting.
I think there are a few types of pirates:
1) People who just can't afford the games. Mostly in the developing world (like here, a fraction of US GDP and games are actually MORE expensive).
Money lost for companies: none, if they couldn't pirate they just wouldn't play games, or just play free ones.
2)Reasonable pirates: they might pirate to test a game before they decide to buy it, they may buy some of the games but can't afford all of them so they pirate a few others. They may dislike DRM or some other sheannigans by some company and find it silly that a pirated copy is better than the one they could pay for.
Money lost: some. Things like DRM probably just pushes them more towards piracy.
3) Asshole pirates: they can afford games, but they're just cheap bastards who just want free stuff.
Money lost: lots. Effective measures against piracy may make them actually buy the games.
In any case, I think gaming companies have every right to try and defend their property, but from a business standpoint... I just think the best way to beat piracy is just to make good games, at decent prices and make it easy and convenient for gamers to buy them.
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
Do you even read what I write?
People that pirate games can't afford them, due to poor pricing in most of the cases. If pirating was impossible, they still wouldn't have bought them. You can't magically wish more money into existance.
Stop throwing out absolutes. Yes, some people who pirate stuff wouldn't be able to buy if they wanted to. There are others though who simply don't want to pay. As well as people who want a good demo, or are 'making a statement'. So again, stop posting absolutes as to why pirating happens - there are a variety of reasons.
I would say the majority of people who download games illegally either 1. Can't afford them, or 2. Wouldn't buy them in the first place. I have friends with hundreds of GB of illegal games on their hard drives that they just download compulsively, because they can, same with music/movies. They never watch the movies, listen to the music, or play the games most of the time. Pirating games and getting them to work properly can be a pain in the butt if you actually spend a lot of time with the game(and depending on the game). Obviously this is just my experience, but people seeing "millions of illegal downloads" and them thinking that is millions in lost sales are delusional. And stupid, considering that an illegal download from someone that would never be able to buy it/just won't buy it in the first place doesn't affect them in the slightest other than free publicity.
I don't disagree. A friend of mine has hundreds of gigs of songs on his computer. He could have never afforded to buy all of it. However, the problem is that you aren't paying for any of it. Normally, you might consume 1/5 of what you pirate(pulled out of my ass, don't take seriously) so you'd be contributing to some people. By pirating it all you're contributing to no one.
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
Do you even read what I write?
People that pirate games can't afford them, due to poor pricing in most of the cases. If pirating was impossible, they still wouldn't have bought them. You can't magically wish more money into existance.
Actually, why am I wasting my time on a troll....
Dude, shut the fuck up. If you really think every pirate is just some poor kid who really likes games but can't afford them, you're deluding yourself. A lot, if not most, are people who have enough income but are too cheap or lazy to buy the game. Pirating isn't saving the starving children in Africa, it's mostly douchebags.
the only douche bag here is you. If someone decides to download it instead of paying for it ... that means by defitiion they are not willing to pay for it (or its easier and the games company hasn't found the right delivery mechanism as my time is more precious than money) and so cannot afford it
why not learn some logical interpretation. ps stop being a douche adn shut the fuck up.
Having £40 in your account doesn't mean you can afford to spend £40 ... its not like we all have pocket money from mommy and daddy.
I have a fucking job. I sit at a desk for 8 hours. I get paid, because people buy my product. If they all pirated it (yes, I work for a software company), then I'd be out of a job. See how that works?
You don't NEED games. If you can't afford them, tough shit. The answer isn't "lulz just pirate it", it's actually get a better job or don't worry about superfluous shit like games.
WAAAAA i would feel sorry for you but you come over as a dick who needs to get a new job. Yes i do see how that works .. do you understand marketing and market segmentation? I think your just an angry mofo that likes beating up on people.
I am a developer also btw so pls put away the violin. If your 8 hours of work are so much hard work find a job you enjoy and stop using it as some wierd cathartic whinging. I worked 10 hours today tryign to merge some code accross 2 projects, tedious as fook but im not complaining because i have a decent job - and i do that much time everyday.
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?
Games don't just fucking show up out of nowhere for no cost. It is wrong to take them without paying. If you can't afford them, don't play games. It's not a necessity in life, you can get by without games, bought or pirated.
I'm poor. I can't afford any games. I pirate them. Developer lost nothing. I gained. The world just gained happiness without losing any. Something is only wrong when someone else gets hurt. A victimless crime cannot be wrong.
note: I don't actually do this as I am able to buy games
If you're poor, you don't need to be spending your time playing games. That's cold and mean, but it's the truth. If you are destitute and you spend 20+ hours a week playing pirated games instead of trying to make more out of your life, then it's wasted.
On December 01 2011 03:06 Liquid`Drone wrote: some piracy is defensible. some is not. if you are a working 25+ year old living in a western country, pirating is pretty.. petty. games give an immense amount of entertainment per buck spent compared virtually every other activity we can engage in - for example I've played 85 hours of skyrim already, a game which I paid $60 or so for. but if you're younger than 18, you prolly couldn't afford the game anyway if you didn't pirate it, so just do it - nobody loses anything from your piracy, if anything a good game will get slightly more publicity and thus a miniscule increase in sales numbers.
as for the example from OP; the 4.5 million number is obviously inflated and I'd be surprised if the amount of actual sales lost due to piracy were higher than 500000 (still a high number.) but as for the witcher 2, they've sold more than a million copies - 250k online and at least 750k box packages. now, even with a huge development team, and even with using a small figure like say, $30 as an average cost per game (it's obviously higher), then they've certainly made a lot of money, because I can't imagine production costs exceeding 30 million dollars.. if anything, piracy is a problem for smaller indie games.
Optimus' CEO stated that CDPR hit 100% ROI at something like 600k copies (I don't remember the exact number). Anything beyond that is profit. Keep in mind that any digital copy bought via GOG.com was supporting the developer and the developer only (you'd be surprised how big of a percent distributors snatch, steam included). If anything, the fact the game sold over 1 million copies at this stage just proves how good service goes a long way. CDPR's take on piracy is commendable and I can only hope GOG.com will become a big player in digital distribution over the next couple of years.
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
Do you even read what I write?
People that pirate games can't afford them, due to poor pricing in most of the cases. If pirating was impossible, they still wouldn't have bought them. You can't magically wish more money into existance.
Actually, why am I wasting my time on a troll....
Dude, shut the fuck up. If you really think every pirate is just some poor kid who really likes games but can't afford them, you're deluding yourself. A lot, if not most, are people who have enough income but are too cheap or lazy to buy the game. Pirating isn't saving the starving children in Africa, it's mostly douchebags.
the only douche bag here is you. If someone decides to download it instead of paying for it ... that means by defitiion they are not willing to pay for it (or its easier and the games company hasn't found the right delivery mechanism as my time is more precious than money) and so cannot afford it.
why not learn some logical interpretation. ps stop being a douche adn shut the fuck up.
Having £40 in your account doesn't mean you can afford to spend £40 ... its not liek we all have pocket money from mommy and daddy.
You tell him to use logic when you assume that because someone is not willing to buy something, but are willing to use it for free, that they automatically can't afford it. That's horrible logic.
Yes, if someone is not willing to pay THAT price for something ... they cannot afford it ... being able to afford something is (as i said) not related to how muich you have in the bank.
Eg I want to goto oslo for instance ... I have a few grand but tickets are 700 ... i decide not to go because that is more than i expected and i cant afford a flight that is that expensive. The amount i own is irrelevant if i decide that the price is not right - i ahve decided that i cannot afford it.
You say logic, what you ahve failed to do is understand that words can be used in many many ways and instead focussed on one way so missed the point.
Wow I didnt check where you are from but if its an english speaking country you really suck. If not then i fully appreciate the ambiguity, i was just making a point against an angry mofo.
Even though I have a Steam account with games worth between 400-500€, I have pirated some games, because I didn't know how much it was worth. Honestly, I pirated SC2. My friend got it and recommended it, but I didn't know if it was good (I didn't have any RTS background, except for AoE2 at a young age). After I played the first few Missions I bought it immediately, I don't know if I had ever bought it if I didn't had this opportunity (The Starter Pack wasn't out yet, this was 3 months after release). I am a student with no great source of income, apart of indie games, I buy maybe 5-6 a year. I am not defending piracy, I'm only saying that 5 Million copies pirated, doesn't mean 5 Million costumers where lost.
On December 01 2011 02:22 HereAndNow wrote: [quote] That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
Do you even read what I write?
People that pirate games can't afford them, due to poor pricing in most of the cases. If pirating was impossible, they still wouldn't have bought them. You can't magically wish more money into existance.
Actually, why am I wasting my time on a troll....
Dude, shut the fuck up. If you really think every pirate is just some poor kid who really likes games but can't afford them, you're deluding yourself. A lot, if not most, are people who have enough income but are too cheap or lazy to buy the game. Pirating isn't saving the starving children in Africa, it's mostly douchebags.
the only douche bag here is you. If someone decides to download it instead of paying for it ... that means by defitiion they are not willing to pay for it (or its easier and the games company hasn't found the right delivery mechanism as my time is more precious than money) and so cannot afford it
why not learn some logical interpretation. ps stop being a douche adn shut the fuck up.
Having £40 in your account doesn't mean you can afford to spend £40 ... its not like we all have pocket money from mommy and daddy.
I have a fucking job. I sit at a desk for 8 hours. I get paid, because people buy my product. If they all pirated it (yes, I work for a software company), then I'd be out of a job. See how that works?
You don't NEED games. If you can't afford them, tough shit. The answer isn't "lulz just pirate it", it's actually get a better job or don't worry about superfluous shit like games.
WAAAAA i would feel sorry for you but you come over as a dick who needs to get a new job. Yes i do see how that works .. do you understand marketing and market segmentation? I think your just an angry mofo that likes beating up on people.
I am a developer also btw so pls put away the violin. If your 8 hours of work are so much hard work find a job you enjoy and stop using it as some wierd cathartic whinging. I worked 10 hours today tryign to merge some code accross 2 projects, tedious as fook but im not complaining because i have a decent job - and i do that much time everyday.
It's not hard. I like my job. And, it gives me enough money to live comfortably and buy games. You're the only one attacking the person and not the problem. I was responding to: "its not like we all have pocket money from mommy and daddy".
The point is, you should play games if you can afford them. I'm sorry if you can't, but that doesn't rationalize pirating them. Games are not necessary for your life to go on. Do something else with your time instead of stealing.
On November 30 2011 22:24 SonicTitan wrote: Minecraft has been downloaded illegally over twelve million times. The creator wants less DRM, not more. There are lessons to be learned here.
this this this 1k times Your not going to download a game cuz you are "bad" your going to download it cuz you are poor, if a game is worth buying and you have the money + its a developer that is worth supporting ( not one that launches 1k $ worth DLC's...etc ) then 99% of the ppl will just buy it. I can bet you anything that white ra started playing bw 13 years ago on a pirate version and then only got the original when he realized he liked it, not every country has an avg income of 5k per person and free time to protest about the rich ppl not giving them money and thus some countries ( mine would be a good example ) need piracy not be ripped off. Want to know games that were highly rated by all the "honest" reviewers and sold for a decent ( quite high but affordable ) price that i and many other ppl would have buyed ? EE 3, Dragon age 2 , C&C 4 ring a bell ? Games with high pirces that were released relatively recently and were a complete scam with a almost non improved engine and dumbed down gameplay that were quite honestly not worth getting half way trough yet CC 3 EE1 ( and 2 at some extent ) and DAO DAA were fucking great games and most ppl would buy ( and many buyed ) them blindly. When developers actually decide to NEVER release a shitty game ever ( or in the case they do patch it swiftly, for free and apologies to the community ) and to break from the corporations they are now being "owned" by ( aka EA Activision ) then i would see no excuse for pirating. Pirating a good game from X developer is bad ... i agree Pirating a game that could be good or could be bad ( but your not allowed to release a negative review so... yeah ) from EA.... that does not seem so evil at all, it seems rather rational to some which do not have enough money to say 50-150$ is something they can lose and be fine with it. Good games are gonna suffer but in the end good games can get most of the money they deserve and out of the pirate that pirated TW2 i can grant you that 90% ethe buyed the game or wouldn't have buyed it any way and out of the ppl that pirate some of the games like the one listed above they never touched them again and the developers didn't got the money... and rightfully so.
On December 01 2011 02:22 HereAndNow wrote: [quote] That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
Do you even read what I write?
People that pirate games can't afford them, due to poor pricing in most of the cases. If pirating was impossible, they still wouldn't have bought them. You can't magically wish more money into existance.
Actually, why am I wasting my time on a troll....
Dude, shut the fuck up. If you really think every pirate is just some poor kid who really likes games but can't afford them, you're deluding yourself. A lot, if not most, are people who have enough income but are too cheap or lazy to buy the game. Pirating isn't saving the starving children in Africa, it's mostly douchebags.
the only douche bag here is you. If someone decides to download it instead of paying for it ... that means by defitiion they are not willing to pay for it (or its easier and the games company hasn't found the right delivery mechanism as my time is more precious than money) and so cannot afford it.
why not learn some logical interpretation. ps stop being a douche adn shut the fuck up.
Having £40 in your account doesn't mean you can afford to spend £40 ... its not liek we all have pocket money from mommy and daddy.
You tell him to use logic when you assume that because someone is not willing to buy something, but are willing to use it for free, that they automatically can't afford it. That's horrible logic.
Yes, if someone is not willing to pay for something ... they cannot afford it ... being able to afford something is (as i said) not related to how muich you have in the bank.
Eg I want to goto oslo for instance ... I have a few grand but tickets are 700 ... i decide not to go because that is more than i expected and i cant afford a flight that is that expensive. The amount i own is irrelevant if i decide that the price is not right - i ahve decided that i cannot afford it.
No, just being unwilling to pay for something doesn't mean you can't afford it. Being able to afford something and being willing to purchase it are two different things. And given the situation you described, you could afford that plane tickets, you decided that they weren't worth it. Now if you had $3,000 in the bank, but owed $2,500 to someone, and tickets cost $700, then you can't afford it.
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
Do you even read what I write?
People that pirate games can't afford them, due to poor pricing in most of the cases. If pirating was impossible, they still wouldn't have bought them. You can't magically wish more money into existance.
Stop throwing out absolutes. Yes, some people who pirate stuff wouldn't be able to buy if they wanted to. There are others though who simply don't want to pay. As well as people who want a good demo, or are 'making a statement'. So again, stop posting absolutes as to why pirating happens - there are a variety of reasons.
I would say the majority of people who download games illegally either 1. Can't afford them, or 2. Wouldn't buy them in the first place. I have friends with hundreds of GB of illegal games on their hard drives that they just download compulsively, because they can, same with music/movies. They never watch the movies, listen to the music, or play the games most of the time. Pirating games and getting them to work properly can be a pain in the butt if you actually spend a lot of time with the game(and depending on the game). Obviously this is just my experience, but people seeing "millions of illegal downloads" and them thinking that is millions in lost sales are delusional. And stupid, considering that an illegal download from someone that would never be able to buy it/just won't buy it in the first place doesn't affect them in the slightest other than free publicity.
I don't disagree. A friend of mine has hundreds of gigs of songs on his computer. He could have never afforded to buy all of it. However, the problem is that you aren't paying for any of it. Normally, you might consume 1/5 of what you pirate(pulled out of my ass, don't take seriously) so you'd be contributing to some people. By pirating it all you're contributing to no one.
hasn't there been some research showing that people who pirate music also purchase more music though?
Most piracy stats are bogus at best because of how they're collected and used, secondly any DRM hurts paying customers more than it ever hurts pirates. Implementing more DRM just pleases shareholders who think their investements are being protected when they really arent, the best course of action is to simply make the best game possible, market it well and hope for the best. Piracy isnt really worth attacking right now and it seems evident DRM doesnt matter much.
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.
On December 01 2011 02:22 HereAndNow wrote: [quote] That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
Do you even read what I write?
People that pirate games can't afford them, due to poor pricing in most of the cases. If pirating was impossible, they still wouldn't have bought them. You can't magically wish more money into existance.
Stop throwing out absolutes. Yes, some people who pirate stuff wouldn't be able to buy if they wanted to. There are others though who simply don't want to pay. As well as people who want a good demo, or are 'making a statement'. So again, stop posting absolutes as to why pirating happens - there are a variety of reasons.
I would say the majority of people who download games illegally either 1. Can't afford them, or 2. Wouldn't buy them in the first place. I have friends with hundreds of GB of illegal games on their hard drives that they just download compulsively, because they can, same with music/movies. They never watch the movies, listen to the music, or play the games most of the time. Pirating games and getting them to work properly can be a pain in the butt if you actually spend a lot of time with the game(and depending on the game). Obviously this is just my experience, but people seeing "millions of illegal downloads" and them thinking that is millions in lost sales are delusional. And stupid, considering that an illegal download from someone that would never be able to buy it/just won't buy it in the first place doesn't affect them in the slightest other than free publicity.
I don't disagree. A friend of mine has hundreds of gigs of songs on his computer. He could have never afforded to buy all of it. However, the problem is that you aren't paying for any of it. Normally, you might consume 1/5 of what you pirate(pulled out of my ass, don't take seriously) so you'd be contributing to some people. By pirating it all you're contributing to no one.
hasn't there been some research showing that people who pirate music also purchase more music though?
I haven't seen that research, but I know my friend hasn't bought a CD in at least 8-10 years.
I mean I can see this being good with pirated multiplayer games, but they really don't get succesffully pirated that often, since you need to be connected to some master server in order to play it successfully. Most of the games that are pirated are those single player ones, where I can't see any sort of player vs player griefing to work.
Really great idea though, I'd join in. And as Gabe Newell said, if you make the game easily available, then people will be less inclined to pirate it, or something like that.
Wasn't there a study recently that showed people who pirate games were considerably more likely to buy said games than people who didn't?
Piracy is not the problem. 1 illegal download does not equal 1 unsold copy.
The problems are cost (during hard economic times) and lack of GOOD demos until well after release. I've downloaded a couple of games which I played a little of and didn't like. Yet someone will add those games to statistics and cry foul, saying those downloads mean 1 more unsold game.
Incidentally I've also downloaded portal 2 and amnesia: the dark descent (thanks day9!), loved them and bought them to support their developers.
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.
Just wrong...
Most of the bad games ARE the ones with the biggest budgets. A lot of Indie games are much "better" games than the ones that take an absolute shit load of money to fund as well as leaving another 300+ million for advertising.
I pirate games although I'd barely call it that any more. Most recent games in my opinion are just bad and not worth my money. I pirated Skyrim because how else am I supposed to know this game is insanely shallow with a slew of "OMG GREAT GAME 90+!" "reviews"? Am I supposed to give them my money so I can take a wildshot and see if I enjoy the game or not? If I do, cool. If I don't then I might have a bitch of a time trying to return or sell a PC game.
There are very few developers that I have faith in...well, not even that. Any developer can make a shit game or completely ruin a series for me like Bioware. I don't know how old you are or if you want to call me a nostalgia faggot but I honestly think that most modern games just don't have that much creativity to them or a really good foundation of actual gameplay and game mechanics.
Besides, pirating is easy. You can talk about all the arguments for and against but the truest one is, you're getting something for free. Doesn't matter what it is, getting something for free is always good. Only game I've pirated in months was Baldur's Gate 1 + 2 thanks to how shallow Skyrim is.
Piracy is a difficult topic. I dont think there is any way to stop it completely. I think the problem is 60$/€ is a pretty big investment for teens 13-18 (which should be the biggest part of the gaming community). You invest 60$/€ in something you don´t even know if its worth it? I think one way to decrease piracy could be putting out the full game to everyone for free for lets say 3 days. So you can test it see how it is and than decide if you really want it. I think a lot more games would be sold because in those 3 Days they get interested and want to see how the game goes on. But realizing such a system would probably be pretty tough. But who knows, maybe someday...
On December 01 2011 03:21 Liquid`Drone wrote: hasn't there been some research showing that people who pirate music also purchase more music though?
Some, maybe 50% of people.
I've pirated some songs, usually when I hear a song on the radio I like I'll usually just download it. Then, when I hear it on my iPod, I'll consider looking out for newer songs or other good songs by the artist - which I usually buy. (Lady Gaga is a good example, downloaded Bad Romance because it was catchy, now I own all her albums).
Fighting piracy is pointless as long as the game is running 100% on the local gaming system (PC or console does not really matter, console may be more difficult, but difficult free pariating is prefered to easy and expensive buying). All solutions to prevent pariating that are known today involve using the net in someform like : - Streaming games (OnLive) -Having part of the game on servers and only allowing playability if offline and online part come together (Starcraft 2 is a good example for that, the starcraft 2 beta client was up in the web very early but it took nearly a year to produce the first non official server you can use for multiplayer because the logic that is used to setup and mantain a multiplayer game is not part of the starcraft 2 binaris we have on our PC's. Sadly that means that no lan mode is something that makes piracy very difficult (if you plan on enjoying the multiplayer))
Piracy is something that is bad for the games industry no Questions. But it's really not a big deal if you look at the big picture (in single cases it has the power to kill small developers). Overall developing games gets cheaper and easier as the years go by. There are so many tools that make ones live easier and developing graphic in a quality that is exceptable is indefinitely easier than 10 years ago. This trend will go on as time progresses, because we will "soon" hit two major lines that will stop the race for more performance (most people will have noticed that performance in the last 5 years wasn't half as bad as it was the 5 years before that) : The first line is what we can perceive with our human eye. The second and more important one is what we want in terms of "beauty". I during this november i often heard the term "Better than reality from a graphic standpoint" and once you're there racing father is kind of pointless.
Tldr : Piracy can be prevented if the net grows fast enough around the world, but if it's not it really does not matter that much.
On December 01 2011 03:07 ninini wrote: Everybody who complains about the developers ripping us off and DRM as causes of pirating are talking out of their ass tbh. I was born in 1987, at the border of the internet generation. My family got connected to the internet when I was 12, a slow 56k modem where it took 20 minutes to download a 2 MB Snes rom, but pirating didn't really hit it big until 2001, when I was 14. This was back when more and more ppl started getting broadband internet, which increased the speed ten-fold. Suddenly we had access to everything for free and we started downloading games and music regularly. I remember how pirating changed the outlook that me and my friends had on media, including music, games and movies.
You who were born in 88/89 or the 90's have not seen the other side, unless you were major geeks at a really early age, so you don't really have a clue about what your outlook on games would have been if the internet hadn't existed. Even if you can remember "the offline days", you didn't really experience it fully, like the ppl who were born around 85 or earlier did.
In 2001 we were pirating for 1 reason only, because we could. There was no such thing as DRM and we didn't start pirating because we felt cheated by the companies. The ppl who say things like that are contradicting themselves. If you really think a game is terrible you wouldn't even be playing it, no matter if it's free or not. Just downloading a game shows that you're atleast interested in it, and many of you would have bought or rented the game if things were differently.
Why waste money on renting a movie, when you could just download it and spend the money on snacks instead?
I can understand both sides. I agree that the media industries are overestimating their losses, and that they haven't been fighting pirating in the most ideal way, but you're pretty much asking them to walk on water.
Look, I was born in 1986. But not in Sweden. When you were 14, the minimum wage in my country was 40 Euro. There's no fucking way that people will be able to afford a game that costs 60 Euro. Nevermind actually having a computer to play it on. Even if a family could afford to save up for a computer, pirating the software was a given, since it'd be impossible to buy more than one game per year or so.
Now, our country is getting wealthier to the point where a lot of people can afford computers. But, we hit the software price snag again. Like I've said so many times already, a person from Finland was able to buy SC2 at release for 30 Euro. I had to pay twice the amount. He probably makes ten times the amount of money that I do. This is inadequate pricing, and it drives most of the piracy in my country.
Now, as far as being interested in the game if you download it - that's true. So let's say I download the newest installment in the Need for Speed series, then play it for 20 minutes and decide that it's crap. Then I uninstall it and I never bother with it again. True, I was interested in the game to begin with, but that hardly justifies me paying a full price for that product. In fact, I'd be pretty pissed if I did just that.
So, who's in the wrong here? I think that you'll be able to agree with me - paying full price for trying out something isn't justified. Hell, some car dealerships offer you a test ride in their cars, do they not? However, I just pirated the game so now I'm a criminal according to law. How am I supposed to take that law seriously? Even if my salary gets on an adequate level in the future... I've still lived with this my whole life. And then I'm going to raise kids. This of course, will lead to problems, but people with no understanding of the situation are "rectifying" it by adding more and more DRM. So I don't see this resolving in a reasonable manner during this generation, or the next one, or the one after that.
On November 30 2011 22:24 Interloper wrote: Many people who pirate do so because they want to try a game out. If they enjoy the game, they will buy it too support the developer. 4,5 million downloads becomes a useless figure since you can not in any way know how many of those 4,5 million purchased the game afterwards. I feel that piracy is a good way to get rid of shitty developers how make crappy games only for the sake of making money (Well all developers want to make money ofc, but i hope you get my point). Good developers get the money they need and then some. Piracy will not be the end of gaming.
...thats fucking bullshit lol.
Piracy will eventually change the video game scene alot though. Developers are accustomed to making shitloads of money, they will do something, like the OP said.
DLC, subscribe games, etc, are already becoming way more common
Cute how you say everything in my post is "fucking bullshit lol" and give no reason why. You know how to discuss things i see. Thumbs up too you! (Y)
On December 01 2011 03:25 bLooD. wrote: Piracy is a difficult topic. I dont think there is any way to stop it completely. I think the problem is 60$/€ is a pretty big investment for teens 13-18 (which should be the biggest part of the gaming community). You invest 60$/€ in something you don´t even know if its worth it? I think one way to decrease piracy could be putting out the full game to everyone for free for lets say 3 days. So you can test it see how it is and than decide if you really want it. I think a lot more games would be sold because in those 3 Days they get interested and want to see how the game goes on. But realizing such a system would probably be pretty tough. But who knows, maybe someday...
I agree with this.
There are many ways in which game developers encourage people to pirate. By not allowing people a proper demo or way to try out a product, I think it's only natural that people would be skeptical about paying upfront when there are so many poorly made games out there. Another problem is recommended system specs that can barely play the game. And as Nikon has brought up, pricing schemes that pretty much force poorer countries to pirate.
There will always be people out there who will take what they can if it's 'free' and there's little chance of repercussions. And I don't think you will ever be able to stop piracy even with always online DRM like Ubisoft and others have tried. I don't think combating pirates directly will ever work. Developers need to encourage users to buy legitimately by offering a better service then can be gained through pirating. Steam has done a wonderful job of this.
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.
I bought The Witcher 2 and played through it twice. But apart from that, I wanna mention that companies thinking they can actually fight and "defeat" piracy are not being realistic. I totally share the opinion of Iwinski not only because I hate Ubisoft for making me go through a lot of anger because of their controlling system being not compatible with my shitty internet connection but also because I think that there will always be somone more clever than the guys in the companies making their "ultra-safe systems" and that will lead to gamers forever being able to play what they want without paying. The way that can be solved is getting the gamers to the right mentality. And if companies are making them suffer for BUYING the game they are basically committing suicide in a manner of speaking. And if you aren't convinced of my reasoning think of it that way: You arent stealing every car that seems kinda nice to you are you?
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.
Piracy is a civic duty. Everything I pirate I would not buy anyway (like insignificant movies, music, TV shows, or crappy games) If that bankrupts the music, film or game industry, and put all these people out of job, all the better, I don't care. Good artists will survive. I still buy the 1% good games I want to play, I go to the cinema to see the good movies, and by a very small amount of cds/ go to concerts.
The old-school Ambrosia Studies space simulator "Escape Velocity" had a similar DRM system - if you pirated the game, "Captain Hector" the invincible space pirate would hunt you down and kill you. Repeatedly and without mercy. Until you quit.
Good times...
EDIT - Also, piracy of digital property is not acceptable. Pirates - you are ruining the production of digital media for everyone. Just stop. Man up and pay for stuff.
On December 01 2011 03:34 jinorazi wrote: hmm, next step in pc gaming: cloud gaming?
needing to authenticate and to load partial content from an online source.
i think that would prevent pirating, or at least make it very difficult...kinda like trying to play pirated sc2 online.
who doesn't have internet these days?
as for those that want to try it out....all pc games should just release demos.
Bandwidth caps, slow internet speeds and issues with good broadband penetration in bigger countries is a huge issue. Also being dependent on outside servers just to play a single player game isn't a very good feeling (diablo 3 singleplayer for example).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Horrible analogy. You didn't take anything that the pancake house produced, and you likely payed for the ingredients that went into the pancake.
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.
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.
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.
I don't agree with that point at all. I think if you weren't capable of paying for warhammer 40k and this stopped you from enjoying warhammer 40k, then your life became worse as a consequence of it. if there had been a way for you to aquire the items necessary to play it without anyone losing out on sales or items of their own, then your life would have been more enjoyable. a net gain for yourself, a net 0 for everyone else, thus a net gain for society.
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.
You're being obtuse. You do not have all the parts for a game. You have the hardware to run it on. There is a distinct difference, and if you don't know that, you're completely uneducated when it comes to technology.
Making your own pancake is the analogy for making your own game. Let's say SC2 just came out. You don't want to buy it. So you sit in front of your computer, and you make a RTS with three races that plays similarly to SC2. That's not piracy. Pirating SC2 is piracy. The former means nothing to Blizzard unless you infringe copyright by naming everything the same. The latter is punishable.
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.
You aren't paying for a disc, you're paying for the experience on that disc and the extensive manpower/thought that went into it's creation. $30-$50 for hours upon hours of entertainment is not an expensive hobby. The issue is that people who wouldn't normally be able to afford now have the alternative of reaping the benefits without shelling out a single cent. Feeling entitled to make things fit one's price range at the expense of others is ethically wrong.
Numbers of times pirated means literally nothing. Assuming people pirating would normally buy it is straight up wrong, and assuming pirates won't buy it later is wrong as well.
Plus, majority of pirates probably pirate everything under the sun and never really do anything with it.
Piracy is combated by well thought out pricing models, and high quality game-play content. Not by retarded DRM that seems to hurt actual customers more than pirates. (pirates just straight up bypass any DRM anyway)
Valve/steam has shown fairly well that better prices and an easy way to get the product means more profit anyway.
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.
You are paying the pancake house for the act of making a pancake. The use of their pancake making service. Not only their recipe. Even with it, your pancake could be worse, and you would choose to go to the pancake house and buy one. The analogy would only be perfect if how to make a game was common knowledge, all the steps and resources used by the game making company avaible to you, and you could choose to make the game yourself. But you are not a good game maker, or you don't have the time to make a game. Then you have to go somewhere and buy the game done. It really is a silly analogy, do you really believe game makers shouldn't be paid for actually creating a game?
The problem is, no one here in this thread as a gamer, or working as a games developer knows enough of the picture to form adequate and correct conclusions on it. No one.
I think DRM is more of a prevention of after-market re-sale, or second-hand sales, than of copy-protection, IMO. If you think about it, buying a second hand game is money that 'should' have gone to the developer but doesn't, because the person making the purchase is obviously willing to spend some money on the product. However there isn't really any way of ascertaining that from illegal downloads.
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.
You aren't paying for a disc, you're paying for the experience on that disc. $30-$50 for hours upon hours of entertainment is not an expensive hobby. The issue is that people who wouldn't normally be able to afford now have the alternative of reaping the benefits without shelling out a single cent. Feeling entitled to make things fit one's price range at the expense of others is ethically wrong.
Firms price on the margin. The marginal cost of an additional copy of a game is $0 (or very near zero). For a firm to charge $50 for a product that has near zero marginal cost of production is absolutely ludicrous.
I'm aware video games cost million to develop, but those are fixed costs, they do not factor into a rational or practical pricing model.
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.
To the question "how many of those 5 people would have bought the game?" I already raised that exact point in my larger, initial post.
To your second point, I would submit that spreading the word can hurt just as much. Because their friends won't likely be saying "Wow, cool game, I'm going to get Mom to buy it next week." But rather would ask "Cool, you said you got it for free? How?!" Spreading the word is a double-edged sword. Again, for every person that's motivated to go purchase the game after playing a friend's illegal copy, there are probably many more (particularly kids) that will just ask their friend how to get it for free and do that instead.
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.
I don't agree with that point at all. I think if you weren't capable of paying for warhammer 40k and this stopped you from enjoying warhammer 40k, then your life became worse as a consequence of it. if there had been a way for you to aquire the items necessary to play it without anyone losing out on sales or items of their own, then your life would have been more enjoyable. a net gain for yourself, a net 0 for everyone else, thus a net gain for society.
I wouldn't have done it if I could have, though. Just because we now have a way to commit crimes without directly hurting anyone doesn't mean it's ok to commit them. A victimless crime is still a crime.
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.
You aren't paying for a disc, you're paying for the experience on that disc. $30-$50 for hours upon hours of entertainment is not an expensive hobby. The issue is that people who wouldn't normally be able to afford now have the alternative of reaping the benefits without shelling out a single cent. Feeling entitled to make things fit one's price range at the expense of others is ethically wrong.
Firms price on the margin. The marginal cost of an additional copy of a game is $0 (or very near zero). For a firm to charge $50 for a product that has near zero marginal cost of production is absolutely ludicrous.
I'm aware video games cost million to develop, but those are fixed costs, they do not factor into a rational or practical pricing model.
I'm pretty sure they only price on the margin in a perfectly competitive market with no product differentiation, which games are not.
They operate a bit like a monopoly, since products in gaming are so different they can't be considered the same thing. Thus they price to maximize profits, not to be competitive.
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.
I don't agree with that point at all. I think if you weren't capable of paying for warhammer 40k and this stopped you from enjoying warhammer 40k, then your life became worse as a consequence of it. if there had been a way for you to aquire the items necessary to play it without anyone losing out on sales or items of their own, then your life would have been more enjoyable. a net gain for yourself, a net 0 for everyone else, thus a net gain for society.
Your argument is assuming that the guy would just sulk around if he couldn't afford to play games.
There are tons of hobbies out there. A person who can't afford to play games could easily have a net enjoyment doing other things, socializing, mountain hiking, jogging etc.
Video games aren't a neccessity. They're a luxury. If your economic situation is that bad, you shouldn't be playing too much games anyway. Work harder and get yourself out of it first.
I'm from Malaysia. Our currency is quite shit in the grand scheme of things. To put things in perspective, coming from a well-off family, buying a Yu-Gi-Oh booster pack (the ones that came with 5 random cards) costed me 5 days worth of allowance. What did I do? I adapted, I watched the show on TV with friends, we made our own cards and still had a great time. Couldn't afford AAA games at retail price? We played F2P games like MapleStory.
There are legitimate reasons for piracy e.g. when the game you're looking for is like 15 years old and is impossible to locate, being unable to afford games is not one of them. It just reeks of entitlement.
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.
You're being obtuse. You do not have all the parts for a game. You have the hardware to run it on. There is a distinct difference, and if you don't know that, you're completely uneducated when it comes to technology.
Making your own pancake is the analogy for making your own game. Let's say SC2 just came out. You don't want to buy it. So you sit in front of your computer, and you make a RTS with three races that plays similarly to SC2. That's not piracy. Pirating SC2 is piracy. The former means nothing to Blizzard unless you infringe copyright by naming everything the same. The latter is punishable.
If you really work for a software company, you should know that your product is an idea. That's why you don't sell a good, you sell a license. You sell the right to use your idea.
A pancake is not sold this way. Not even recipe books are sold this way. Because it's ridiculous, a pancake recipe is such a simple idea that it's just so incredibly stupid to think of controlling it.
The internet has made controlling software just as hard. It has made controllyng ANY idea unfeasible. But if you don't like this, and try to fix it by calling things theft, then acknowledge that using a recipe you didn't invent is stealing. You are not in the moral highground. You are just trying to defend your interests.
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.
To the question "how many of those 5 people would have bought the game?" I already raised that exact point in my larger, initial post.
To your second point, I would submit that spreading the word can hurt just as much. Because their friends won't likely be saying "Wow, cool game, I'm going to get Mom to buy it next week." But rather would ask "Cool, you said you got it for free? How?!" Spreading the word is a double-edged sword. Again, for every person that's motivated to go purchase the game after playing a friend's illegal copy, there are probably many more (particularly kids) that will just ask their friend how to get it for free and do that instead.
Mind linking that larger, initial post? I've read the thread, but I skip names.
As for your comment to my second point - this is exactly what's free advertisement and growing for the future, though. Yes, they do probably lose some sales right now, but you spread the word about the franchise and the company, which results in brand recognition. In effect, the brand becomes vastly bigger through word-of-mouth, reacting in recognition and purchases from groups that would never have heard of the brand before at all.
On November 30 2011 22:24 Interloper wrote: Many people who pirate do so because they want to try a game out. If they enjoy the game, they will buy it too support the developer. 4,5 million downloads becomes a useless figure since you can not in any way know how many of those 4,5 million purchased the game afterwards. I feel that piracy is a good way to get rid of shitty developers how make crappy games only for the sake of making money (Well all developers want to make money ofc, but i hope you get my point). Good developers get the money they need and then some. Piracy will not be the end of gaming.
This is the most common reason that has been given to me but more than often the person is also an expert at procrastination and gives the "oh I'll buy it later excuse". In the case of single player games, what usually winds up happening is that they'll beat the game and it becomes forgotten on their computers. Either way, I'd be willing to be a huge chunk of those who pirated wouldn't have bothered buying the game if piracy wasn't an option in the first place (in which case nothing would have been lost anyway).
I would rather prefer to see game demos be more prominent to get rid of that whole "I wanted to try the game" excuse.
This more or less sums it up. Buying SC2 is necessary in order to play competative multiplayer. Buying Skyrim is never necessary as you can do everything without a legitimate key.
Additionally, when I was a kid, every game I bought came with a set of demos. Games are doing this less often. Some devs don't bother making a demo which hurts them. If a person can't find a demo for a game that looks good, they are more likely to pirate it.
The other thing I'd like to mention is that steam sales are wildly successful because the games are being sold for around $5-15 which for most kids and young college students with low income can afford. A price revision of games would help in my mind. A lot of people aren't willing to pay $60 a game in a down economy when they have the option of getting it for free.
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.
I don't agree with that point at all. I think if you weren't capable of paying for warhammer 40k and this stopped you from enjoying warhammer 40k, then your life became worse as a consequence of it. if there had been a way for you to aquire the items necessary to play it without anyone losing out on sales or items of their own, then your life would have been more enjoyable. a net gain for yourself, a net 0 for everyone else, thus a net gain for society.
I wouldn't have done it if I could have, though. Just because we now have a way to commit crimes without directly hurting anyone doesn't mean it's ok to commit them. A victimless crime is still a crime.
I've agreed with most of what you've said, but I disagree on victimless crime. If something is victimless, it shouldn't be a crime.
However, pirating isn't victimless. There are many people who could afford it and pirated simply cause they could. Trying to differentiate the people who pirate because they can vs pirate because it's their 'only choice' is impossible in the justice system.
On December 01 2011 04:10 wei2coolman wrote: All I know is that all the industries that "piracy" supposedly hurts, are all growing.
As far as numbers go, these industries are expanding, not diminishing.
And they would grow larger and faster if they weren't being slowed by piracy. If every person who pirated actually bought the game/CD/movie as well (and don't try and pretend they do), the prices would go down because the makers would know the market is willing to pay.
Let's say you make a game and you need to make $120 between 5 people to break even. You know three of those five will pirate, so you price it at $60. If you knew all 5 people would buy it legally, you'd only charge $24.
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.
You aren't paying for a disc, you're paying for the experience on that disc. $30-$50 for hours upon hours of entertainment is not an expensive hobby. The issue is that people who wouldn't normally be able to afford now have the alternative of reaping the benefits without shelling out a single cent. Feeling entitled to make things fit one's price range at the expense of others is ethically wrong.
I already wrote this in an earlier post actually. I don't think all piracy is defensible - and I personally have not pirated a game for several years, or any music since I got spotify almost 3 years ago. but that's because I am an adult living in a western country, and I can afford to pay for the games I want to play. and yes, to me, they're not expensive. what I'm defending is piracy for 1: people whose consumption of games/music is so enormous that they can't pay for everything they want to enjoy, but who still pay for quite a bit. this includes those reasonable pirates who pirate games and buy them if they like them, or people who download 120 cds per month and buy 2 cds per month. in this event, their consumption and thus contribution to the industry increases because of their piracy. I also defend piracy for 2: people who can't afford games or music period - and this includes most people younger than 18 who have been encouraged to go to school rather than work, and people who live in countries where games/music costs equally much but where average wage is 10-20% of what it is in norway. in none of these cases does the industry lose money, as the act of piracy either makes a person capable of enjoying something he couldn't afford otherwise, or makes a person capable of choosing with greater accuracy which artist/game producer he wishes to support.
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.
You aren't paying for a disc, you're paying for the experience on that disc. $30-$50 for hours upon hours of entertainment is not an expensive hobby. The issue is that people who wouldn't normally be able to afford now have the alternative of reaping the benefits without shelling out a single cent. Feeling entitled to make things fit one's price range at the expense of others is ethically wrong.
Firms price on the margin. The marginal cost of an additional copy of a game is $0 (or very near zero). For a firm to charge $50 for a product that has near zero marginal cost of production is absolutely ludicrous.
I'm aware video games cost million to develop, but those are fixed costs, they do not factor into a rational or practical pricing model.
I'm pretty sure they only price on the margin in a perfectly competitive market with no product differentiation, which games are not.
They operate a bit like a monopoly, since products in gaming are so different they can't be considered the same thing. Thus they price to maximize profits, not to be competitive.
It's certainly not perfect competition but I would argue video games are pretty damn good substitutes for each other. Sure, a player isn't likely to substitute Skyrim for MW3, but they sure could substitute for any of the bajillion other shooters out there. And Skyrim players could easily substitute for the plethora of sandbox RPG's.
Also, in monopoly pricing MC is still an upward sloping curve (at least to a point) and the monopolist charges where MC=MR. But with copies of video games, MC=0 the whole damn way...where do you price? When MR=0? It never equals 0 because with zero marginal cost of production MR is flat and copyright law means they never lower the price (you pay our price or we put you in jail).
I suppose you could say "you pay their price or you go buy a different video game" but then we're back to a model that's more like perfect competition.
On November 30 2011 22:38 zalz wrote: Piracy is not a problem that needs to be adressed. It's a miniscule thing that doesn't make any mentionable dent on sales.
Let's say that 2 out of 3 people (in this case, roughly 3 million people) do not buy the game. 3,000,000 x 60 (Approximate price upon release) = 180,000,000. That is a lot of money. Even if only 1 out of three people do not buy the game, it would still end up at almost a hundred million euros. Most companies (obviously excluding giants like Activision that can just throw money at a project until it winds) would do well with an additional ~90 million euros. Of course, the above estimate is extremely rough, but nevertheless, your statement appears rather ignorant.
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.
To the question "how many of those 5 people would have bought the game?" I already raised that exact point in my larger, initial post.
To your second point, I would submit that spreading the word can hurt just as much. Because their friends won't likely be saying "Wow, cool game, I'm going to get Mom to buy it next week." But rather would ask "Cool, you said you got it for free? How?!" Spreading the word is a double-edged sword. Again, for every person that's motivated to go purchase the game after playing a friend's illegal copy, there are probably many more (particularly kids) that will just ask their friend how to get it for free and do that instead.
Mind linking that larger, initial post? I've read the thread, but I skip names.
As for your comment to my second point - this is exactly what's free advertisement and growing for the future, though. Yes, they do probably lose some sales right now, but you spread the word about the franchise and the company, which results in brand recognition. In effect, the brand becomes vastly bigger through word-of-mouth, reacting in recognition and purchases from groups that would never have heard of the brand before at all.
Is the link to my larger post. We essentially agreed on that point.
Again, you almost ignore the fact that word of mouth is a double-edged sword. Without preventative measures, piracy grows with the market. So WC2 was pirated X number of times, raising Blizzard's reputation and brand-recognition by factor Y, but also introducing Z people to the joys of pirating free games. When WC3 comes out. Without preventative measures put in place. The number of pirated copies is now X + Z + some % of Y + P (where P is the number of people introduced to piracy in THIS round).
If there's no prevention, then as the market grows, so does the piracy. It doesn't matter that Blizzard is now making more profit. If the game is amazing, the brand will grow with or without piracy, and the difference between the two is likely negligible. Piracy cuts into future profits by subtracting a percentage of the new pirates that would have otherwise purchased the game based on the word of mouth that WC2 generated on its own.
On December 01 2011 03:45 Nemireck wrote: 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.
Most public torrent sites have comment / trusted user systems in place to try to stop fake versions. The use of fake versions only work on totally decentralised communities, the more centralisation and control there is in the system the less false copies show up.
Then as you mentioned you get into the private communities where a fake release is an instant ban from the site, good luck getting another account this quarter.
I last downloaded a pirated copy that didn't work 2 years ago, I then downloaded another crack and it worked two days later. It is simply hard to fake the popular releases as things currently are.
As for the main debate, I pirate more than I buy. Yet I would buy at most 1/10 more games if I couldn't pirate. I might even give up gaming totally since I have other hobbies I enjoy more than gaming and am more willing to dedicate money to. I am probably among the 50% highest legal consumers of games when considering the total gaming population. Yet I pirate more than I buy.
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.
You're being obtuse. You do not have all the parts for a game. You have the hardware to run it on. There is a distinct difference, and if you don't know that, you're completely uneducated when it comes to technology.
Making your own pancake is the analogy for making your own game. Let's say SC2 just came out. You don't want to buy it. So you sit in front of your computer, and you make a RTS with three races that plays similarly to SC2. That's not piracy. Pirating SC2 is piracy. The former means nothing to Blizzard unless you infringe copyright by naming everything the same. The latter is punishable.
If you really work for a software company, you should know that your product is an idea. That's why you don't sell a good, you sell a license. You sell the right to use your idea.
A pancake is not sold this way. Not even recipe books are sold this way. Because it's ridiculous, a pancake recipe is such a simple idea that it's just so incredibly stupid to think of controlling it.
The internet has made controlling software just as hard. It has made controllyng ANY idea unfeasible. But if you don't like this, and try to fix it by calling things theft, then acknowledge that using a recipe you didn't invent is stealing. You are not in the moral highground. You are just trying to defend your interests.
And you have the moral high ground? Cute.
Can someone make our software? Yeah, we have competitors who sell basically the same product. We sell customer support, a better interface, etc.
A game is not just an idea. It's the engine, the system, the VA, the music, the experience. You're not downloading an idea, you're downloading hours of time and energy, taking it for granted when you could not produce the same experience yourself. The pancake analogy doesn't even work in this regard. Could you build Skyrim on your computer without using any proprietary or open-source software? I'll wait.
...No? Well damn, you probably need the game. Your choices are buy it legally or download it illegally. There is no middle ground where you're still a good person but don't pay anything. You're performing an illegal act for one reason or another.
So yes, I do have the moral high ground. Until buying games from a distributor is punishable by law, you're not going to have moral high ground against people who buy games.
I have no problem with piracy if you cant' afford it, or can't have access to it otherwise.(If you live in some nation where literally your nearest gamestop is in it's capital I don't think anyones going to care if you pirated it or note) The problem is the people who can buy it who don't and people who feel they shouldn't have to pay.
Those are the problems. People who pirate because they don't want to pay(they do exist I know some) and folks who just rather spend money on anything else.
I don't pirate games. If I can't afford a game. I wait for it to go on sale. Or.. I don't buy it. *boggle* It's not like you need the game.
On December 01 2011 04:25 Parnage wrote: I have no problem with piracy if you cant' afford it, or can't have access to it otherwise.(If you live in some nation where literally your nearest gamestop is in it's capital I don't think anyones going to care if you pirated it or note) The problem is the people who can buy it who don't and people who feel they shouldn't have to pay.
Those are the problems. People who pirate because they don't want to pay(they do exist I know some) and folks who just rather spend money on anything else.
I don't pirate games. If I can't afford a game. I wait for it to go on sale. Or.. I don't buy it. *boggle* It's not like you need the game.
But normally if people don't buy a product at the given price, the producer responds to that signal by lowering the price of the product. For some reason the video games industry hasn't really responded to those signals. Whenever a game doesn't do well, publishers scream "the pirates robbed us!" and never actually considered that they needed to be charging less for their game. While I don't think punishing them by pirating is the solution, it is pretty silly how "not buying the game" doesn't seem to send the signal that it does in other markets.
Any game by Valve or blizzard is worth buying. They can take my money. A lot of the time they don't even charge full price which is £40 in UK roundabout, £25-30 for a solid pc game. Sure take my money, great deal. Starcraft, warcraft, diablo, team fortress, half life, left 4 dead, portal, counter strike; all of these games are <3. I did pirate the sc2 beta vs AI thing before i got a key, sorry i just HAD to play.
You want £45 for a console game or some terrible singleplayer game? forget it ill torrent it, and probably not even complete it cause it will be dog.
To make money you need to make people log in for the multiplayer experience. If by pirating a game you can only get the single player or be forced to play some shitty mode vs bots, people who want the game are gonna buy it.
On December 01 2011 03:45 Nemireck wrote: 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.
Most public torrent sites have comment / trusted user systems in place to try to stop fake versions. The use of fake versions only work on totally decentralised communities, the more centralisation and control there is in the system the less false copies show up.
Absolutely, and I'm aware of this.
Subsequently, the more centralized the system, the easier it is to prosecute the distributor of the illegal copy of the game. Or shut down the service. Notwithstanding the difficulties that come with trying to prosecute internationally.
Someone might prove me wrong on this but I think at least in my country piracy is neither a crime (a very strong legal term only fitting certain illegal behaviour) nor illegal (it's a legal grey area). Distributing (i.e. torrent upload) and cracking is punishable, though also not a crime I think. So even legally the case is not clear cut.
Now to those of you having a strong stance against piracy: You can either go in cicles, make up and defeat ridiculous analogies and throw your morality around (which nobody who is not on your side cares about) or you need to explain the following. Game companies (media companies in general) are pushing to severely limit our ability to use the internet and our computers (targeting only files that I already have on my harddrive or receive over consensual transfer), why should this be allowed? To help you argue, because you seem to have problems with making a convincing case, some points: Like I said, morality (because piracy is wrong / because piracy is theft) is not convincing to those not sharing your view. "Because companies are losing money" is in itself also not convincing, you need to explain why this is bad. To refer to your opinion or common sense concerning this will not be enough since it's a very complex problem. For example you can easily argue that piracy is having a very selective effect on the quality of games that benefits gamers. And you can also argue the opposite, both not very effective in swaying anyones opinion. So show us with anything tangible these bad effects, that are in fact so bad that we should leave the default position of "as much freedom for everyone as possible".
On December 01 2011 04:25 Parnage wrote: I have no problem with piracy if you cant' afford it, or can't have access to it otherwise.(If you live in some nation where literally your nearest gamestop is in it's capital I don't think anyones going to care if you pirated it or note) The problem is the people who can buy it who don't and people who feel they shouldn't have to pay.
Those are the problems. People who pirate because they don't want to pay(they do exist I know some) and folks who just rather spend money on anything else.
I don't pirate games. If I can't afford a game. I wait for it to go on sale. Or.. I don't buy it. *boggle* It's not like you need the game.
But normally if people don't buy a product at the given price, the producer responds to that signal by lowering the price of the product. For some reason the video games industry hasn't really responded to those signals. Whenever a game doesn't do well, publishers scream "the pirates robbed us!" and never actually considered that they needed to be charging less for their game. While I don't think punishing them by pirating is the solution, it is pretty silly how "not buying the game" doesn't seem to send the signal that it does in other markets.
The console industry does this. They can tell when a game is doing poorly, and drop it down in price.
With PC games, you have to look at a lot of factors. If a game is critically acclaimed and widely reviewed, but has low sales, it's probably pirated a lot.
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.
You aren't paying for a disc, you're paying for the experience on that disc. $30-$50 for hours upon hours of entertainment is not an expensive hobby. The issue is that people who wouldn't normally be able to afford now have the alternative of reaping the benefits without shelling out a single cent. Feeling entitled to make things fit one's price range at the expense of others is ethically wrong.
I already wrote this in an earlier post actually. I don't think all piracy is defensible - and I personally have not pirated a game for several years, or any music since I got spotify almost 3 years ago. but that's because I am an adult living in a western country, and I can afford to pay for the games I want to play. and yes, to me, they're not expensive. what I'm defending is piracy for 1: people whose consumption of games/music is so enormous that they can't pay for everything they want to enjoy, but who still pay for quite a bit. this includes those reasonable pirates who pirate games and buy them if they like them, or people who download 120 cds per month and buy 2 cds per month. in this event, their consumption and thus contribution to the industry increases because of their piracy. I also defend piracy for 2: people who can't afford games or music period - and this includes most people younger than 18 who have been encouraged to go to school rather than work, and people who live in countries where games/music costs equally much but where average wage is 10-20% of what it is in norway. in none of these cases does the industry lose money, as the act of piracy either makes a person capable of enjoying something he couldn't afford otherwise, or makes a person capable of choosing with greater accuracy which artist/game producer he wishes to support.
I can see why some might agree with your points, but I still hate that companies are being essentially shoehorned into acting a particular way just to counteract piracy. Piracy is absolutely not the victimless crime that it's made out to be. It is undeniable fact that if more people started paying for games legitimately then the price of games would naturally decrease according to market demands.
My hope is that TeamLiquid.net becomes a paid, subscription-based website/community, because it's something I genuinely value and I would not hesitate for one even second to shell out $10/month.
On December 01 2011 04:25 Parnage wrote: I have no problem with piracy if you cant' afford it, or can't have access to it otherwise.(If you live in some nation where literally your nearest gamestop is in it's capital I don't think anyones going to care if you pirated it or note) The problem is the people who can buy it who don't and people who feel they shouldn't have to pay.
Those are the problems. People who pirate because they don't want to pay(they do exist I know some) and folks who just rather spend money on anything else.
I don't pirate games. If I can't afford a game. I wait for it to go on sale. Or.. I don't buy it. *boggle* It's not like you need the game.
But normally if people don't buy a product at the given price, the producer responds to that signal by lowering the price of the product. For some reason the video games industry hasn't really responded to those signals. Whenever a game doesn't do well, publishers scream "the pirates robbed us!" and never actually considered that they needed to be charging less for their game. While I don't think punishing them by pirating is the solution, it is pretty silly how "not buying the game" doesn't seem to send the signal that it does in other markets.
The console industry does this. They can tell when a game is doing poorly, and drop it down in price.
With PC games, you have to look at a lot of factors. If a game is critically acclaimed and widely reviewed, but has low sales, it's probably pirated a lot.
Or it just means people didn't listen to the reviewers since they often just talk out their asses. Especially if that publisher bought a truckload of advertising on their site.
On December 01 2011 04:29 carrion wrote: Any game by Valve or blizzard is worth buying. They can take my money. A lot of the time they don't even charge full price which is £40 in UK roundabout, £25-30 for a solid pc game. Sure take my money, great deal. Starcraft, warcraft, diablo, team fortress, half life, left 4 dead, portal, counter strike; all of these games are <3. I did pirate the sc2 beta vs AI thing before i got a key, sorry i just HAD to play.
You want £45 for a console game or some terrible singleplayer game? forget it ill torrent it, and probably not even complete it cause it will be dog.
To make money you need to make people log in for the multiplayer experience. If by pirating a game you can only get the single player or be forced to play some shitty mode vs bots, people who want the game are gonna buy it.
But that's terrible logic. What if you actually like a game you torrent? Do you just say "fuck it" and not buy it anyway?
And the other part is crap too. "This game is shit, but I want it anyway" is not justification for pirating. If you're going to play a game, get it. If you think it's going to be crap, don't play it. How is this a hard concept?
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.
We bought the army books. Then we bought one rule book. Then we played with proxys. So according to you we played WH illegally?
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.
To the question "how many of those 5 people would have bought the game?" I already raised that exact point in my larger, initial post.
To your second point, I would submit that spreading the word can hurt just as much. Because their friends won't likely be saying "Wow, cool game, I'm going to get Mom to buy it next week." But rather would ask "Cool, you said you got it for free? How?!" Spreading the word is a double-edged sword. Again, for every person that's motivated to go purchase the game after playing a friend's illegal copy, there are probably many more (particularly kids) that will just ask their friend how to get it for free and do that instead.
Mind linking that larger, initial post? I've read the thread, but I skip names.
As for your comment to my second point - this is exactly what's free advertisement and growing for the future, though. Yes, they do probably lose some sales right now, but you spread the word about the franchise and the company, which results in brand recognition. In effect, the brand becomes vastly bigger through word-of-mouth, reacting in recognition and purchases from groups that would never have heard of the brand before at all.
Is the link to my larger post. We essentially agreed on that point.
Again, you almost ignore the fact that word of mouth is a double-edged sword. Without preventative measures, piracy grows with the market. So WC2 was pirated X number of times, raising Blizzard's reputation and brand-recognition by factor Y, but also introducing Z people to the joys of pirating free games. When WC3 comes out. Without preventative measures put in place. The number of pirated copies is now X + Z + some % of Y + P (where P is the number of people introduced to piracy in THIS round).
If there's no prevention, then as the market grows, so does the piracy. It doesn't matter that Blizzard is now making more profit. If the game is amazing, the brand will grow with or without piracy, and the difference between the two is likely negligible. Piracy cuts into future profits by subtracting a percentage of the new pirates that would have otherwise purchased the game based on the word of mouth that WC2 generated on its own.
Thanks for the link.
Yes, piracy grows with the market, but the market would never grow to its size WITHOUT the piracy - or, at least, not as fast as it did. I agree with you that pirating would be an issue if the effect of pirating and market growth would equate to less sales than no pirating and original, non-grown market, but this is obviously not the case. Look at Blizzard's growth from the SNES titles of Blackthorn, Rock 'n Roll racing and Lost Vikings (fine, PC and amiga too, but yea) to Diablo to modern day SC2, WoW and imminent Diablo 3. A lot of it has grown out of quality games, surely, but a lot has grown simply because there's so much many more gamers in the pool of potential buyers nowadays than it were back then.
Is piracy the only catalyst? Of course not. But I'd dare say it's been quite significant in turning computer and console games into such a prominent media representation as it is these days.
Edit: clunky writing.
I agree with you that pirating would be an issue if the effect of pirating and market growth would equate to less sales than no pirating and original, non-grown market,
Original market without any pirating sells for 1. Extended market with pirating pirates for 50, and sells for 5. Extended market still yields 4 more than 1, and thus is a good.
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.
We bought the army books. Then we bought one rule book. Then we played with proxys. So according to you we played WH illegally?
Haha, I remember playing Necromunda with LEGO buildings and LEGO figures. Borrowed the rulesbook from a friend of mine and copied the important bits. Guess I should be wary, or the legal arm of GW will get me ;_;
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.
You're being obtuse. You do not have all the parts for a game. You have the hardware to run it on. There is a distinct difference, and if you don't know that, you're completely uneducated when it comes to technology.
Making your own pancake is the analogy for making your own game. Let's say SC2 just came out. You don't want to buy it. So you sit in front of your computer, and you make a RTS with three races that plays similarly to SC2. That's not piracy. Pirating SC2 is piracy. The former means nothing to Blizzard unless you infringe copyright by naming everything the same. The latter is punishable.
If you really work for a software company, you should know that your product is an idea. That's why you don't sell a good, you sell a license. You sell the right to use your idea.
A pancake is not sold this way. Not even recipe books are sold this way. Because it's ridiculous, a pancake recipe is such a simple idea that it's just so incredibly stupid to think of controlling it.
The internet has made controlling software just as hard. It has made controllyng ANY idea unfeasible. But if you don't like this, and try to fix it by calling things theft, then acknowledge that using a recipe you didn't invent is stealing. You are not in the moral highground. You are just trying to defend your interests.
And you have the moral high ground? Cute.
Can someone make our software? Yeah, we have competitors who sell basically the same product. We sell customer support, a better interface, etc.
A game is not just an idea. It's the engine, the system, the VA, the music, the experience. You're not downloading an idea, you're downloading hours of time and energy, taking it for granted when you could not produce the same experience yourself. The pancake analogy doesn't even work in this regard. Could you build Skyrim on your computer without using any proprietary or open-source software? I'll wait.
...No? Well damn, you probably need the game. Your choices are buy it legally or download it illegally. There is no middle ground where you're still a good person but don't pay anything. You're performing an illegal act for one reason or another.
So yes, I do have the moral high ground. Until buying games from a distributor is punishable by law, you're not going to have moral high ground against people who buy games.
Could you come up on your own with a good recipe? Some people can, they do that as a job. Guess: they need to put time and effort into it. There is no music but eating sure is an experience.
Yet no cook puts an EULA in front of their recipes. You know, "you are not allowed to add salt, perpetrators will be punished by law". It is accepted that recipes do not work this way. Does a cook have moral highground? who cares? they can make a living. They may have to actually cook and not just sell recipes, but they are not bitching about it, because they don't expect people to believe that copying a recipe is theft.
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.
We bought the army books. Then we bought one rule book. Then we played with proxys. So according to you we played WH illegally?
Again, not a perfect analogy for video gaming.
But you're not using official pieces. It's not stealing, it's not even illegal. Pirating a game is analagous (analagous, not the same as) to stealing a full army and using the official pieces without paying for it.
They also knew that they weren't going to sell a full rule book to each player, and accounted for that. Same for DnD books. They expect you to buy your pieces for the full experience.
Again, gaming is an experience. You can watch someone play a game on a stream or something legally, but it's not the same as actually playing the game.
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.
You're being obtuse. You do not have all the parts for a game. You have the hardware to run it on. There is a distinct difference, and if you don't know that, you're completely uneducated when it comes to technology.
Making your own pancake is the analogy for making your own game. Let's say SC2 just came out. You don't want to buy it. So you sit in front of your computer, and you make a RTS with three races that plays similarly to SC2. That's not piracy. Pirating SC2 is piracy. The former means nothing to Blizzard unless you infringe copyright by naming everything the same. The latter is punishable.
If you really work for a software company, you should know that your product is an idea. That's why you don't sell a good, you sell a license. You sell the right to use your idea.
A pancake is not sold this way. Not even recipe books are sold this way. Because it's ridiculous, a pancake recipe is such a simple idea that it's just so incredibly stupid to think of controlling it.
The internet has made controlling software just as hard. It has made controllyng ANY idea unfeasible. But if you don't like this, and try to fix it by calling things theft, then acknowledge that using a recipe you didn't invent is stealing. You are not in the moral highground. You are just trying to defend your interests.
And you have the moral high ground? Cute.
Can someone make our software? Yeah, we have competitors who sell basically the same product. We sell customer support, a better interface, etc.
A game is not just an idea. It's the engine, the system, the VA, the music, the experience. You're not downloading an idea, you're downloading hours of time and energy, taking it for granted when you could not produce the same experience yourself. The pancake analogy doesn't even work in this regard. Could you build Skyrim on your computer without using any proprietary or open-source software? I'll wait.
...No? Well damn, you probably need the game. Your choices are buy it legally or download it illegally. There is no middle ground where you're still a good person but don't pay anything. You're performing an illegal act for one reason or another.
So yes, I do have the moral high ground. Until buying games from a distributor is punishable by law, you're not going to have moral high ground against people who buy games.
Could you come up on your own with a good recipe? Some people can, they do that as a job. Guess: they need to put time and effort into it. There is no music but eating sure is an experience.
Yet no cook puts an EULA in front of their recipes. You know, "you are not allowed to add salt, perpetrators will be punished by law". It is accepted that recipes do not work this way. Does a cook have moral highground? who cares? they can make a living. They may have to actually cook and not just sell recipes, but they are not bitching about it, because they don't expect people to believe that copying a recipe is theft.
That's still not the same thing, you're still being obtuse. Do you not know what that means? It means being difficult for the sake of being difficult. We call it trolling nowadays.
Giving out a recipe is the same as giving out source code, which a lot of companies do, like the Source and Unreal engines. If I gave you Source, could you make HL2:Episode 3? Probably not, which is why I'm going to pay Valve for it eventually.
You're not copying a recipe and making it yourself, you're copying a whole meal and walking out on the check.
Yes, piracy grows with the market, but the market would never grow to its size WITHOUT the piracy - or, at least, not as fast as it did. I agree with you that pirating would be an issue if the effect of pirating and market growth would equate to less sales than no pirating and original, non-grown market, but this is obviously not the case. Look at Blizzard's growth from the SNES titles of Blackthorn, Rock 'n Roll racing and Lost Vikings (fine, PC and amiga too, but yea) to Diablo to modern day SC2, WoW and imminent Diablo 3. A lot of it has grown out of quality games, surely, but a lot has grown simply because there's so much many more gamers in the pool of potential buyers nowadays than it were back then.
Is piracy the only catalyst? Of course not. But I'd dare say it's been quite significant in turning computer and console games into such a prominent media representation as it is these days.
I think that you're greatly overestimating the positive effect that piracy has had on the market. Quality speaks for itself, and the industry would be doing just as well as it is today without piracy. The publicity generated by word of mouth would occur without illegal copies of the game being made available.
OK, lets get this straight. To those of you who think piracy is harming the industry. Actually, let me rephrase that. To those of you who think piracy in no way helps the industry - Do you really think that if it was as clear cut as you think it is and every developer 'knew' that piracy was only bad for the industry and was ruining it, that we'd be able to pirate games at all?
Just throwing this out there, as I think too many people think this issue is more clear-cut than it is. Developers aren't the good guys and pirates aren't the bad guys. The reverse is also not true. Don't imagine that DRM is what you're told to believe it is. Don't imagine that piracy is what you've been taught to believe it is.
Personally, I buy my games, but I don't think that piracy the evil that some of you think it is and I don't think developers are stupid enough to think that either.
On December 01 2011 04:37 HereAndNow wrote: They also knew that they weren't going to sell a full rule book to each player, and accounted for that. Same for DnD books. They expect you to buy your pieces for the full experience.
I've been watching this discussion for a few pages now but I have to step in here and say - what makes you think this isn't being done for video games? High prices to compensate for lost sales I mean.
On December 01 2011 04:44 jtype wrote: OK, lets get this straight. To those of you who think piracy is harming the industry. Actually, let me rephrase that. To those of you who think piracy in no way helps the industry - Do you really think that if it was as clear cut as you think it is and every developer 'knew' that piracy was only bad for the industry and was ruining it, that we'd be able to pirate games at all?
Just throwing this out there, as I think too many people think this issue is more clear-cut than it is. Developers aren't the good guys and pirates aren't the bad guys. The reverse is also not true. Don't imagine that DRM is what you're told to believe it is. Don't imagine that piracy is what you've been taught to believe it is.
Personally, I buy my games, but I don't think that piracy the evil that some of you think it is and I don't think developers are stupid enough to think that either.
It will be 100% impossible to pirate Diablo III since the entire game is emulated on the Blizzard servers. The only reason we've been able to pirate games up to this point is because developers and publishers haven't had the technology to keep us from doing so. They have the technology now.
On December 01 2011 04:37 HereAndNow wrote: They also knew that they weren't going to sell a full rule book to each player, and accounted for that. Same for DnD books. They expect you to buy your pieces for the full experience.
I've been watching this discussion for a few pages now but I have to step in here and say - what makes you think this isn't being done for video games? High prices to compensate for lost sales I mean.
Yeah, and I'd much prefer if my DnD DMG didn't cost an arm and a leg.
Like I said in a previous post, if there were less pirates, there'd be lower prices, and less need for pirates. But no one wants to put up with the inbetween stage of buying games and proving to developers that they can actually lower the price and still make a profit.
On December 01 2011 04:44 jtype wrote: OK, lets get this straight. To those of you who think piracy is harming the industry. Actually, let me rephrase that. To those of you who think piracy in no way helps the industry - Do you really think that if it was as clear cut as you think it is and every developer 'knew' that piracy was only bad for the industry and was ruining it, that we'd be able to pirate games at all?
Just throwing this out there, as I think too many people think this issue is more clear-cut than it is. Developers aren't the good guys and pirates aren't the bad guys. The reverse is also not true. Don't imagine that DRM is what you're told to believe it is. Don't imagine that piracy is what you've been taught to believe it is.
Personally, I buy my games, but I don't think that piracy the evil that some of you think it is and I don't think developers are stupid enough to think that either.
Honestly, I could give a f*** whether or not someone pirates. I'm just annoyed that they're walking around thinking that they're the good guys and nothing they're doing is wrong. It's wrong, and if you choose to do it, you're doing something illegal. If you're ok with that, accept it. Don't try to push the idea that pirating is saving the industry or making humanity better or some bollocks.
Yes, piracy grows with the market, but the market would never grow to its size WITHOUT the piracy - or, at least, not as fast as it did. I agree with you that pirating would be an issue if the effect of pirating and market growth would equate to less sales than no pirating and original, non-grown market, but this is obviously not the case. Look at Blizzard's growth from the SNES titles of Blackthorn, Rock 'n Roll racing and Lost Vikings (fine, PC and amiga too, but yea) to Diablo to modern day SC2, WoW and imminent Diablo 3. A lot of it has grown out of quality games, surely, but a lot has grown simply because there's so much many more gamers in the pool of potential buyers nowadays than it were back then.
Is piracy the only catalyst? Of course not. But I'd dare say it's been quite significant in turning computer and console games into such a prominent media representation as it is these days.
I think that you're greatly overestimating the positive effect that piracy has had on the market. Quality speaks for itself, and the industry would be doing just as well as it is today without piracy. The publicity generated by word of mouth would occur without illegal copies of the game being made available.
And I think you're underestimating it. Word by mouth and the power of leaders of opinion to shape the public conciousness is far stronger than mediacarried advertisements, at least if we're to follow Lazarsfeld's two-step hypothesis.
On November 30 2011 22:24 Interloper wrote: Many people who pirate do so because they want to try a game out. If they enjoy the game, they will buy it too support the developer. 4,5 million downloads becomes a useless figure since you can not in any way know how many of those 4,5 million purchased the game afterwards. I feel that piracy is a good way to get rid of shitty developers how make crappy games only for the sake of making money (Well all developers want to make money ofc, but i hope you get my point). Good developers get the money they need and then some. Piracy will not be the end of gaming.
this is what i do. and most of the time the games are shit so i save my money and complaint against the company for making me waste my cash.
same deal with music...i always got my stuff from pirating 1st, but now i buy everything Devin Townsend puts out for example...same deal with Sevendust
On December 01 2011 04:44 jtype wrote: OK, lets get this straight. To those of you who think piracy is harming the industry. Actually, let me rephrase that. To those of you who think piracy in no way helps the industry - Do you really think that if it was as clear cut as you think it is and every developer 'knew' that piracy was only bad for the industry and was ruining it, that we'd be able to pirate games at all?
Just throwing this out there, as I think too many people think this issue is more clear-cut than it is. Developers aren't the good guys and pirates aren't the bad guys. The reverse is also not true. Don't imagine that DRM is what you're told to believe it is. Don't imagine that piracy is what you've been taught to believe it is.
Personally, I buy my games, but I don't think that piracy the evil that some of you think it is and I don't think developers are stupid enough to think that either.
It will be 100% impossible to pirate Diablo III since the entire game is emulated on the Blizzard servers. The only reason we've been able to pirate games up to this point is because developers and publishers haven't had the technology to keep us from doing so. They have the technology now.
Exactly, just like SC2. No one has EVER been in a ladder game in sc2 that wasn't running a copy with a CDkey attached to it.
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.
We bought the army books. Then we bought one rule book. Then we played with proxys. So according to you we played WH illegally?
Again, not a perfect analogy for video gaming.
But you're not using official pieces. It's not stealing, it's not even illegal. Pirating a game is analagous (analagous, not the same as) to stealing a full army and using the official pieces without paying for it.
Of course we used official pieces o_O Chaos hounds just became DE Dark Riders, when the Chaos player wasnt present. But according to you it was a "selfish childish act to pick a hobby and ignore the fact that it was outside of our cost". We knew we couldnt afford 2000p+ armies for years (over time we have them) but we still picked that hobby. According to you selfish & childish.
It's actually very similiar to video games. You plan to buy it later - or when it's cheaper (we bought a lot of cheap earlier edition minis). But you still want to experience the full experience _now_ - be it the full game or using every unit/model the army book offers.
Imho you just cannot throw all pirates into one pot. I personally will never understand people who will complete a game and then say "What a shitgame, I had no fun, glad I didnt pay for it - so not worth it".
On December 01 2011 04:37 HereAndNow wrote: They also knew that they weren't going to sell a full rule book to each player, and accounted for that. Same for DnD books. They expect you to buy your pieces for the full experience.
I've been watching this discussion for a few pages now but I have to step in here and say - what makes you think this isn't being done for video games? High prices to compensate for lost sales I mean.
Yeah, and I'd much prefer if my DnD DMG didn't cost an arm and a leg.
Like I said in a previous post, if there were less pirates, there'd be lower prices, and less need for pirates. But no one wants to put up with the inbetween stage of buying games and proving to developers that they can actually lower the price and still make a profit.
Sorry but that's just plain wrong. With digital downloads we would have the _perfect_ way to lower prices. I dont know for the video game industry, but I know for a fact that amazon is taking ~50% (exact figure is subject to change of course) in the book sector. If you buy a DMG from amazon which costs 50$, 25$ will go to amazon and 25$ to the "creator". I honestly think video game distributors take a similiar margin. Now with digital downloads it would've been perfect to lower the prices (since there's no distributor taking his cut). But the prices on the digital platforms are higher then ever. I therefore think they would never lower prices when there are less pirates.
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.
We bought the army books. Then we bought one rule book. Then we played with proxys. So according to you we played WH illegally?
Again, not a perfect analogy for video gaming.
But you're not using official pieces. It's not stealing, it's not even illegal. Pirating a game is analagous (analagous, not the same as) to stealing a full army and using the official pieces without paying for it.
They also knew that they weren't going to sell a full rule book to each player, and accounted for that. Same for DnD books. They expect you to buy your pieces for the full experience.
Again, gaming is an experience. You can watch someone play a game on a stream or something legally, but it's not the same as actually playing the game.
Except that PLAYING Warhammer is an experience. It's actually quite an accurate analogy when it comes to GAME of Warhammer. Although, they DID purchase the books, which are the gateway to the actual game experience, so really would have done nothing wrong. The game-pieces themselves are geared more towards model hobbyists. And the only analogy that would work for the illegal acquisition of the game-pieces would be if someone were to somehow make their own casts of the pieces (say... they borrowed one of each from a friend), then created their own pieces at home using their own base-materials.
Now, if they had stolen the books, or an even better analogy, if someone had photocopied the books, then left the hard-copy on the shelf and walked out with a free photocopied version, THEN we'd be getting into a situation analogous to game piracy.
On December 01 2011 04:37 HereAndNow wrote: They also knew that they weren't going to sell a full rule book to each player, and accounted for that. Same for DnD books. They expect you to buy your pieces for the full experience.
I've been watching this discussion for a few pages now but I have to step in here and say - what makes you think this isn't being done for video games? High prices to compensate for lost sales I mean.
Except the higher prices drive piracy too. A bit of a catch 22, but if the "poor" companies are willing to punish their customer base for something they didn't do... well, I got no sympathy for that.
On December 01 2011 04:44 jtype wrote: OK, lets get this straight. To those of you who think piracy is harming the industry. Actually, let me rephrase that. To those of you who think piracy in no way helps the industry - Do you really think that if it was as clear cut as you think it is and every developer 'knew' that piracy was only bad for the industry and was ruining it, that we'd be able to pirate games at all?
Just throwing this out there, as I think too many people think this issue is more clear-cut than it is. Developers aren't the good guys and pirates aren't the bad guys. The reverse is also not true. Don't imagine that DRM is what you're told to believe it is. Don't imagine that piracy is what you've been taught to believe it is.
Personally, I buy my games, but I don't think that piracy the evil that some of you think it is and I don't think developers are stupid enough to think that either.
It will be 100% impossible to pirate Diablo III since the entire game is emulated on the Blizzard servers. The only reason we've been able to pirate games up to this point is because developers and publishers haven't had the technology to keep us from doing so. They have the technology now.
We live in a culture of something for nothing and me me me.
I love pc games and console games, but when I hear of PC elitists crying about how a game was developed mostly for console like skyrim and not tapping into the true potential of PC and how consoles are ruining pc gaming etc, that just makes me laugh.
More and more developers will primiarly develop for consoles, they want to make money not lose money.
On December 01 2011 04:44 jtype wrote: OK, lets get this straight. To those of you who think piracy is harming the industry. Actually, let me rephrase that. To those of you who think piracy in no way helps the industry - Do you really think that if it was as clear cut as you think it is and every developer 'knew' that piracy was only bad for the industry and was ruining it, that we'd be able to pirate games at all?
Just throwing this out there, as I think too many people think this issue is more clear-cut than it is. Developers aren't the good guys and pirates aren't the bad guys. The reverse is also not true. Don't imagine that DRM is what you're told to believe it is. Don't imagine that piracy is what you've been taught to believe it is.
Personally, I buy my games, but I don't think that piracy the evil that some of you think it is and I don't think developers are stupid enough to think that either.
It will be 100% impossible to pirate Diablo III since the entire game is emulated on the Blizzard servers. The only reason we've been able to pirate games up to this point is because developers and publishers haven't had the technology to keep us from doing so. They have the technology now.
Yes, piracy grows with the market, but the market would never grow to its size WITHOUT the piracy - or, at least, not as fast as it did. I agree with you that pirating would be an issue if the effect of pirating and market growth would equate to less sales than no pirating and original, non-grown market, but this is obviously not the case. Look at Blizzard's growth from the SNES titles of Blackthorn, Rock 'n Roll racing and Lost Vikings (fine, PC and amiga too, but yea) to Diablo to modern day SC2, WoW and imminent Diablo 3. A lot of it has grown out of quality games, surely, but a lot has grown simply because there's so much many more gamers in the pool of potential buyers nowadays than it were back then.
Is piracy the only catalyst? Of course not. But I'd dare say it's been quite significant in turning computer and console games into such a prominent media representation as it is these days.
I think that you're greatly overestimating the positive effect that piracy has had on the market. Quality speaks for itself, and the industry would be doing just as well as it is today without piracy. The publicity generated by word of mouth would occur without illegal copies of the game being made available.
And I think you're underestimating it. Word by mouth and the power of leaders of opinion to shape the public conciousness is far stronger than mediacarried advertisements, at least if we're to follow Lazarsfeld's two-step hypothesis.
Yea I'll pay 60 dollars for the game if it's good. If it has dlc that racks the game up to 75-90 dollars, it can kiss my ass. Also games with DRM piss me off. I buy games legitimately, but if the DRM forces me to re-connect, error, re-connect, error, don't expect me to buy the sequels. That, or it's going into the blender.
On December 01 2011 04:44 jtype wrote: OK, lets get this straight. To those of you who think piracy is harming the industry. Actually, let me rephrase that. To those of you who think piracy in no way helps the industry - Do you really think that if it was as clear cut as you think it is and every developer 'knew' that piracy was only bad for the industry and was ruining it, that we'd be able to pirate games at all?
Just throwing this out there, as I think too many people think this issue is more clear-cut than it is. Developers aren't the good guys and pirates aren't the bad guys. The reverse is also not true. Don't imagine that DRM is what you're told to believe it is. Don't imagine that piracy is what you've been taught to believe it is.
Personally, I buy my games, but I don't think that piracy the evil that some of you think it is and I don't think developers are stupid enough to think that either.
Honestly, I could give a f*** whether or not someone pirates. I'm just annoyed that they're walking around thinking that they're the good guys and nothing they're doing is wrong. It's wrong, and if you choose to do it, you're doing something illegal. If you're ok with that, accept it. Don't try to push the idea that pirating is saving the industry or making humanity better or some bollocks.
Who are 'they' and why would they all be walking around thinking that they are the good guys and are saving the industry? Who are you referring to? The millions of identical people who pirate games every year?
I think you've made them into an enemy and you take their actions too personally. Most people do things that are 'wrong' every day. Most people find ways to justify some of those things.
On December 01 2011 04:54 jj33 wrote: Alot of justification for pirating in here.
We live in a culture of something for nothing and me me me.
I love pc games and console games, but when I hear of PC elitists crying about how a game was developed mostly for console like skyrim and not tapping into the true potential of PC and how consoles are ruining pc gaming etc, that just makes me laugh.
More and more developers will primiarly develop for consoles, they want to make money not lose money.
Console games are pirated too. Pirated ALOT more than you think they are.
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.
We bought the army books. Then we bought one rule book. Then we played with proxys. So according to you we played WH illegally?
Again, not a perfect analogy for video gaming.
But you're not using official pieces. It's not stealing, it's not even illegal. Pirating a game is analagous (analagous, not the same as) to stealing a full army and using the official pieces without paying for it.
Of course we used official pieces o_O Chaos hounds just became DE Dark Riders, when the Chaos player wasnt present. But according to you it was a "selfish childish act to pick a hobby and ignore the fact that it was outside of our cost". We knew we couldnt afford 2000p+ armies for years (over time we have them) but we still picked that hobby. According to you selfish & childish.
It's actually very similiar to video games. You plan to buy it later - or when it's cheaper (we bought a lot of cheap earlier edition minis). But you still want to experience the full experience _now_ - be it the full game or using every unit/model the army book offers.
Imho you just cannot throw all pirates into one pot. I personally will never understand people who will complete a game and then say "What a shitgame, I had no fun, glad I didnt pay for it - so not worth it".
In that case, no, you still didn't do anything wrong. You still paid the company, you still supported Games Workshop. You just played a modified version of it. I couldn't afford Halo Reach, so I just played 3 with settings made to make it more Reach like.
Playing with proxies is not the same as pirating by a long shot. It's not really analogous in any way.
On December 01 2011 04:44 jtype wrote: OK, lets get this straight. To those of you who think piracy is harming the industry. Actually, let me rephrase that. To those of you who think piracy in no way helps the industry - Do you really think that if it was as clear cut as you think it is and every developer 'knew' that piracy was only bad for the industry and was ruining it, that we'd be able to pirate games at all?
Just throwing this out there, as I think too many people think this issue is more clear-cut than it is. Developers aren't the good guys and pirates aren't the bad guys. The reverse is also not true. Don't imagine that DRM is what you're told to believe it is. Don't imagine that piracy is what you've been taught to believe it is.
Personally, I buy my games, but I don't think that piracy the evil that some of you think it is and I don't think developers are stupid enough to think that either.
It will be 100% impossible to pirate Diablo III since the entire game is emulated on the Blizzard servers. The only reason we've been able to pirate games up to this point is because developers and publishers haven't had the technology to keep us from doing so. They have the technology now.
On December 01 2011 04:44 jtype wrote: OK, lets get this straight. To those of you who think piracy is harming the industry. Actually, let me rephrase that. To those of you who think piracy in no way helps the industry - Do you really think that if it was as clear cut as you think it is and every developer 'knew' that piracy was only bad for the industry and was ruining it, that we'd be able to pirate games at all?
Just throwing this out there, as I think too many people think this issue is more clear-cut than it is. Developers aren't the good guys and pirates aren't the bad guys. The reverse is also not true. Don't imagine that DRM is what you're told to believe it is. Don't imagine that piracy is what you've been taught to believe it is.
Personally, I buy my games, but I don't think that piracy the evil that some of you think it is and I don't think developers are stupid enough to think that either.
It will be 100% impossible to pirate Diablo III since the entire game is emulated on the Blizzard servers. The only reason we've been able to pirate games up to this point is because developers and publishers haven't had the technology to keep us from doing so. They have the technology now.
Impossible huh? I think you will be surprised...
The hackers will have to emulate the battle.net system and then some how construct files that don't exist outside the Blizzard servers.
You know how MMO's are never truly pirated? Do you know why the Starcraft 2 single player campaign was cracked on day 2 of release but a good multiplayer hack has yet to see the light of day? Everything is managed by the server, not your computer.
Diablo III is an MMO disguised as a single player game.
On December 01 2011 04:44 jtype wrote: OK, lets get this straight. To those of you who think piracy is harming the industry. Actually, let me rephrase that. To those of you who think piracy in no way helps the industry - Do you really think that if it was as clear cut as you think it is and every developer 'knew' that piracy was only bad for the industry and was ruining it, that we'd be able to pirate games at all?
Just throwing this out there, as I think too many people think this issue is more clear-cut than it is. Developers aren't the good guys and pirates aren't the bad guys. The reverse is also not true. Don't imagine that DRM is what you're told to believe it is. Don't imagine that piracy is what you've been taught to believe it is.
Personally, I buy my games, but I don't think that piracy the evil that some of you think it is and I don't think developers are stupid enough to think that either.
It will be 100% impossible to pirate Diablo III since the entire game is emulated on the Blizzard servers. The only reason we've been able to pirate games up to this point is because developers and publishers haven't had the technology to keep us from doing so. They have the technology now.
there are so many bad analogies in this thread, it's hilarious. i think the point of analogy is to make a comparison of something complex to something simple to better understand it. but we all know what it is so that's enough of the analogy. maybe they need to bring it back on the SAT.
i have no problem paying with stuff if i know what i'm getting. the entertainment industry is doing a really shitty job of this and is not doing a good job of what our dollar contributes to. i'm sick of watching these anti-piracy movie commericials about how we're stealing from the guy who does lighting work and needs the money to feed his family. maybe it wouldn't be so bad if the CEO would cut his own damn salary. why do i have to buy a music cd nowadays when i can just download it in quality that's just as good? and when we read things like how artists only get 1 or 2 cents per CD sold, do you really think we feel good supporting these greedy ass distributors and monopolizing record companies? i've been buying a lot of japanese music CDs which isn't cheap. but they give you so much service. if you buy an akb48 single, you get trading cards, a DVD with the music video as well as music videos for the B-sides, a ticket to shake the hand of one of the members for a special event, or some other promotion like the fan election. i bought a moumoon CD just because you can get entered in a drawing to attend a mini-concert. that's cool. what do i get when i buy an american cd? just music? i think companies need to focus on what customers are getting for their dollar. if they think it's expensive, then you need to justify to them why it's not expensive and where all the costs factor in, because right now, they're not paying because they don't feel like they're getting appropriate value. sure, i bought miles edgeworth DS because i like the game and i want to see more of it, but when they don't announce miles edgeworth 2 for the US i start to wonder what the hell i spent my money for.
On December 01 2011 04:54 jj33 wrote: Alot of justification for pirating in here.
We live in a culture of something for nothing and me me me.
I love pc games and console games, but when I hear of PC elitists crying about how a game was developed mostly for console like skyrim and not tapping into the true potential of PC and how consoles are ruining pc gaming etc, that just makes me laugh.
More and more developers will primiarly develop for consoles, they want to make money not lose money.
Console games are pirated too. Pirated ALOT more than you think they are.
Worse even, is the fact that every time a game is sold second-hand, it not only has the same affect as pirating the game, but someone else who ISN'T the game publisher/developer makes a profit off of it. It's considered an even bigger problem than piracy itself in much of the console industry.
Yes, piracy grows with the market, but the market would never grow to its size WITHOUT the piracy - or, at least, not as fast as it did. I agree with you that pirating would be an issue if the effect of pirating and market growth would equate to less sales than no pirating and original, non-grown market, but this is obviously not the case. Look at Blizzard's growth from the SNES titles of Blackthorn, Rock 'n Roll racing and Lost Vikings (fine, PC and amiga too, but yea) to Diablo to modern day SC2, WoW and imminent Diablo 3. A lot of it has grown out of quality games, surely, but a lot has grown simply because there's so much many more gamers in the pool of potential buyers nowadays than it were back then.
Is piracy the only catalyst? Of course not. But I'd dare say it's been quite significant in turning computer and console games into such a prominent media representation as it is these days.
I think that you're greatly overestimating the positive effect that piracy has had on the market. Quality speaks for itself, and the industry would be doing just as well as it is today without piracy. The publicity generated by word of mouth would occur without illegal copies of the game being made available.
And I think you're underestimating it. Word by mouth and the power of leaders of opinion to shape the public conciousness is far stronger than mediacarried advertisements, at least if we're to follow Lazarsfeld's two-step hypothesis.
You don't need piracy to generate word of mouth. You're overestimating the effect of word of mouth generated by piracy is what I'm saying.
Ah, fair enough. I did state that I didn't consider piracy as the sole catalyst earlier though.
What I do firmly believe, is that all modern type of media since the cassette has profited more market-wise from pirating than they've lost sale-to-sale. While other factors obviously are in play, pirating is the factor that gets demonized, which I feel is just silly. This is also why I'm also giving it an exeptional position in this argumentation.
On December 01 2011 04:54 jj33 wrote: Alot of justification for pirating in here.
We live in a culture of something for nothing and me me me.
I love pc games and console games, but when I hear of PC elitists crying about how a game was developed mostly for console like skyrim and not tapping into the true potential of PC and how consoles are ruining pc gaming etc, that just makes me laugh.
More and more developers will primiarly develop for consoles, they want to make money not lose money.
Console games are pirated too. Pirated ALOT more than you think they are.
I know they are, but there is a reason why alot of developers love consoles.
I'm pretty sure they make more money on consoles than PC. There is a reason why skyrim was developed for 360 primarily and not PC.
You know what is different now? Demos. Or lack of them.
Remember back in the 90s you could download demos? Or if you subscribed to some gaming mag you got demo CDs every month with 6 to 12 demos on them?
Now game companies want us to just straight up believe their advertising hype(bull shit usually) and buy the shitty 70 dollar game on a whim. Fuck that. Honestly these days I feel like that for a game to be worth 50+ dollars it better have more than 10 hours of gameplay on it that's not useless time sinks.
On December 01 2011 04:44 jtype wrote: OK, lets get this straight. To those of you who think piracy is harming the industry. Actually, let me rephrase that. To those of you who think piracy in no way helps the industry - Do you really think that if it was as clear cut as you think it is and every developer 'knew' that piracy was only bad for the industry and was ruining it, that we'd be able to pirate games at all?
Just throwing this out there, as I think too many people think this issue is more clear-cut than it is. Developers aren't the good guys and pirates aren't the bad guys. The reverse is also not true. Don't imagine that DRM is what you're told to believe it is. Don't imagine that piracy is what you've been taught to believe it is.
Personally, I buy my games, but I don't think that piracy the evil that some of you think it is and I don't think developers are stupid enough to think that either.
It will be 100% impossible to pirate Diablo III since the entire game is emulated on the Blizzard servers. The only reason we've been able to pirate games up to this point is because developers and publishers haven't had the technology to keep us from doing so. They have the technology now.
Impossible huh? I think you will be surprised...
How many people played online SC2 without a key?
A good amount. Pirate servers do exist.
Only with the Taiwanese client...where you can't change the player names or starting colors and there is obviously no ladder.
On December 01 2011 04:37 HereAndNow wrote: They also knew that they weren't going to sell a full rule book to each player, and accounted for that. Same for DnD books. They expect you to buy your pieces for the full experience.
I've been watching this discussion for a few pages now but I have to step in here and say - what makes you think this isn't being done for video games? High prices to compensate for lost sales I mean.
Yeah, and I'd much prefer if my DnD DMG didn't cost an arm and a leg.
Like I said in a previous post, if there were less pirates, there'd be lower prices, and less need for pirates. But no one wants to put up with the inbetween stage of buying games and proving to developers that they can actually lower the price and still make a profit.
Again, an argument you can turn around - no developer wants to be at the inbetween stage of lowering their prices before increased sales either.
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.
You're being obtuse. You do not have all the parts for a game. You have the hardware to run it on. There is a distinct difference, and if you don't know that, you're completely uneducated when it comes to technology.
Making your own pancake is the analogy for making your own game. Let's say SC2 just came out. You don't want to buy it. So you sit in front of your computer, and you make a RTS with three races that plays similarly to SC2. That's not piracy. Pirating SC2 is piracy. The former means nothing to Blizzard unless you infringe copyright by naming everything the same. The latter is punishable.
If you really work for a software company, you should know that your product is an idea. That's why you don't sell a good, you sell a license. You sell the right to use your idea.
A pancake is not sold this way. Not even recipe books are sold this way. Because it's ridiculous, a pancake recipe is such a simple idea that it's just so incredibly stupid to think of controlling it.
The internet has made controlling software just as hard. It has made controllyng ANY idea unfeasible. But if you don't like this, and try to fix it by calling things theft, then acknowledge that using a recipe you didn't invent is stealing. You are not in the moral highground. You are just trying to defend your interests.
And you have the moral high ground? Cute.
Can someone make our software? Yeah, we have competitors who sell basically the same product. We sell customer support, a better interface, etc.
A game is not just an idea. It's the engine, the system, the VA, the music, the experience. You're not downloading an idea, you're downloading hours of time and energy, taking it for granted when you could not produce the same experience yourself. The pancake analogy doesn't even work in this regard. Could you build Skyrim on your computer without using any proprietary or open-source software? I'll wait.
...No? Well damn, you probably need the game. Your choices are buy it legally or download it illegally. There is no middle ground where you're still a good person but don't pay anything. You're performing an illegal act for one reason or another.
So yes, I do have the moral high ground. Until buying games from a distributor is punishable by law, you're not going to have moral high ground against people who buy games.
Could you come up on your own with a good recipe? Some people can, they do that as a job. Guess: they need to put time and effort into it. There is no music but eating sure is an experience.
Yet no cook puts an EULA in front of their recipes. You know, "you are not allowed to add salt, perpetrators will be punished by law". It is accepted that recipes do not work this way. Does a cook have moral highground? who cares? they can make a living. They may have to actually cook and not just sell recipes, but they are not bitching about it, because they don't expect people to believe that copying a recipe is theft.
That's still not the same thing, you're still being obtuse. Do you not know what that means? It means being difficult for the sake of being difficult. We call it trolling nowadays.
Giving out a recipe is the same as giving out source code, which a lot of companies do, like the Source and Unreal engines. If I gave you Source, could you make HL2:Episode 3? Probably not, which is why I'm going to pay Valve for it eventually.
You're not copying a recipe and making it yourself, you're copying a whole meal and walking out on the check.
I'm not sure where you got this idea. An HL2 binary is a string that becomes the game when run on a computer. A recipe is a string that becomes a pancake when run on eggs. Source code is just the binary in Chinese so I have to find a translator first. They are all just ideas. Without computers or ingredients they are worthless. Otherwise they have value. A recipe has value because people are willing to pay to go eat in a good restaurant. A game should have value because you want to force people to pay to play it. The problem is that you can't. You need to find value elsewhere.
On December 01 2011 04:54 jj33 wrote: Alot of justification for pirating in here.
We live in a culture of something for nothing and me me me.
I love pc games and console games, but when I hear of PC elitists crying about how a game was developed mostly for console like skyrim and not tapping into the true potential of PC and how consoles are ruining pc gaming etc, that just makes me laugh.
More and more developers will primiarly develop for consoles, they want to make money not lose money.
Console games are pirated too. Pirated ALOT more than you think they are.
Worse even, is the fact that every time a game is sold second-hand, it not only has the same affect as pirating the game, but someone else who ISN'T the game publisher/developer makes a profit off of it. It's considered an even bigger problem than piracy itself in much of the console industry.
You are right, second hand sales from gamestop for example are hurting the game companies.
Hence why they want to get rid of gamestop and eventually get digital downloads straight from them.
Here's the thing, you seem to want to justify piracy and say it's not that bad because second hand used games sales are worse.
I'm not sitting on a high horse, but people trying to justify piracy and saying it's not THAT bad is just hilarious to me.
As much as people bitch about it, I think the best idea is first day buy bonuses that you have to confirm online, or in-store bonuses. I've payed extra for art books or something like that, collectibles and what not, if every game came with some sort of registration bonus, it might help.
Then again, it might not, depending on how many people are interested in stuff like that.
On December 01 2011 04:44 jtype wrote: OK, lets get this straight. To those of you who think piracy is harming the industry. Actually, let me rephrase that. To those of you who think piracy in no way helps the industry - Do you really think that if it was as clear cut as you think it is and every developer 'knew' that piracy was only bad for the industry and was ruining it, that we'd be able to pirate games at all?
Just throwing this out there, as I think too many people think this issue is more clear-cut than it is. Developers aren't the good guys and pirates aren't the bad guys. The reverse is also not true. Don't imagine that DRM is what you're told to believe it is. Don't imagine that piracy is what you've been taught to believe it is.
Personally, I buy my games, but I don't think that piracy the evil that some of you think it is and I don't think developers are stupid enough to think that either.
It will be 100% impossible to pirate Diablo III since the entire game is emulated on the Blizzard servers. The only reason we've been able to pirate games up to this point is because developers and publishers haven't had the technology to keep us from doing so. They have the technology now.
Impossible huh? I think you will be surprised...
How many people played online SC2 without a key?
A good amount. Pirate servers do exist.
I'm talking about on the normal ladder. Not any private server. The correct answer is none.
On December 01 2011 04:37 HereAndNow wrote: They also knew that they weren't going to sell a full rule book to each player, and accounted for that. Same for DnD books. They expect you to buy your pieces for the full experience.
I've been watching this discussion for a few pages now but I have to step in here and say - what makes you think this isn't being done for video games? High prices to compensate for lost sales I mean.
Yeah, and I'd much prefer if my DnD DMG didn't cost an arm and a leg.
Like I said in a previous post, if there were less pirates, there'd be lower prices, and less need for pirates. But no one wants to put up with the inbetween stage of buying games and proving to developers that they can actually lower the price and still make a profit.
Again, an argument you can turn around - no developer wants to be at the inbetween stage of lowering their prices before increased sales either.
Because actually, in pure business terms, paying 50$ for a game is basically proving that the game is worth 50$. No one in their right mind can truly believe that more people paying 50$ for a game is going to make developers decide to sell their next game for less that.
On December 01 2011 04:44 jtype wrote: OK, lets get this straight. To those of you who think piracy is harming the industry. Actually, let me rephrase that. To those of you who think piracy in no way helps the industry - Do you really think that if it was as clear cut as you think it is and every developer 'knew' that piracy was only bad for the industry and was ruining it, that we'd be able to pirate games at all?
Just throwing this out there, as I think too many people think this issue is more clear-cut than it is. Developers aren't the good guys and pirates aren't the bad guys. The reverse is also not true. Don't imagine that DRM is what you're told to believe it is. Don't imagine that piracy is what you've been taught to believe it is.
Personally, I buy my games, but I don't think that piracy the evil that some of you think it is and I don't think developers are stupid enough to think that either.
It will be 100% impossible to pirate Diablo III since the entire game is emulated on the Blizzard servers. The only reason we've been able to pirate games up to this point is because developers and publishers haven't had the technology to keep us from doing so. They have the technology now.
Impossible huh? I think you will be surprised...
How many people played online SC2 without a key?
A good amount. Pirate servers do exist.
I'm talking about on the normal ladder. Not any private server. The correct answer is none.
It's still cracked and people are still playing over the internet without purchasing the game.
On December 01 2011 04:44 jtype wrote: OK, lets get this straight. To those of you who think piracy is harming the industry. Actually, let me rephrase that. To those of you who think piracy in no way helps the industry - Do you really think that if it was as clear cut as you think it is and every developer 'knew' that piracy was only bad for the industry and was ruining it, that we'd be able to pirate games at all?
Just throwing this out there, as I think too many people think this issue is more clear-cut than it is. Developers aren't the good guys and pirates aren't the bad guys. The reverse is also not true. Don't imagine that DRM is what you're told to believe it is. Don't imagine that piracy is what you've been taught to believe it is.
Personally, I buy my games, but I don't think that piracy the evil that some of you think it is and I don't think developers are stupid enough to think that either.
It will be 100% impossible to pirate Diablo III since the entire game is emulated on the Blizzard servers. The only reason we've been able to pirate games up to this point is because developers and publishers haven't had the technology to keep us from doing so. They have the technology now.
Impossible huh? I think you will be surprised...
How many people played online SC2 without a key?
A good amount. Pirate servers do exist.
I'm talking about on the normal ladder. Not any private server. The correct answer is none.
Well, "How many people played online SC2 without a key?" was your question. The answer is that some people did. And if it wasnt on the official servers, so what? It was still online with the same basic experience. Not all the features maybe, but it was still possible, and will be possible for D3 as well.
On December 01 2011 04:54 jj33 wrote: Alot of justification for pirating in here.
We live in a culture of something for nothing and me me me.
I love pc games and console games, but when I hear of PC elitists crying about how a game was developed mostly for console like skyrim and not tapping into the true potential of PC and how consoles are ruining pc gaming etc, that just makes me laugh.
More and more developers will primiarly develop for consoles, they want to make money not lose money.
Console games are pirated too. Pirated ALOT more than you think they are.
I know they are, but there is a reason why alot of developers love consoles.
I'm pretty sure they make more money on consoles than PC. There is a reason why skyrim was developed for 360 primarily and not PC.
Because the graphics can look super shitty and way more people play console games?
On December 01 2011 04:44 jtype wrote: OK, lets get this straight. To those of you who think piracy is harming the industry. Actually, let me rephrase that. To those of you who think piracy in no way helps the industry - Do you really think that if it was as clear cut as you think it is and every developer 'knew' that piracy was only bad for the industry and was ruining it, that we'd be able to pirate games at all?
Just throwing this out there, as I think too many people think this issue is more clear-cut than it is. Developers aren't the good guys and pirates aren't the bad guys. The reverse is also not true. Don't imagine that DRM is what you're told to believe it is. Don't imagine that piracy is what you've been taught to believe it is.
Personally, I buy my games, but I don't think that piracy the evil that some of you think it is and I don't think developers are stupid enough to think that either.
It will be 100% impossible to pirate Diablo III since the entire game is emulated on the Blizzard servers. The only reason we've been able to pirate games up to this point is because developers and publishers haven't had the technology to keep us from doing so. They have the technology now.
Impossible huh? I think you will be surprised...
How many people played online SC2 without a key?
A good amount. Pirate servers do exist.
I'm talking about on the normal ladder. Not any private server. The correct answer is none.
Well, "How many people played online SC2 without a key?" was your question. The answer is that some people did. And if it wasnt on the official servers, so what? It was still online with the same basic experience. Not all the features maybe, but it was still possible, and will be possible for D3 as well.
I just rephrased my question that I posted a little above which was "How many people played the ladder on sc2 without a key?"
If it wasn't on official servers...well then it's not even worth it to play much is it? How many people play WoW on private servers? A drop in a bucket compared to the real servers.
Most downloaded games end up getting deleted after, between, a few minutes or a couple of hours of play.... the vast majority of games released these days are a little bit garbage; this was true of 10 years ago too.
Every good game i've played i've gone and bought... steam helps with this greatly as off-the-shelf games in Australia are ridiculously overpriced.
I didn't buy SC2 until I'd played my friend's copy. The only two games I ever bought blindly (without playing at all) were Goldeneye 007 and Total Annihilation lol
On December 01 2011 04:54 jj33 wrote: Alot of justification for pirating in here.
We live in a culture of something for nothing and me me me.
I love pc games and console games, but when I hear of PC elitists crying about how a game was developed mostly for console like skyrim and not tapping into the true potential of PC and how consoles are ruining pc gaming etc, that just makes me laugh.
More and more developers will primiarly develop for consoles, they want to make money not lose money.
Console games are pirated too. Pirated ALOT more than you think they are.
I know they are, but there is a reason why alot of developers love consoles.
I'm pretty sure they make more money on consoles than PC. There is a reason why skyrim was developed for 360 primarily and not PC.
Because the graphics can look super shitty and way more people play console games?
On December 01 2011 04:54 jj33 wrote: Alot of justification for pirating in here.
We live in a culture of something for nothing and me me me.
I love pc games and console games, but when I hear of PC elitists crying about how a game was developed mostly for console like skyrim and not tapping into the true potential of PC and how consoles are ruining pc gaming etc, that just makes me laugh.
More and more developers will primiarly develop for consoles, they want to make money not lose money.
Console games are pirated too. Pirated ALOT more than you think they are.
Worse even, is the fact that every time a game is sold second-hand, it not only has the same affect as pirating the game, but someone else who ISN'T the game publisher/developer makes a profit off of it. It's considered an even bigger problem than piracy itself in much of the console industry.
You are right, second hand sales from gamestop for example are hurting the game companies.
Hence why they want to get rid of gamestop and eventually get digital downloads straight from them.
Here's the thing, you seem to want to justify piracy and say it's not that bad because second hand used games sales are worse.
I'm not sitting on a high horse, but people trying to justify piracy and saying it's not THAT bad is just hilarious to me.
I'm not trying to justify piracy at all. You seem to have mistaken me for someone else.
The reason that second-hand sales are worse is that they actually represent a concrete SALE. Whereas not every pirated copy of a game represents the same.
On December 01 2011 05:10 magicmUnky wrote: Most downloaded games end up getting deleted after, between, a few minutes or a couple of hours of play.... the vast majority of games released these days are a little bit garbage; this was true of 10 years ago too.
Every good game i've played i've gone and bought... steam helps with this greatly as off-the-shelf games in Australia are ridiculously overpriced.
I didn't buy SC2 until I'd played my friend's copy. The only two games I ever bought blindly (without playing at all) were Goldeneye 007 and Total Annihilation lol
I bought Bastion blindly, and oh my god, awesome game, but not long of gameplay...but that game was 100% awesome.
On December 01 2011 04:54 jj33 wrote: Alot of justification for pirating in here.
We live in a culture of something for nothing and me me me.
I love pc games and console games, but when I hear of PC elitists crying about how a game was developed mostly for console like skyrim and not tapping into the true potential of PC and how consoles are ruining pc gaming etc, that just makes me laugh.
More and more developers will primiarly develop for consoles, they want to make money not lose money.
Console games are pirated too. Pirated ALOT more than you think they are.
I know they are, but there is a reason why alot of developers love consoles.
I'm pretty sure they make more money on consoles than PC. There is a reason why skyrim was developed for 360 primarily and not PC.
Because the graphics can look super shitty and way more people play console games?
On December 01 2011 04:54 jj33 wrote: Alot of justification for pirating in here.
We live in a culture of something for nothing and me me me.
I love pc games and console games, but when I hear of PC elitists crying about how a game was developed mostly for console like skyrim and not tapping into the true potential of PC and how consoles are ruining pc gaming etc, that just makes me laugh.
More and more developers will primiarly develop for consoles, they want to make money not lose money.
Console games are pirated too. Pirated ALOT more than you think they are.
I know they are, but there is a reason why alot of developers love consoles.
I'm pretty sure they make more money on consoles than PC. There is a reason why skyrim was developed for 360 primarily and not PC.
Because the graphics can look super shitty and way more people play console games?
On December 01 2011 04:44 jtype wrote: OK, lets get this straight. To those of you who think piracy is harming the industry. Actually, let me rephrase that. To those of you who think piracy in no way helps the industry - Do you really think that if it was as clear cut as you think it is and every developer 'knew' that piracy was only bad for the industry and was ruining it, that we'd be able to pirate games at all?
Just throwing this out there, as I think too many people think this issue is more clear-cut than it is. Developers aren't the good guys and pirates aren't the bad guys. The reverse is also not true. Don't imagine that DRM is what you're told to believe it is. Don't imagine that piracy is what you've been taught to believe it is.
Personally, I buy my games, but I don't think that piracy the evil that some of you think it is and I don't think developers are stupid enough to think that either.
It will be 100% impossible to pirate Diablo III since the entire game is emulated on the Blizzard servers. The only reason we've been able to pirate games up to this point is because developers and publishers haven't had the technology to keep us from doing so. They have the technology now.
Impossible huh? I think you will be surprised...
How many people played online SC2 without a key?
A good amount. Pirate servers do exist.
I'm talking about on the normal ladder. Not any private server. The correct answer is none.
Well, "How many people played online SC2 without a key?" was your question. The answer is that some people did. And if it wasnt on the official servers, so what? It was still online with the same basic experience. Not all the features maybe, but it was still possible, and will be possible for D3 as well.
I just rephrased my question that I posted a little above which was "How many people played the ladder on sc2 without a key?"
If it wasn't on official servers...well then it's not even worth it to play much is it? How many people play WoW on private servers? A drop in a bucket compared to the real servers.
What do you mean by that? I am willing to wager that alot of those who pirated found thier time as well spent as anyone who bought the game. And alot, ALOT, of people play WoW on private servers.
On December 01 2011 04:54 jj33 wrote: Alot of justification for pirating in here.
We live in a culture of something for nothing and me me me.
I love pc games and console games, but when I hear of PC elitists crying about how a game was developed mostly for console like skyrim and not tapping into the true potential of PC and how consoles are ruining pc gaming etc, that just makes me laugh.
More and more developers will primiarly develop for consoles, they want to make money not lose money.
Console games are pirated too. Pirated ALOT more than you think they are.
Worse even, is the fact that every time a game is sold second-hand, it not only has the same affect as pirating the game, but someone else who ISN'T the game publisher/developer makes a profit off of it. It's considered an even bigger problem than piracy itself in much of the console industry.
You are right, second hand sales from gamestop for example are hurting the game companies.
Hence why they want to get rid of gamestop and eventually get digital downloads straight from them.
Here's the thing, you seem to want to justify piracy and say it's not that bad because second hand used games sales are worse.
I'm not sitting on a high horse, but people trying to justify piracy and saying it's not THAT bad is just hilarious to me.
I'm not trying to justify piracy at all. You seem to have mistaken me for someone else.
The reason that second-hand sales are worse is that they actually represent a concrete SALE. Whereas not every pirated copy of a game represents the same.
Used game sales absolutely do not represent a concrete sale. If someone buys a game for $15 you have no way of knowing whether they would have bought it for $50 if that was their only option. They may have simply opted to not buy the game or buy a different game.
Also, the person who sold said used game might've used the money they got for the trade-in to purchase a new game themselves. In that scenario, used game sales increase new game sales.
On December 01 2011 04:54 jj33 wrote: Alot of justification for pirating in here.
We live in a culture of something for nothing and me me me.
I love pc games and console games, but when I hear of PC elitists crying about how a game was developed mostly for console like skyrim and not tapping into the true potential of PC and how consoles are ruining pc gaming etc, that just makes me laugh.
More and more developers will primiarly develop for consoles, they want to make money not lose money.
Console games are pirated too. Pirated ALOT more than you think they are.
I know they are, but there is a reason why alot of developers love consoles.
I'm pretty sure they make more money on consoles than PC. There is a reason why skyrim was developed for 360 primarily and not PC.
Because the graphics can look super shitty and way more people play console games?
On December 01 2011 04:44 jtype wrote: OK, lets get this straight. To those of you who think piracy is harming the industry. Actually, let me rephrase that. To those of you who think piracy in no way helps the industry - Do you really think that if it was as clear cut as you think it is and every developer 'knew' that piracy was only bad for the industry and was ruining it, that we'd be able to pirate games at all?
Just throwing this out there, as I think too many people think this issue is more clear-cut than it is. Developers aren't the good guys and pirates aren't the bad guys. The reverse is also not true. Don't imagine that DRM is what you're told to believe it is. Don't imagine that piracy is what you've been taught to believe it is.
Personally, I buy my games, but I don't think that piracy the evil that some of you think it is and I don't think developers are stupid enough to think that either.
It will be 100% impossible to pirate Diablo III since the entire game is emulated on the Blizzard servers. The only reason we've been able to pirate games up to this point is because developers and publishers haven't had the technology to keep us from doing so. They have the technology now.
Impossible huh? I think you will be surprised...
How many people played online SC2 without a key?
A good amount. Pirate servers do exist.
I'm talking about on the normal ladder. Not any private server. The correct answer is none.
Well, "How many people played online SC2 without a key?" was your question. The answer is that some people did. And if it wasnt on the official servers, so what? It was still online with the same basic experience. Not all the features maybe, but it was still possible, and will be possible for D3 as well.
I just rephrased my question that I posted a little above which was "How many people played the ladder on sc2 without a key?"
If it wasn't on official servers...well then it's not even worth it to play much is it? How many people play WoW on private servers? A drop in a bucket compared to the real servers.
Yes it's true way more people are on consoles. That is a big reason definitely, but the fact that pc games get pirated to hell is another reason they go console.
Yes I know console games get pirated, but I'm pretty sure PC piracy still surpasses it.
Oblivion got pirated badly when it came out on PC, pretty sure Bethesda took note of that was a big reason why they went 360 for primary development.
On December 01 2011 02:19 dementrio wrote: I have a better analogy than stealing. + Show Spoiler +
it's not hard to find one, because, well, piracy isn't stealing
You live in San Diego and you just turned 21. You go party hard in Mexico, where a bottle of tequila costs $10. The same bottle in the US costs $20, because there is heavy tax on alcohol thanks to the liberal media.
You drink a bottle and come back for the hangover. How much did you steal from the US government?
That's not a good analogy, because you're still paying for the service. If I could find the same game in two places, but one charged me $20 dollars less, it's still a sale.
A better analogy is this. You have a magic gun that lets you clone anything you shoot with it. You walk onto a car dealership. You shoot a Camaro. You drive off in a brand new Camaro that you didn't pay for, but the one you cloned is still there.
Is this stealing a car? Yeah. Yeah it fucking is.
No, it's not. The owner of the original car still has it. You took a car that wasn't created and/or paid for by him in any capacity. #1 bad analogy.
Alright, now what's to prevent 1000 people from walking on to the lot and doing the same thing? The going price of the 2011 Camaro is ~$35k. That's $35,000,000 worth of car that's driving out without being paid for.
Oh look, the Camaro isn't being made anymore!
But why? I still want a new Camaro even if I don't pay for it!
Well you see, you fucking need to pay people for a service, or they're not going to keep making products because there's no revenue in it.
How many pirates do you think are out there?
Lol... if I clone a Camaro that goes at $35000, that's not $35000 lost for the company, since I can't afford it anyway. Now, with cars, there's a multitue of price ranges and different types, etc. So I'm able to afford a car. True, it's not as good as the Camaro, but it works.
With computer games, however, I'm stuck with paying 60 Euro for a product, that I will add, costs 30 Euro in Finland (which I only found out today, thanks to this thread) - a country in which, a person at minimum wage earns 10 times what a person in my country does.
It is $35000 wasted for the company though. Why should they even bother making cars when they won't sell? Again, this doesn't work for gaming because the games don't disappear, but the point still stands.
Why do you spend time and money making a game that a good chunk of the people aren't going to pay for? You'll just run yourself broke that way.
Do you even read what I write?
People that pirate games can't afford them, due to poor pricing in most of the cases. If pirating was impossible, they still wouldn't have bought them. You can't magically wish more money into existance.
Stop throwing out absolutes. Yes, some people who pirate stuff wouldn't be able to buy if they wanted to. There are others though who simply don't want to pay. As well as people who want a good demo, or are 'making a statement'. So again, stop posting absolutes as to why pirating happens - there are a variety of reasons.
I would say the majority of people who download games illegally either 1. Can't afford them, or 2. Wouldn't buy them in the first place. I have friends with hundreds of GB of illegal games on their hard drives that they just download compulsively, because they can, same with music/movies. They never watch the movies, listen to the music, or play the games most of the time. Pirating games and getting them to work properly can be a pain in the butt if you actually spend a lot of time with the game(and depending on the game). Obviously this is just my experience, but people seeing "millions of illegal downloads" and them thinking that is millions in lost sales are delusional. And stupid, considering that an illegal download from someone that would never be able to buy it/just won't buy it in the first place doesn't affect them in the slightest other than free publicity.
I don't disagree. A friend of mine has hundreds of gigs of songs on his computer. He could have never afforded to buy all of it. However, the problem is that you aren't paying for any of it. Normally, you might consume 1/5 of what you pirate(pulled out of my ass, don't take seriously) so you'd be contributing to some people. By pirating it all you're contributing to no one.
I'm not arguing morality, I'm arguing business. Morally, pirating is wrong. From a business side of it, though, I don't see how all this ridiculous, expensive, hard to use DRM makes sense.
On December 01 2011 04:54 jj33 wrote: Alot of justification for pirating in here.
We live in a culture of something for nothing and me me me.
I love pc games and console games, but when I hear of PC elitists crying about how a game was developed mostly for console like skyrim and not tapping into the true potential of PC and how consoles are ruining pc gaming etc, that just makes me laugh.
More and more developers will primiarly develop for consoles, they want to make money not lose money.
Console games are pirated too. Pirated ALOT more than you think they are.
Worse even, is the fact that every time a game is sold second-hand, it not only has the same affect as pirating the game, but someone else who ISN'T the game publisher/developer makes a profit off of it. It's considered an even bigger problem than piracy itself in much of the console industry.
You are right, second hand sales from gamestop for example are hurting the game companies.
Hence why they want to get rid of gamestop and eventually get digital downloads straight from them.
Here's the thing, you seem to want to justify piracy and say it's not that bad because second hand used games sales are worse.
I'm not sitting on a high horse, but people trying to justify piracy and saying it's not THAT bad is just hilarious to me.
I'm not trying to justify piracy at all. You seem to have mistaken me for someone else.
The reason that second-hand sales are worse is that they actually represent a concrete SALE. Whereas not every pirated copy of a game represents the same.
Used game sales absolutely do not represent a concrete sale. If someone buys a game for $15 you have no way of knowing whether they would have bought it for $50 if that was their only option. They may have simply opted to not buy the game or buy a different game.
Also, the person who sold said used game might've used the money they got for the trade-in to purchase a new game themselves. In that scenario, used game sales increase new game sales.
They absolutely DO represent a concrete sale. If the game is sold, it's a SALE. Naturally, because it's second-hand it's worth less than a brand new copy, but it is still a sale that the developer could have made potential profit off of. If Gamestop, for instance, weren't Gamestop, but was "The Nintendo Store" owned and operated by Nintendo, and people brought in their used games to trade for new games, and then Nintendo sold those second-hand games for $15, they'd be making a profit that they aren't currently making, because right now Gamestop makes that money.
On December 01 2011 04:54 jj33 wrote: Alot of justification for pirating in here.
We live in a culture of something for nothing and me me me.
I love pc games and console games, but when I hear of PC elitists crying about how a game was developed mostly for console like skyrim and not tapping into the true potential of PC and how consoles are ruining pc gaming etc, that just makes me laugh.
More and more developers will primiarly develop for consoles, they want to make money not lose money.
Console games are pirated too. Pirated ALOT more than you think they are.
I know they are, but there is a reason why alot of developers love consoles.
I'm pretty sure they make more money on consoles than PC. There is a reason why skyrim was developed for 360 primarily and not PC.
Because the graphics can look super shitty and way more people play console games?
On December 01 2011 05:09 Interloper wrote:
On December 01 2011 05:07 Silidons wrote:
On December 01 2011 04:58 Myles wrote:
On December 01 2011 04:56 Silidons wrote:
On December 01 2011 04:53 Interloper wrote:
On December 01 2011 04:47 Klondikebar wrote:
On December 01 2011 04:44 jtype wrote: OK, lets get this straight. To those of you who think piracy is harming the industry. Actually, let me rephrase that. To those of you who think piracy in no way helps the industry - Do you really think that if it was as clear cut as you think it is and every developer 'knew' that piracy was only bad for the industry and was ruining it, that we'd be able to pirate games at all?
Just throwing this out there, as I think too many people think this issue is more clear-cut than it is. Developers aren't the good guys and pirates aren't the bad guys. The reverse is also not true. Don't imagine that DRM is what you're told to believe it is. Don't imagine that piracy is what you've been taught to believe it is.
Personally, I buy my games, but I don't think that piracy the evil that some of you think it is and I don't think developers are stupid enough to think that either.
It will be 100% impossible to pirate Diablo III since the entire game is emulated on the Blizzard servers. The only reason we've been able to pirate games up to this point is because developers and publishers haven't had the technology to keep us from doing so. They have the technology now.
Impossible huh? I think you will be surprised...
How many people played online SC2 without a key?
A good amount. Pirate servers do exist.
I'm talking about on the normal ladder. Not any private server. The correct answer is none.
Well, "How many people played online SC2 without a key?" was your question. The answer is that some people did. And if it wasnt on the official servers, so what? It was still online with the same basic experience. Not all the features maybe, but it was still possible, and will be possible for D3 as well.
I just rephrased my question that I posted a little above which was "How many people played the ladder on sc2 without a key?"
If it wasn't on official servers...well then it's not even worth it to play much is it? How many people play WoW on private servers? A drop in a bucket compared to the real servers.
Yes it's true way more people are on consoles. That is a big reason definitely, but the fact that pc games get pirated to hell is another reason they go console.
Yes I know console games get pirated, but I'm pretty sure PC piracy still surpasses it.
Oblivion got pirated badly when it came out on PC, pretty sure Bethesda took note of that was a big reason why they went 360 for primary development.
No, I think developers primarily develop games on consoles because it's easier to create a simple, console-friendly interface and port it to the pc, than vice-versa. They may state pc piracy as their reason, but that's a different issue.
On December 01 2011 04:37 HereAndNow wrote: They also knew that they weren't going to sell a full rule book to each player, and accounted for that. Same for DnD books. They expect you to buy your pieces for the full experience.
I've been watching this discussion for a few pages now but I have to step in here and say - what makes you think this isn't being done for video games? High prices to compensate for lost sales I mean.
Yeah, and I'd much prefer if my DnD DMG didn't cost an arm and a leg.
Like I said in a previous post, if there were less pirates, there'd be lower prices, and less need for pirates. But no one wants to put up with the inbetween stage of buying games and proving to developers that they can actually lower the price and still make a profit.
Again, an argument you can turn around - no developer wants to be at the inbetween stage of lowering their prices before increased sales either.
Because actually, in pure business terms, paying 50$ for a game is basically proving that the game is worth 50$. No one in their right mind can truly believe that more people paying 50$ for a game is going to make developers decide to sell their next game for less that.
Which is why not pirating and supporting a game will never make the price drop, whereas developers dropping the price will not necessarily lead to loss of income (due to an increase in sales).
The problem here is that like all piracy arguments, it can't be quantified to any extent so the status quo will most likely be preserved (save for incredibly intrusive laws like SOPA/PIPA which I am against). Considering that the industry isn't exactly shrinking, I don't think the status quo right now is that bad.
On December 01 2011 04:54 jj33 wrote: Alot of justification for pirating in here.
We live in a culture of something for nothing and me me me.
I love pc games and console games, but when I hear of PC elitists crying about how a game was developed mostly for console like skyrim and not tapping into the true potential of PC and how consoles are ruining pc gaming etc, that just makes me laugh.
More and more developers will primiarly develop for consoles, they want to make money not lose money.
Console games are pirated too. Pirated ALOT more than you think they are.
Worse even, is the fact that every time a game is sold second-hand, it not only has the same affect as pirating the game, but someone else who ISN'T the game publisher/developer makes a profit off of it. It's considered an even bigger problem than piracy itself in much of the console industry.
You are right, second hand sales from gamestop for example are hurting the game companies.
Hence why they want to get rid of gamestop and eventually get digital downloads straight from them.
Here's the thing, you seem to want to justify piracy and say it's not that bad because second hand used games sales are worse.
I'm not sitting on a high horse, but people trying to justify piracy and saying it's not THAT bad is just hilarious to me.
I'm not trying to justify piracy at all. You seem to have mistaken me for someone else.
The reason that second-hand sales are worse is that they actually represent a concrete SALE. Whereas not every pirated copy of a game represents the same.
Used game sales absolutely do not represent a concrete sale. If someone buys a game for $15 you have no way of knowing whether they would have bought it for $50 if that was their only option. They may have simply opted to not buy the game or buy a different game.
Also, the person who sold said used game might've used the money they got for the trade-in to purchase a new game themselves. In that scenario, used game sales increase new game sales.
They absolutely DO represent a concrete sale. If the game is sold, it's a SALE. Naturally, because it's second-hand it's worth less than a brand new copy, but it is still a sale that the developer could have made potential profit off of. If Gamestop, for instance, weren't Gamestop, but was "The Nintendo Store" owned and operated by Nintendo, and people brought in their used games to trade for new games, and then Nintendo sold those second-hand games for $15, they'd be making a profit that they aren't currently making, because right now Gamestop makes that money.
I know HOW used games work. I'm just not convinced that if you took away used game sales, new sales would improve. I would argue they would actually get worse.
On December 01 2011 04:54 jj33 wrote: Alot of justification for pirating in here.
We live in a culture of something for nothing and me me me.
I love pc games and console games, but when I hear of PC elitists crying about how a game was developed mostly for console like skyrim and not tapping into the true potential of PC and how consoles are ruining pc gaming etc, that just makes me laugh.
More and more developers will primiarly develop for consoles, they want to make money not lose money.
Console games are pirated too. Pirated ALOT more than you think they are.
I know they are, but there is a reason why alot of developers love consoles.
I'm pretty sure they make more money on consoles than PC. There is a reason why skyrim was developed for 360 primarily and not PC.
Because the graphics can look super shitty and way more people play console games?
On December 01 2011 05:09 Interloper wrote:
On December 01 2011 05:07 Silidons wrote:
On December 01 2011 04:58 Myles wrote:
On December 01 2011 04:56 Silidons wrote:
On December 01 2011 04:53 Interloper wrote:
On December 01 2011 04:47 Klondikebar wrote:
On December 01 2011 04:44 jtype wrote: OK, lets get this straight. To those of you who think piracy is harming the industry. Actually, let me rephrase that. To those of you who think piracy in no way helps the industry - Do you really think that if it was as clear cut as you think it is and every developer 'knew' that piracy was only bad for the industry and was ruining it, that we'd be able to pirate games at all?
Just throwing this out there, as I think too many people think this issue is more clear-cut than it is. Developers aren't the good guys and pirates aren't the bad guys. The reverse is also not true. Don't imagine that DRM is what you're told to believe it is. Don't imagine that piracy is what you've been taught to believe it is.
Personally, I buy my games, but I don't think that piracy the evil that some of you think it is and I don't think developers are stupid enough to think that either.
It will be 100% impossible to pirate Diablo III since the entire game is emulated on the Blizzard servers. The only reason we've been able to pirate games up to this point is because developers and publishers haven't had the technology to keep us from doing so. They have the technology now.
Impossible huh? I think you will be surprised...
How many people played online SC2 without a key?
A good amount. Pirate servers do exist.
I'm talking about on the normal ladder. Not any private server. The correct answer is none.
Well, "How many people played online SC2 without a key?" was your question. The answer is that some people did. And if it wasnt on the official servers, so what? It was still online with the same basic experience. Not all the features maybe, but it was still possible, and will be possible for D3 as well.
I just rephrased my question that I posted a little above which was "How many people played the ladder on sc2 without a key?"
If it wasn't on official servers...well then it's not even worth it to play much is it? How many people play WoW on private servers? A drop in a bucket compared to the real servers.
Yes it's true way more people are on consoles. That is a big reason definitely, but the fact that pc games get pirated to hell is another reason they go console.
Yes I know console games get pirated, but I'm pretty sure PC piracy still surpasses it.
Oblivion got pirated badly when it came out on PC, pretty sure Bethesda took note of that was a big reason why they went 360 for primary development.
No, I think developers primarily develop games on consoles because it's easier to create a simple, console-friendly interface and port it to the pc, than vice-versa. They may state pc piracy as their reason, but that's a different issue.
And as a recent example of Skyrim, PC scene has the right to hate the guts out of developers who take the lazy way around and simply do a shitty port over to PC from console when it comes to control scheme. How godawful UI and controls can you bear before you put your hands up and say this shit is enough?
Extremely laggy, unresponsive mouse control, UI menus clearly suited for pads, not mice and things like your mouse Y movement being dependant on your FPS, menu items not registering a mouse click over them, quality issues like this aren't really the thing to boost your sales >_>
So many people here trying to justify stealing to ease their guilty minds. You are without permission, taking intellectual property that the owner intended to sell. If you don't have the money then you shouldn't have it.
We have access to gameplay footage on Youtube, tons of reviews, Blockbuster rentals, downloadable demos, and Gamefly. Don't tell me you don't know what game you're buying and need to just "test" it out via piracy (play the entire campaign). Same applies to music. Just because the song has the ability to be reproduced in a non-physical manner does not mean that you aren't stealing. They are SELLING entertainment. Are you not entertained?
Is it OK to walk into a movie theater and sample the first 30 minutes of the movie before you buy the ticket? Of course not.
On December 01 2011 04:37 HereAndNow wrote: They also knew that they weren't going to sell a full rule book to each player, and accounted for that. Same for DnD books. They expect you to buy your pieces for the full experience.
I've been watching this discussion for a few pages now but I have to step in here and say - what makes you think this isn't being done for video games? High prices to compensate for lost sales I mean.
Yeah, and I'd much prefer if my DnD DMG didn't cost an arm and a leg.
Like I said in a previous post, if there were less pirates, there'd be lower prices, and less need for pirates. But no one wants to put up with the inbetween stage of buying games and proving to developers that they can actually lower the price and still make a profit.
Again, an argument you can turn around - no developer wants to be at the inbetween stage of lowering their prices before increased sales either.
Because actually, in pure business terms, paying 50$ for a game is basically proving that the game is worth 50$. No one in their right mind can truly believe that more people paying 50$ for a game is going to make developers decide to sell their next game for less that.
Which is why not pirating and supporting a game will never make the price drop, whereas developers dropping the price will not necessarily lead to loss of income (due to an increase in sales).
The problem here is that like all piracy arguments, it can't be quantified to any extent so the status quo will most likely be preserved (save for incredibly intrusive laws like SOPA/PIPA which I am against). Considering that the industry isn't exactly shrinking, I don't think the status quo right now is that bad.
Yea, exactly. And I've tried to make that point in various ways throughout this thread. I think you put it a bit better than I did though.
Guys, of course the 4.5 million pirated copies do not represent all the revenue lost. But that doesn't matter. I'm willing to bet the majority of these pirates never bought the real game. I'm also willing to bet that, no matter how many times you remind yourself that 4.5 million is not the true amount of copies worth of revenue lost, you cannot deny that 4.5 million is a big number. And that's all that matters. It's part of our subtler psychology, it's why products are always sold one cent below a dollar and why the "freemium" method is so good. Because there is an almost invisible, but incredibly strong influence on our perception of numbers that isn't always rational. 4.5 million may not be the actual number of copies that are owned but never bought, but it's the only number we have, and it's a big number. For the first RPG of its kind in a long time, and an absolutely AMAZING one at that, this is devastating.
On December 01 2011 04:54 jj33 wrote: Alot of justification for pirating in here.
We live in a culture of something for nothing and me me me.
I love pc games and console games, but when I hear of PC elitists crying about how a game was developed mostly for console like skyrim and not tapping into the true potential of PC and how consoles are ruining pc gaming etc, that just makes me laugh.
More and more developers will primiarly develop for consoles, they want to make money not lose money.
Console games are pirated too. Pirated ALOT more than you think they are.
Worse even, is the fact that every time a game is sold second-hand, it not only has the same affect as pirating the game, but someone else who ISN'T the game publisher/developer makes a profit off of it. It's considered an even bigger problem than piracy itself in much of the console industry.
You are right, second hand sales from gamestop for example are hurting the game companies.
Hence why they want to get rid of gamestop and eventually get digital downloads straight from them.
Here's the thing, you seem to want to justify piracy and say it's not that bad because second hand used games sales are worse.
I'm not sitting on a high horse, but people trying to justify piracy and saying it's not THAT bad is just hilarious to me.
I'm not trying to justify piracy at all. You seem to have mistaken me for someone else.
The reason that second-hand sales are worse is that they actually represent a concrete SALE. Whereas not every pirated copy of a game represents the same.
Used game sales absolutely do not represent a concrete sale. If someone buys a game for $15 you have no way of knowing whether they would have bought it for $50 if that was their only option. They may have simply opted to not buy the game or buy a different game.
Also, the person who sold said used game might've used the money they got for the trade-in to purchase a new game themselves. In that scenario, used game sales increase new game sales.
They absolutely DO represent a concrete sale. If the game is sold, it's a SALE. Naturally, because it's second-hand it's worth less than a brand new copy, but it is still a sale that the developer could have made potential profit off of. If Gamestop, for instance, weren't Gamestop, but was "The Nintendo Store" owned and operated by Nintendo, and people brought in their used games to trade for new games, and then Nintendo sold those second-hand games for $15, they'd be making a profit that they aren't currently making, because right now Gamestop makes that money.
I know HOW used games work. I'm just not convinced that if you took away used game sales, new sales would improve. I would argue they would actually get worse.
I'm not arguing that new sales would improve if used game sales were taken away. I'm arguing that developers deserve a cut of the second-hand sale.
On December 01 2011 04:54 jj33 wrote: Alot of justification for pirating in here.
We live in a culture of something for nothing and me me me.
I love pc games and console games, but when I hear of PC elitists crying about how a game was developed mostly for console like skyrim and not tapping into the true potential of PC and how consoles are ruining pc gaming etc, that just makes me laugh.
More and more developers will primiarly develop for consoles, they want to make money not lose money.
Console games are pirated too. Pirated ALOT more than you think they are.
Worse even, is the fact that every time a game is sold second-hand, it not only has the same affect as pirating the game, but someone else who ISN'T the game publisher/developer makes a profit off of it. It's considered an even bigger problem than piracy itself in much of the console industry.
You are right, second hand sales from gamestop for example are hurting the game companies.
Hence why they want to get rid of gamestop and eventually get digital downloads straight from them.
Here's the thing, you seem to want to justify piracy and say it's not that bad because second hand used games sales are worse.
I'm not sitting on a high horse, but people trying to justify piracy and saying it's not THAT bad is just hilarious to me.
I'm not trying to justify piracy at all. You seem to have mistaken me for someone else.
The reason that second-hand sales are worse is that they actually represent a concrete SALE. Whereas not every pirated copy of a game represents the same.
Used game sales absolutely do not represent a concrete sale. If someone buys a game for $15 you have no way of knowing whether they would have bought it for $50 if that was their only option. They may have simply opted to not buy the game or buy a different game.
Also, the person who sold said used game might've used the money they got for the trade-in to purchase a new game themselves. In that scenario, used game sales increase new game sales.
They absolutely DO represent a concrete sale. If the game is sold, it's a SALE. Naturally, because it's second-hand it's worth less than a brand new copy, but it is still a sale that the developer could have made potential profit off of. If Gamestop, for instance, weren't Gamestop, but was "The Nintendo Store" owned and operated by Nintendo, and people brought in their used games to trade for new games, and then Nintendo sold those second-hand games for $15, they'd be making a profit that they aren't currently making, because right now Gamestop makes that money.
I know HOW used games work. I'm just not convinced that if you took away used game sales, new sales would improve. I would argue they would actually get worse.
I'm not arguing that new sales would improve if used game sales were taken away. I'm arguing that developers deserve a cut of the second-hand sale.
Why? They didn't create anything new. They already got their payment with the original sale. Gamestop is the one who staffs the stores, rents the space to display/store the games, and bears all of the transaction costs for the used game sale.
On December 01 2011 05:31 Karnage77 wrote: So many people here trying to justify stealing to ease their guilty minds. You are without permission, taking intellectual property that the owner intended to sell. If you don't have the money then you shouldn't have it.
We have access to gameplay footage on Youtube, tons of reviews, Blockbuster rentals, downloadable demos, and Gamefly. Don't tell me you don't know what game you're buying and need to just "test" it out via piracy (play the entire campaign). Same applies to music. Just because the song has the ability to be reproduced in a non-physical manner does not mean that you aren't stealing. They are SELLING entertainment. Are you not entertained?
And there are so many people trying to defend companys who again and again make shitty content just for the sake of making money. Quality or happy customers are just a Bi-product in a best case scenario for these people. I do not understand how anyone can defend companys like Activision, Ubisoft or EA for all the shit they have pulled through the years. Piracy is the perfect method to tell a company to fuck off because it is the only way to target the only thing they care about, the money.
On December 01 2011 04:54 jj33 wrote: Alot of justification for pirating in here.
We live in a culture of something for nothing and me me me.
I love pc games and console games, but when I hear of PC elitists crying about how a game was developed mostly for console like skyrim and not tapping into the true potential of PC and how consoles are ruining pc gaming etc, that just makes me laugh.
More and more developers will primiarly develop for consoles, they want to make money not lose money.
Console games are pirated too. Pirated ALOT more than you think they are.
I know they are, but there is a reason why alot of developers love consoles.
I'm pretty sure they make more money on consoles than PC. There is a reason why skyrim was developed for 360 primarily and not PC.
Because the graphics can look super shitty and way more people play console games?
On December 01 2011 05:09 Interloper wrote:
On December 01 2011 05:07 Silidons wrote:
On December 01 2011 04:58 Myles wrote:
On December 01 2011 04:56 Silidons wrote:
On December 01 2011 04:53 Interloper wrote:
On December 01 2011 04:47 Klondikebar wrote:
On December 01 2011 04:44 jtype wrote: OK, lets get this straight. To those of you who think piracy is harming the industry. Actually, let me rephrase that. To those of you who think piracy in no way helps the industry - Do you really think that if it was as clear cut as you think it is and every developer 'knew' that piracy was only bad for the industry and was ruining it, that we'd be able to pirate games at all?
Just throwing this out there, as I think too many people think this issue is more clear-cut than it is. Developers aren't the good guys and pirates aren't the bad guys. The reverse is also not true. Don't imagine that DRM is what you're told to believe it is. Don't imagine that piracy is what you've been taught to believe it is.
Personally, I buy my games, but I don't think that piracy the evil that some of you think it is and I don't think developers are stupid enough to think that either.
It will be 100% impossible to pirate Diablo III since the entire game is emulated on the Blizzard servers. The only reason we've been able to pirate games up to this point is because developers and publishers haven't had the technology to keep us from doing so. They have the technology now.
Impossible huh? I think you will be surprised...
How many people played online SC2 without a key?
A good amount. Pirate servers do exist.
I'm talking about on the normal ladder. Not any private server. The correct answer is none.
Well, "How many people played online SC2 without a key?" was your question. The answer is that some people did. And if it wasnt on the official servers, so what? It was still online with the same basic experience. Not all the features maybe, but it was still possible, and will be possible for D3 as well.
I just rephrased my question that I posted a little above which was "How many people played the ladder on sc2 without a key?"
If it wasn't on official servers...well then it's not even worth it to play much is it? How many people play WoW on private servers? A drop in a bucket compared to the real servers.
Yes it's true way more people are on consoles. That is a big reason definitely, but the fact that pc games get pirated to hell is another reason they go console.
Yes I know console games get pirated, but I'm pretty sure PC piracy still surpasses it.
Oblivion got pirated badly when it came out on PC, pretty sure Bethesda took note of that was a big reason why they went 360 for primary development.
No, I think developers primarily develop games on consoles because it's easier to create a simple, console-friendly interface and port it to the pc, than vice-versa. They may state pc piracy as their reason, but that's a different issue.
Developing for a console is simplier because the environment is defined and testing is simple. A console provides a set of developing tools and makes certain that they work on every one of the boxes out there. To test your stuff you just need one of the boxes. If the box gives trouble you go ask its single manufacturer.
Developing in e.g. Java is the same, and that's why Java is so popular. But PC has a much vaster landscape. For every chip in a PC there are at least several different manufacturers, each one has it quirks and many could act unexpectedly when combined with others in particular setup. Past the hardware there is an even more chaotic software level: many different operating systems, libraries, protocols and standards. Just finding out what of all this is responsible for a particular problem you're facing can be a daunting task. If you develop for the xbox Microsoft tells you how to do things and if you have a problem you go ask Microsoft.
On December 01 2011 05:31 Karnage77 wrote: So many people here trying to justify stealing to ease their guilty minds. You are without permission, taking intellectual property that the owner intended to sell. If you don't have the money then you shouldn't have it.
We have access to gameplay footage on Youtube, tons of reviews, Blockbuster rentals, downloadable demos, and Gamefly. Don't tell me you don't know what game you're buying and need to just "test" it out via piracy (play the entire campaign). Same applies to music. Just because the song has the ability to be reproduced in a non-physical manner does not mean that you aren't stealing. They are SELLING entertainment. Are you not entertained?
And there are so many people trying to defend companys who again and again make shitty content just for the sake of making money. Quality or happy customers are just a Bi-product in a best case scenario for these people. I do not understand how anyone can defend companys like Activision, Ubisoft or EA for all the shit they have pulled through the years. Piracy is the perfect method to tell a company to fuck off because it is the only way to target the only thing they care about, the money.
that's a copout. if these game companies made the best game ever etc and did everything perfectly, people would still pirate the hell out of the games.
You know, this is really simple, and people really tend to overcomplicate this shit.
Is stealing bad: Yes or No. If Yes, then pirating is bad. If No, then pirating isn't bad.
Pirating is stealing, plain and simple. People keep making ridiculous arguments like "I couldn't afford to buy it anyway, so it isn't hurting them anyway for me to pirate it." Well guess what? When it comes to other goods, if you can't afford it, YOU DON'T BENEFIT FROM IT. When you pirate you're benefiting from someone's work and not giving them anything in exchange for their work, and it hurts innovation.
People deserve to benefit from their work, and the more their work is used, the more they deserve to benefit from it.
On December 01 2011 05:31 Karnage77 wrote: So many people here trying to justify stealing to ease their guilty minds. You are without permission, taking intellectual property that the owner intended to sell. If you don't have the money then you shouldn't have it.
We have access to gameplay footage on Youtube, tons of reviews, Blockbuster rentals, downloadable demos, and Gamefly. Don't tell me you don't know what game you're buying and need to just "test" it out via piracy (play the entire campaign). Same applies to music. Just because the song has the ability to be reproduced in a non-physical manner does not mean that you aren't stealing. They are SELLING entertainment. Are you not entertained?
And there are so many people trying to defend companys who again and again make shitty content just for the sake of making money. Quality or happy customers are just a Bi-product in a best case scenario for these people. I do not understand how anyone can defend companys like Activision, Ubisoft or EA for all the shit they have pulled through the years. Piracy is the perfect method to tell a company to fuck off because it is the only way to target the only thing they care about, the money.
that's a copout. if these game companies made the best game ever etc and did everything perfectly, people would still pirate the hell out of the games.
No, then they would get a pat on the back (the pat in this case being my money) and a job well done so they can make more games.
On December 01 2011 04:54 jj33 wrote: Alot of justification for pirating in here.
We live in a culture of something for nothing and me me me.
I love pc games and console games, but when I hear of PC elitists crying about how a game was developed mostly for console like skyrim and not tapping into the true potential of PC and how consoles are ruining pc gaming etc, that just makes me laugh.
More and more developers will primiarly develop for consoles, they want to make money not lose money.
Console games are pirated too. Pirated ALOT more than you think they are.
Worse even, is the fact that every time a game is sold second-hand, it not only has the same affect as pirating the game, but someone else who ISN'T the game publisher/developer makes a profit off of it. It's considered an even bigger problem than piracy itself in much of the console industry.
You are right, second hand sales from gamestop for example are hurting the game companies.
Hence why they want to get rid of gamestop and eventually get digital downloads straight from them.
Here's the thing, you seem to want to justify piracy and say it's not that bad because second hand used games sales are worse.
I'm not sitting on a high horse, but people trying to justify piracy and saying it's not THAT bad is just hilarious to me.
I'm not trying to justify piracy at all. You seem to have mistaken me for someone else.
The reason that second-hand sales are worse is that they actually represent a concrete SALE. Whereas not every pirated copy of a game represents the same.
Used game sales absolutely do not represent a concrete sale. If someone buys a game for $15 you have no way of knowing whether they would have bought it for $50 if that was their only option. They may have simply opted to not buy the game or buy a different game.
Also, the person who sold said used game might've used the money they got for the trade-in to purchase a new game themselves. In that scenario, used game sales increase new game sales.
They absolutely DO represent a concrete sale. If the game is sold, it's a SALE. Naturally, because it's second-hand it's worth less than a brand new copy, but it is still a sale that the developer could have made potential profit off of. If Gamestop, for instance, weren't Gamestop, but was "The Nintendo Store" owned and operated by Nintendo, and people brought in their used games to trade for new games, and then Nintendo sold those second-hand games for $15, they'd be making a profit that they aren't currently making, because right now Gamestop makes that money.
I know HOW used games work. I'm just not convinced that if you took away used game sales, new sales would improve. I would argue they would actually get worse.
I'm not arguing that new sales would improve if used game sales were taken away. I'm arguing that developers deserve a cut of the second-hand sale.
Depends on how you look at it.
One way is to say once you purchase something you have paid the producers for their time involved creating that product and now you have full control over what you do with it. They've recouped the money spent in development + profit off the initial sell. This is how things have been traditionally handled - when I buy a shovel I'm free to sell it to a friend down the line.
Software has changed this due to the ease of reproduction. You no longer control what you can do with a software product because you aren't actually purchasing the code on the CD, your purchasing the ability to use it. Of course, the developers should be getting all their money back on the initial sell. Getting additional revenue because it was sold again seems akin to double jeopardy in the legal system, just in a good way.
On December 01 2011 05:31 Karnage77 wrote: So many people here trying to justify stealing to ease their guilty minds. You are without permission, taking intellectual property that the owner intended to sell. If you don't have the money then you shouldn't have it.
We have access to gameplay footage on Youtube, tons of reviews, Blockbuster rentals, downloadable demos, and Gamefly. Don't tell me you don't know what game you're buying and need to just "test" it out via piracy (play the entire campaign). Same applies to music. Just because the song has the ability to be reproduced in a non-physical manner does not mean that you aren't stealing. They are SELLING entertainment. Are you not entertained?
And there are so many people trying to defend companys who again and again make shitty content just for the sake of making money. Quality or happy customers are just a Bi-product in a best case scenario for these people. I do not understand how anyone can defend companys like Activision, Ubisoft or EA for all the shit they have pulled through the years. Piracy is the perfect method to tell a company to fuck off because it is the only way to target the only thing they care about, the money.
Really? Your argument is "it's a shitty game, but I want to play it anyway"? No. If you think a game is crap, don't play it at all. Don't pirate it, don't buy it. Playing it in any way is showing them that you want to play it. If a game goes un-bought and un-pirated, they'll know it's shit.
Don't act like you're some kind of Robin Hood trying to stick it to the man. They're providing a product that you don't like, but don't have to partake in. You're a stealing bastard, you're not teaching a lesson or anything.
On December 01 2011 05:36 Energizer wrote: I really do feel that before this thread spirals to far out, people should watch this video : http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/piracy
Basically, its all the same arguments in video form. Hopefully after people watch it we arn't going in circles.
They're wise as usual. My favorite line "do not tangle with people who want to install Linux on the PS3's!"
But they did miss the part where a game might not be worth playing at $60 but might still be worth playing at $0 (aka a mediocre game). That's my only quibble. By and large those guys are smart and they have my ear on my hot button issues.
When did the "piracy is stealing" ads start to air? I think it was in the late 80s in movie theaters.
My parents would never have guessed that downloading music is illegal. My mother finds it odd, my father is just scared to death that the cops would come knocking.
Either they are terrible persons, or your morality comes from those cheesy theater ads.
On December 01 2011 05:31 Karnage77 wrote: So many people here trying to justify stealing to ease their guilty minds. You are without permission, taking intellectual property that the owner intended to sell. If you don't have the money then you shouldn't have it.
We have access to gameplay footage on Youtube, tons of reviews, Blockbuster rentals, downloadable demos, and Gamefly. Don't tell me you don't know what game you're buying and need to just "test" it out via piracy (play the entire campaign). Same applies to music. Just because the song has the ability to be reproduced in a non-physical manner does not mean that you aren't stealing. They are SELLING entertainment. Are you not entertained?
And there are so many people trying to defend companys who again and again make shitty content just for the sake of making money. Quality or happy customers are just a Bi-product in a best case scenario for these people. I do not understand how anyone can defend companys like Activision, Ubisoft or EA for all the shit they have pulled through the years. Piracy is the perfect method to tell a company to fuck off because it is the only way to target the only thing they care about, the money.
Really? Your argument is "it's a shitty game, but I want to play it anyway"? No. If you think a game is crap, don't play it at all. Don't pirate it, don't buy it. Playing it in any way is showing them that you want to play it. If a game goes un-bought and un-pirated, they'll know it's shit.
Don't act like you're some kind of Robin Hood trying to stick it to the man. They're providing a product that you don't like, but don't have to partake in. You're a stealing bastard, you're not teaching a lesson or anything.
How am i to know it's a bad game if i can't take it for a test drive?
The advertisment for the game is through the roof, everyone is talking about the game and how awesome it will be and every site who was able to play the game and write a review pre-release praises the game. Game comes out, i pay 50-70$ for it, and guess what it's shit. It's impossible to get a non biased view of the game if you don't play it yourself.
On December 01 2011 04:54 jj33 wrote: Alot of justification for pirating in here.
We live in a culture of something for nothing and me me me.
I love pc games and console games, but when I hear of PC elitists crying about how a game was developed mostly for console like skyrim and not tapping into the true potential of PC and how consoles are ruining pc gaming etc, that just makes me laugh.
More and more developers will primiarly develop for consoles, they want to make money not lose money.
Console games are pirated too. Pirated ALOT more than you think they are.
Worse even, is the fact that every time a game is sold second-hand, it not only has the same affect as pirating the game, but someone else who ISN'T the game publisher/developer makes a profit off of it. It's considered an even bigger problem than piracy itself in much of the console industry.
You are right, second hand sales from gamestop for example are hurting the game companies.
Hence why they want to get rid of gamestop and eventually get digital downloads straight from them.
Here's the thing, you seem to want to justify piracy and say it's not that bad because second hand used games sales are worse.
I'm not sitting on a high horse, but people trying to justify piracy and saying it's not THAT bad is just hilarious to me.
I'm not trying to justify piracy at all. You seem to have mistaken me for someone else.
The reason that second-hand sales are worse is that they actually represent a concrete SALE. Whereas not every pirated copy of a game represents the same.
Used game sales absolutely do not represent a concrete sale. If someone buys a game for $15 you have no way of knowing whether they would have bought it for $50 if that was their only option. They may have simply opted to not buy the game or buy a different game.
Also, the person who sold said used game might've used the money they got for the trade-in to purchase a new game themselves. In that scenario, used game sales increase new game sales.
They absolutely DO represent a concrete sale. If the game is sold, it's a SALE. Naturally, because it's second-hand it's worth less than a brand new copy, but it is still a sale that the developer could have made potential profit off of. If Gamestop, for instance, weren't Gamestop, but was "The Nintendo Store" owned and operated by Nintendo, and people brought in their used games to trade for new games, and then Nintendo sold those second-hand games for $15, they'd be making a profit that they aren't currently making, because right now Gamestop makes that money.
I know HOW used games work. I'm just not convinced that if you took away used game sales, new sales would improve. I would argue they would actually get worse.
I'm not arguing that new sales would improve if used game sales were taken away. I'm arguing that developers deserve a cut of the second-hand sale.
Why? They didn't create anything new. They already got their payment with the original sale. Gamestop is the one who staffs the stores, rents the space to display/store the games, and bears all of the transaction costs for the used game sale.
Sorry, I didn't mean that *I* think they deserve that cut. I'm not choosing my words carefully enough. I mean that second-hand sales are considered worse by the companies because used game sales actually represent a SALE of their game, and thus concrete, lost revenue.
I think we're both in agreement that if they wanted to fix that particular issue, all they need to do is invest in their own version of Gamestop.
On December 01 2011 05:31 Karnage77 wrote: So many people here trying to justify stealing to ease their guilty minds. You are without permission, taking intellectual property that the owner intended to sell. If you don't have the money then you shouldn't have it.
We have access to gameplay footage on Youtube, tons of reviews, Blockbuster rentals, downloadable demos, and Gamefly. Don't tell me you don't know what game you're buying and need to just "test" it out via piracy (play the entire campaign). Same applies to music. Just because the song has the ability to be reproduced in a non-physical manner does not mean that you aren't stealing. They are SELLING entertainment. Are you not entertained?
And there are so many people trying to defend companys who again and again make shitty content just for the sake of making money. Quality or happy customers are just a Bi-product in a best case scenario for these people. I do not understand how anyone can defend companys like Activision, Ubisoft or EA for all the shit they have pulled through the years. Piracy is the perfect method to tell a company to fuck off because it is the only way to target the only thing they care about, the money.
Really? Your argument is "it's a shitty game, but I want to play it anyway"? No. If you think a game is crap, don't play it at all. Don't pirate it, don't buy it. Playing it in any way is showing them that you want to play it. If a game goes un-bought and un-pirated, they'll know it's shit.
Don't act like you're some kind of Robin Hood trying to stick it to the man. They're providing a product that you don't like, but don't have to partake in. You're a stealing bastard, you're not teaching a lesson or anything.
How am i to know it's a bad game if i can't take it for a test drive?
The advertisment for the game is through the roof, everyone is talking about the game and how awesome it will be and every site who was able to play the game and write a review pre-release praises the game. Game comes out, i pay 50-70$ for it, and guess what it's shit. It's impossible to get a non biased view of the game if you don't play it yourself.
You know, this is really simple, and people really tend to overcomplicate this shit.
Is stealing bad: Yes or No. If Yes, then pirating is bad. If No, then pirating isn't bad.
Pirating is stealing, plain and simple. People keep making ridiculous arguments like "I couldn't afford to buy it anyway, so it isn't hurting them anyway for me to pirate it." Well guess what? When it comes to other goods, if you can't afford it, YOU DON'T BENEFIT FROM IT. When you pirate you're benefiting from someone's work and not giving them anything in exchange for their work, and it hurts innovation.
People deserve to benefit from their work, and the more their work is used, the more they deserve to benefit from it.
In my country pirating is not stealing, in order to steal you must use, take or keep other person property. The property must be tangible. The general rule is that if you are preventing the owner from using the thing you have, you are stealing.
On December 01 2011 05:31 Karnage77 wrote: So many people here trying to justify stealing to ease their guilty minds. You are without permission, taking intellectual property that the owner intended to sell. If you don't have the money then you shouldn't have it.
We have access to gameplay footage on Youtube, tons of reviews, Blockbuster rentals, downloadable demos, and Gamefly. Don't tell me you don't know what game you're buying and need to just "test" it out via piracy (play the entire campaign). Same applies to music. Just because the song has the ability to be reproduced in a non-physical manner does not mean that you aren't stealing. They are SELLING entertainment. Are you not entertained?
And there are so many people trying to defend companys who again and again make shitty content just for the sake of making money. Quality or happy customers are just a Bi-product in a best case scenario for these people. I do not understand how anyone can defend companys like Activision, Ubisoft or EA for all the shit they have pulled through the years. Piracy is the perfect method to tell a company to fuck off because it is the only way to target the only thing they care about, the money.
Really? Your argument is "it's a shitty game, but I want to play it anyway"? No. If you think a game is crap, don't play it at all. Don't pirate it, don't buy it. Playing it in any way is showing them that you want to play it. If a game goes un-bought and un-pirated, they'll know it's shit.
Don't act like you're some kind of Robin Hood trying to stick it to the man. They're providing a product that you don't like, but don't have to partake in. You're a stealing bastard, you're not teaching a lesson or anything.
How am i to know it's a bad game if i can't take it for a test drive?
The advertisment for the game is through the roof, everyone is talking about the game and how awesome it will be and every site who was able to play the game and write a review pre-release praises the game. Game comes out, i pay 50-70$ for it, and guess what it's shit. It's impossible to get a non biased view of the game if you don't play it yourself.
Uhhh... You could always rent the game?
I don't know where you live, but renting games in Sweden (atleast around my parts) have not been possible since the Sega/SNES days...
On December 01 2011 05:31 Karnage77 wrote: So many people here trying to justify stealing to ease their guilty minds. You are without permission, taking intellectual property that the owner intended to sell. If you don't have the money then you shouldn't have it.
We have access to gameplay footage on Youtube, tons of reviews, Blockbuster rentals, downloadable demos, and Gamefly. Don't tell me you don't know what game you're buying and need to just "test" it out via piracy (play the entire campaign). Same applies to music. Just because the song has the ability to be reproduced in a non-physical manner does not mean that you aren't stealing. They are SELLING entertainment. Are you not entertained?
And there are so many people trying to defend companys who again and again make shitty content just for the sake of making money. Quality or happy customers are just a Bi-product in a best case scenario for these people. I do not understand how anyone can defend companys like Activision, Ubisoft or EA for all the shit they have pulled through the years. Piracy is the perfect method to tell a company to fuck off because it is the only way to target the only thing they care about, the money.
Really? Your argument is "it's a shitty game, but I want to play it anyway"? No. If you think a game is crap, don't play it at all. Don't pirate it, don't buy it. Playing it in any way is showing them that you want to play it. If a game goes un-bought and un-pirated, they'll know it's shit.
Don't act like you're some kind of Robin Hood trying to stick it to the man. They're providing a product that you don't like, but don't have to partake in. You're a stealing bastard, you're not teaching a lesson or anything.
How am i to know it's a bad game if i can't take it for a test drive?
The advertisment for the game is through the roof, everyone is talking about the game and how awesome it will be and every site who was able to play the game and write a review pre-release praises the game. Game comes out, i pay 50-70$ for it, and guess what it's shit. It's impossible to get a non biased view of the game if you don't play it yourself.
Uhhh... You could always rent the game?
Last time that was possible around my area (northern finland) was when the newest console was NES8B and 16B. Never seen a PC game rental around anywhere here.
same shit all over again. people make stupid arguments like "i wouldn't buy the game anyway" or "if the game is good, people will buy it to support developers"(ROFL) or "copying isn't stealing" to justify their stealing. The list is endless. I'm so sick of it.
On December 01 2011 05:31 Karnage77 wrote: So many people here trying to justify stealing to ease their guilty minds. You are without permission, taking intellectual property that the owner intended to sell. If you don't have the money then you shouldn't have it.
We have access to gameplay footage on Youtube, tons of reviews, Blockbuster rentals, downloadable demos, and Gamefly. Don't tell me you don't know what game you're buying and need to just "test" it out via piracy (play the entire campaign). Same applies to music. Just because the song has the ability to be reproduced in a non-physical manner does not mean that you aren't stealing. They are SELLING entertainment. Are you not entertained?
And there are so many people trying to defend companys who again and again make shitty content just for the sake of making money. Quality or happy customers are just a Bi-product in a best case scenario for these people. I do not understand how anyone can defend companys like Activision, Ubisoft or EA for all the shit they have pulled through the years. Piracy is the perfect method to tell a company to fuck off because it is the only way to target the only thing they care about, the money.
Really? Your argument is "it's a shitty game, but I want to play it anyway"? No. If you think a game is crap, don't play it at all. Don't pirate it, don't buy it. Playing it in any way is showing them that you want to play it. If a game goes un-bought and un-pirated, they'll know it's shit.
Don't act like you're some kind of Robin Hood trying to stick it to the man. They're providing a product that you don't like, but don't have to partake in. You're a stealing bastard, you're not teaching a lesson or anything.
How am i to know it's a bad game if i can't take it for a test drive?
The advertisment for the game is through the roof, everyone is talking about the game and how awesome it will be and every site who was able to play the game and write a review pre-release praises the game. Game comes out, i pay 50-70$ for it, and guess what it's shit. It's impossible to get a non biased view of the game if you don't play it yourself.
Alright, here's a list of things you can do.
1) Go to Blockbuster, get a membership. You now have access to game rentals for a very reasonable rate.
2) Find a local Redbox. $2 a day for games. If you hate it, return it after a day.
3) Buy from a store rather than online. Returning a game within a few day sis usually a full refund, or at least in-store credit.
4) Play a demo. A good chunk of games nowadays have demos available. Not all, but many.
5) Play at a demo kiosk. Best Buy, Gamestop, Target, Walmart, and many other stores have these available for you to play on.
6) Wait on buying it until the price comes down. This is usually a month or two. If it's a game you're not for sure buying first day, you can usually afford to wait a few more weeks.
7) Find someone who has it, maybe a friend, or make friends who game. Play with them.
And many more. There are ways to play games legally without buying them. And if you don't think you want to play a game... you don't have to have it. Just don't buy it, it won't kill you.
This conversation never leads anywhere, because everyone already firmly has their own viewpoint on the matter and nobody will change. You can all look at the same scenario, which is almost impossible to quantify, and take out something different.
As an example, you can look at me and 4 friends and our experience with The Witcher 2. When we heard it was DRM free, 4 of us decided to pitch in to buy a copy and spread it around. This was a game that we had zero interest in whatsoever, and only caught our attention because of the lack of DRM. We four played it, and two of us liked it. The two that liked it discussed it enough that another friend bought it.
So you have 5 people who played the game. 3 liked it. 2 copies were bought. How do you view this scenario?
There are three main views on this scenario, each one equally valid, and each one intensely defending themselves.
Group A says this is 3 lost sales. 3 people played the game who did not buy it. Those 3 people have stolen from the company.
Group B says it is 1 lost sale. 1 person played the game and enjoyed it and did not buy it. That 1 person has stolen from the company. The other 2 did not enjoy it and should not feel obligated to pay.
Group C says it is 2 gained sales. The lack of DRM was marketing, and of the 5 viewers, there was a 40% conversion rate. Not a single one of these 5 would have bought it at full price, with DRM, since it was not on any of their game radars before hand.
Those 3 groups all have valid points that can be argued. None of those groups will ever concede their point. This argument cannot go anywhere because all 3 feel the other is simply wrong and not looking at things correctly.
On December 01 2011 05:31 Karnage77 wrote: So many people here trying to justify stealing to ease their guilty minds. You are without permission, taking intellectual property that the owner intended to sell. If you don't have the money then you shouldn't have it.
We have access to gameplay footage on Youtube, tons of reviews, Blockbuster rentals, downloadable demos, and Gamefly. Don't tell me you don't know what game you're buying and need to just "test" it out via piracy (play the entire campaign). Same applies to music. Just because the song has the ability to be reproduced in a non-physical manner does not mean that you aren't stealing. They are SELLING entertainment. Are you not entertained?
And there are so many people trying to defend companys who again and again make shitty content just for the sake of making money. Quality or happy customers are just a Bi-product in a best case scenario for these people. I do not understand how anyone can defend companys like Activision, Ubisoft or EA for all the shit they have pulled through the years. Piracy is the perfect method to tell a company to fuck off because it is the only way to target the only thing they care about, the money.
Really? Your argument is "it's a shitty game, but I want to play it anyway"? No. If you think a game is crap, don't play it at all. Don't pirate it, don't buy it. Playing it in any way is showing them that you want to play it. If a game goes un-bought and un-pirated, they'll know it's shit.
Don't act like you're some kind of Robin Hood trying to stick it to the man. They're providing a product that you don't like, but don't have to partake in. You're a stealing bastard, you're not teaching a lesson or anything.
How am i to know it's a bad game if i can't take it for a test drive?
The advertisment for the game is through the roof, everyone is talking about the game and how awesome it will be and every site who was able to play the game and write a review pre-release praises the game. Game comes out, i pay 50-70$ for it, and guess what it's shit. It's impossible to get a non biased view of the game if you don't play it yourself.
Uhhh... You could always rent the game?
I don't know where you live, but renting games in Sweden (atleast around my parts) have not been possible since the Sega/SNES days...
And hell, even the few places that still have games for rent often don't have the game you want to play.
And I'm not aware of anywhere that made PC rentals work, though I know Blockbuster tried it for at least a year.
On December 01 2011 05:42 Whitewing wrote: You know, this is really simple, and people really tend to overcomplicate this shit.
Is stealing bad: Yes or No. If Yes, then pirating is bad. If No, then pirating isn't bad.
Pirating is stealing, plain and simple. People keep making ridiculous arguments like "I couldn't afford to buy it anyway, so it isn't hurting them anyway for me to pirate it." Well guess what? When it comes to other goods, if you can't afford it, YOU DON'T BENEFIT FROM IT. When you pirate you're benefiting from someone's work and not giving them anything in exchange for their work, and it hurts innovation.
People deserve to benefit from their work, and the more their work is used, the more they deserve to benefit from it.
I think it's more that pirating can't be a universal action. If we go by some simple categorical imperative ethics, universalizing pirating as an action would stop developers from making any games as they wouldn't be able to recuperate costs. And then the pirates go into weird contortions of logic, because they can't admit to themselves that game software developers need to be able to earn an income somehow and pirating behaviour is destructive when 100% of gamers pirate games. I've had this argument with my coworkers (when I was on the defensive for paying for Windows 7).
On December 01 2011 06:02 HereAndNow wrote: 3) Buy from a store rather than online. Returning a game within a few day sis usually a full refund, or at least in-store credit.
Where in the world can you get a full refund or full credit-value for an opened game?
I'm not aware of a single place here in Canada that does that, specifically because of the likelihood that a game that's been opened has been copied and you're just trying to get your money back for a game you JUST pirated.
If everyone pirated, we'd collapse the industry overnight. What you're saying by pirating is that you're entitled to all the great spoils of gaming without paying any of the price. You are a leech.
On December 01 2011 06:02 HereAndNow wrote: 3) Buy from a store rather than online. Returning a game within a few day sis usually a full refund, or at least in-store credit.
Where in the world can you get a full refund or full credit-value for an opened game?
I'm not aware of a single place here in Canada that does that, specifically because of the likelihood that a game that's been opened has been copied and you're just trying to get your money back for a game you JUST pirated.
United States. Midwest. My local Gamestop will take it back if it's been opened and you give them a good reason. They'll check the disc, look at the receipt, and credit you.
On December 01 2011 05:31 Karnage77 wrote: So many people here trying to justify stealing to ease their guilty minds. You are without permission, taking intellectual property that the owner intended to sell. If you don't have the money then you shouldn't have it.
We have access to gameplay footage on Youtube, tons of reviews, Blockbuster rentals, downloadable demos, and Gamefly. Don't tell me you don't know what game you're buying and need to just "test" it out via piracy (play the entire campaign). Same applies to music. Just because the song has the ability to be reproduced in a non-physical manner does not mean that you aren't stealing. They are SELLING entertainment. Are you not entertained?
And there are so many people trying to defend companys who again and again make shitty content just for the sake of making money. Quality or happy customers are just a Bi-product in a best case scenario for these people. I do not understand how anyone can defend companys like Activision, Ubisoft or EA for all the shit they have pulled through the years. Piracy is the perfect method to tell a company to fuck off because it is the only way to target the only thing they care about, the money.
that's a copout. if these game companies made the best game ever etc and did everything perfectly, people would still pirate the hell out of the games.
No, then they would get a pat on the back (the pat in this case being my money) and a job well done so they can make more games.
Wrong.
People would still pirate it.
If the game is so bad, then don't buy it and play it.
Blockbuster died because they did not adapt to the market.
The reality is the market has advanced too much for companies to keep up. For example, I must pay most of my games in US dollars or at a dollarized price which makes games prohibitive to the average folk. If the same game can be obtained for free people chooses the second option.
The only way the companies can reduce piracy is by offering quality goods with competitive pricing and good customer support which sincerly does not happen in this industry. I have very long stories on dealing with American companies with average games and lousy cs.
On November 30 2011 22:24 Interloper wrote: Many people who pirate do so because they want to try a game out. If they enjoy the game, they will buy it too support the developer. 4,5 million downloads becomes a useless figure since you can not in any way know how many of those 4,5 million purchased the game afterwards. I feel that piracy is a good way to get rid of shitty developers how make crappy games only for the sake of making money (Well all developers want to make money ofc, but i hope you get my point). Good developers get the money they need and then some. Piracy will not be the end of gaming.
This is the most common reason that has been given to me but more than often the person is also an expert at procrastination and gives the "oh I'll buy it later excuse". In the case of single player games, what usually winds up happening is that they'll beat the game and it becomes forgotten on their computers. Either way, I'd be willing to be a huge chunk of those who pirated wouldn't have bothered buying the game if piracy wasn't an option in the first place (in which case nothing would have been lost anyway).
I would rather prefer to see game demos be more prominent to get rid of that whole "I wanted to try the game" excuse.
Maybe for some, but I do buy them whenever I have the money available and it was a good game.
You know, this is really simple, and people really tend to overcomplicate this shit.
Is stealing bad: Yes or No. If Yes, then pirating is bad. If No, then pirating isn't bad.
Pirating is stealing, plain and simple. People keep making ridiculous arguments like "I couldn't afford to buy it anyway, so it isn't hurting them anyway for me to pirate it." Well guess what? When it comes to other goods, if you can't afford it, YOU DON'T BENEFIT FROM IT. When you pirate you're benefiting from someone's work and not giving them anything in exchange for their work, and it hurts innovation.
People deserve to benefit from their work, and the more their work is used, the more they deserve to benefit from it.
In my country pirating is not stealing, in order to steal you must use, take or keep other person property. The property must be tangible. The general rule is that if you are preventing the owner from using the thing you have, you are stealing.
There is no country where piracy and stealing are the same thing in the eyes of the law.
On December 01 2011 05:31 Karnage77 wrote: So many people here trying to justify stealing to ease their guilty minds. You are without permission, taking intellectual property that the owner intended to sell. If you don't have the money then you shouldn't have it.
We have access to gameplay footage on Youtube, tons of reviews, Blockbuster rentals, downloadable demos, and Gamefly. Don't tell me you don't know what game you're buying and need to just "test" it out via piracy (play the entire campaign). Same applies to music. Just because the song has the ability to be reproduced in a non-physical manner does not mean that you aren't stealing. They are SELLING entertainment. Are you not entertained?
And there are so many people trying to defend companys who again and again make shitty content just for the sake of making money. Quality or happy customers are just a Bi-product in a best case scenario for these people. I do not understand how anyone can defend companys like Activision, Ubisoft or EA for all the shit they have pulled through the years. Piracy is the perfect method to tell a company to fuck off because it is the only way to target the only thing they care about, the money.
Really? Your argument is "it's a shitty game, but I want to play it anyway"? No. If you think a game is crap, don't play it at all. Don't pirate it, don't buy it. Playing it in any way is showing them that you want to play it. If a game goes un-bought and un-pirated, they'll know it's shit.
Don't act like you're some kind of Robin Hood trying to stick it to the man. They're providing a product that you don't like, but don't have to partake in. You're a stealing bastard, you're not teaching a lesson or anything.
How am i to know it's a bad game if i can't take it for a test drive?
The advertisment for the game is through the roof, everyone is talking about the game and how awesome it will be and every site who was able to play the game and write a review pre-release praises the game. Game comes out, i pay 50-70$ for it, and guess what it's shit. It's impossible to get a non biased view of the game if you don't play it yourself.
Alright, here's a list of things you can do.
1) Go to Blockbuster, get a membership. You now have access to game rentals for a very reasonable rate.
2) Find a local Redbox. $2 a day for games. If you hate it, return it after a day.
3) Buy from a store rather than online. Returning a game within a few day sis usually a full refund, or at least in-store credit.
4) Play a demo. A good chunk of games nowadays have demos available. Not all, but many.
5) Play at a demo kiosk. Best Buy, Gamestop, Target, Walmart, and many other stores have these available for you to play on.
6) Wait on buying it until the price comes down. This is usually a month or two. If it's a game you're not for sure buying first day, you can usually afford to wait a few more weeks.
7) Find someone who has it, maybe a friend, or make friends who game. Play with them.
And many more. There are ways to play games legally without buying them. And if you don't think you want to play a game... you don't have to have it. Just don't buy it, it won't kill you.
1) I can't find any info regarding Blockbuster in sweden 2) Same with redbox. 3) Sure this could work i guess, but most places around here have a policy. If you opend the packaging of something you can't return it. 4) I did not find any demos for say, Skyrim or any of the Fallout games and so on. They are VERY limited. 5) A store setup demo is a way to do it. If you feel like stalking a store for several days hoping they will put in the game you maybe want to buy. 6) This point is true, but it's never fun to be out of the loop on something. 7) Same thing as with #6
Points 6-7 are the only ones i find do able and work in most cases but not all.
On December 01 2011 06:02 HereAndNow wrote: 3) Buy from a store rather than online. Returning a game within a few day sis usually a full refund, or at least in-store credit.
Where in the world can you get a full refund or full credit-value for an opened game?
I'm not aware of a single place here in Canada that does that, specifically because of the likelihood that a game that's been opened has been copied and you're just trying to get your money back for a game you JUST pirated.
United States. Midwest. My local Gamestop will take it back if it's been opened and you give them a good reason. They'll check the disc, look at the receipt, and credit you.
Yeah, Gamestop for me as well, but on the West Coast. They seem to be pretty good nation-wide.
Gaming is trying to appeal to everyone and ends up being boring. What made Brood War so amazing was it existed in it's own universe. The control was kinda like Red Alert in some ways, and completely unique otherwise. It was hard as hell though. And the computer whopped you more times than you'd like to admit. But you'd stick with it. See what was on the other side. We've had several thousand games released since BW, but we're still sticking with this one. Obviously content creators aren't delivering what we want the most. You need to take a risk and not rely on graphics and gimmicks. Shadow of the Colossus pulled it off. Street Fighter 3:Third Strike did as well. Ridge Racer 6 didn't. Rethink your approach. I'd GLADLY pay money for a game. Though the last game I enjoyed was Shadow of the Colossus, and that was 4 years ago.
You know, this is really simple, and people really tend to overcomplicate this shit.
Is stealing bad: Yes or No. If Yes, then pirating is bad. If No, then pirating isn't bad.
Pirating is stealing, plain and simple. People keep making ridiculous arguments like "I couldn't afford to buy it anyway, so it isn't hurting them anyway for me to pirate it." Well guess what? When it comes to other goods, if you can't afford it, YOU DON'T BENEFIT FROM IT. When you pirate you're benefiting from someone's work and not giving them anything in exchange for their work, and it hurts innovation.
People deserve to benefit from their work, and the more their work is used, the more they deserve to benefit from it.
In my country pirating is not stealing, in order to steal you must use, take or keep other person property. The property must be tangible. The general rule is that if you are preventing the owner from using the thing you have, you are stealing.
There is no country where piracy and stealing are the same thing in the eyes of the law.
So far as I'm aware, piracy is most often treated as a form of copyright infringement. Specifically, making pirated materials available for acquisition.
Some industries function in a way such that they are inherently limited in their success. Some industries do not have these inherent problems and are not as limited in their success.
Perhaps digital media like this is just not a highly successful business model, but just an okay one.
I understand they want to protect their industry and it certainly makes sense to combat things that threaten their success, but at what point do you just consider the model fundamentally, and irreconcilably flawed?
On November 30 2011 22:24 Interloper wrote: Many people who pirate do so because they want to try a game out. If they enjoy the game, they will buy it too support the developer. 4,5 million downloads becomes a useless figure since you can not in any way know how many of those 4,5 million purchased the game afterwards. I feel that piracy is a good way to get rid of shitty developers how make crappy games only for the sake of making money (Well all developers want to make money ofc, but i hope you get my point). Good developers get the money they need and then some. Piracy will not be the end of gaming.
This is the most common reason that has been given to me but more than often the person is also an expert at procrastination and gives the "oh I'll buy it later excuse". In the case of single player games, what usually winds up happening is that they'll beat the game and it becomes forgotten on their computers. Either way, I'd be willing to be a huge chunk of those who pirated wouldn't have bothered buying the game if piracy wasn't an option in the first place (in which case nothing would have been lost anyway).
I would rather prefer to see game demos be more prominent to get rid of that whole "I wanted to try the game" excuse.
Maybe for some, but I do buy them whenever I have the money available and it was a good game.
Yeah yeah, everyone who pirates says this. How many of them actually do? Of course, anonymity of the internet and what not, so we can't tell, but still.
On December 01 2011 05:31 Karnage77 wrote: So many people here trying to justify stealing to ease their guilty minds. You are without permission, taking intellectual property that the owner intended to sell. If you don't have the money then you shouldn't have it.
We have access to gameplay footage on Youtube, tons of reviews, Blockbuster rentals, downloadable demos, and Gamefly. Don't tell me you don't know what game you're buying and need to just "test" it out via piracy (play the entire campaign). Same applies to music. Just because the song has the ability to be reproduced in a non-physical manner does not mean that you aren't stealing. They are SELLING entertainment. Are you not entertained?
And there are so many people trying to defend companys who again and again make shitty content just for the sake of making money. Quality or happy customers are just a Bi-product in a best case scenario for these people. I do not understand how anyone can defend companys like Activision, Ubisoft or EA for all the shit they have pulled through the years. Piracy is the perfect method to tell a company to fuck off because it is the only way to target the only thing they care about, the money.
that's a copout. if these game companies made the best game ever etc and did everything perfectly, people would still pirate the hell out of the games.
No, then they would get a pat on the back (the pat in this case being my money) and a job well done so they can make more games.
Wrong.
People would still pirate it.
If the game is so bad, then don't buy it and play it.
LIke I said nice try at justifying it.
Again, i only pirate games to see if they are good or not. If good, i buy it. If its bad i delete the thing and i'm still able to spend my 60$ on another game from a better developer. I don't see how this makes me close to the most vile evil thing in the world. And if you don't think that people actualy spend money on a game they have already priated, you are wrong.
as far as piracy goes I think Gabe sums up my feelings on it fairly well. I'm sure you have all read what he has had to say, but here are a few article links anyways.
On December 01 2011 05:31 Karnage77 wrote: So many people here trying to justify stealing to ease their guilty minds. You are without permission, taking intellectual property that the owner intended to sell. If you don't have the money then you shouldn't have it.
We have access to gameplay footage on Youtube, tons of reviews, Blockbuster rentals, downloadable demos, and Gamefly. Don't tell me you don't know what game you're buying and need to just "test" it out via piracy (play the entire campaign). Same applies to music. Just because the song has the ability to be reproduced in a non-physical manner does not mean that you aren't stealing. They are SELLING entertainment. Are you not entertained?
And there are so many people trying to defend companys who again and again make shitty content just for the sake of making money. Quality or happy customers are just a Bi-product in a best case scenario for these people. I do not understand how anyone can defend companys like Activision, Ubisoft or EA for all the shit they have pulled through the years. Piracy is the perfect method to tell a company to fuck off because it is the only way to target the only thing they care about, the money.
that's a copout. if these game companies made the best game ever etc and did everything perfectly, people would still pirate the hell out of the games.
No, then they would get a pat on the back (the pat in this case being my money) and a job well done so they can make more games.
Wrong.
People would still pirate it.
If the game is so bad, then don't buy it and play it.
LIke I said nice try at justifying it.
Again, i only pirate games to see if they are good or not. If good, i buy it. If its bad i delete the thing and i'm still able to spend my 60$ on another game from a better developer. I don't see how this makes me close to the most vile evil thing in the world. And if you don't think that people actualy spend money on a game they have already priated, you are wrong.
It's not that you're evil, but people trying to justify piracy as "good" or "right" or even "ok" just need to stop. Even if it's not legally the same, it's stealing, and it's immoral. If you're ok with that, fine, whatever. People just need to stop trying to make it out like they're not doing anything wrong.
It's like cheating on a significant other. It's wrong, you know it's wrong, but if you can justify it to yourself, then whatever. I'll never do it, but if you realize that what you're doing is wrong and can accept that, go for it.
On December 01 2011 06:14 Befree wrote: Some industries function in a way such that they are inherently limited in their success. Some industries do not have these inherent problems and are not as limited in their success.
Perhaps digital media like this is just not a highly successful business model, but just an okay one.
I understand they want to protect their industry and it certainly makes sense to combat things that threaten their success, but at what point do you just consider the model fundamentally, and irreconcilably flawed?
Record companies and Game devs work as if we were in the 70s where you could only obtain a vinil record. The "pirating is theft" started when people started duplicating magnetic tapes/disks.
The whole model is outdated. That's why they can't do anything against piracy.
On November 30 2011 22:35 Inori wrote: 2.) People download because they can't afford it. 60 euro for a new game is too damn high (insert the too damn high meme here). In fact until recently I pirated 99% of games I played simply because I didn't have the heart to ask my parents for 1/8th of their monthly salary (yeah, min wage is low here) just so I could play a game for 4-5 hours.
Damn I can't afford that Lamborgini, guess I will just take it off the lot for free anyway... Seriously? What kind of point is that?
And to all those people who are saying single player games aren't worth the 50-60 dollar price tag, wait for it to go on sale. If you don't want to play full price sooner or later they drop in price, steam always has sales and origin just had 50% of everything in their store for cyber monday, including Batman: Arkam City, which I picked up for 25 bucks instead of 50, and Battlefield 3. Just have patience, and if you want to play the game that badly that you can't wait for it to drop in price maybe it is worth it to get it full price.
On December 01 2011 05:31 Karnage77 wrote: So many people here trying to justify stealing to ease their guilty minds. You are without permission, taking intellectual property that the owner intended to sell. If you don't have the money then you shouldn't have it.
We have access to gameplay footage on Youtube, tons of reviews, Blockbuster rentals, downloadable demos, and Gamefly. Don't tell me you don't know what game you're buying and need to just "test" it out via piracy (play the entire campaign). Same applies to music. Just because the song has the ability to be reproduced in a non-physical manner does not mean that you aren't stealing. They are SELLING entertainment. Are you not entertained?
And there are so many people trying to defend companys who again and again make shitty content just for the sake of making money. Quality or happy customers are just a Bi-product in a best case scenario for these people. I do not understand how anyone can defend companys like Activision, Ubisoft or EA for all the shit they have pulled through the years. Piracy is the perfect method to tell a company to fuck off because it is the only way to target the only thing they care about, the money.
Really? Your argument is "it's a shitty game, but I want to play it anyway"? No. If you think a game is crap, don't play it at all. Don't pirate it, don't buy it. Playing it in any way is showing them that you want to play it. If a game goes un-bought and un-pirated, they'll know it's shit.
Don't act like you're some kind of Robin Hood trying to stick it to the man. They're providing a product that you don't like, but don't have to partake in. You're a stealing bastard, you're not teaching a lesson or anything.
How am i to know it's a bad game if i can't take it for a test drive?
The advertisment for the game is through the roof, everyone is talking about the game and how awesome it will be and every site who was able to play the game and write a review pre-release praises the game. Game comes out, i pay 50-70$ for it, and guess what it's shit. It's impossible to get a non biased view of the game if you don't play it yourself.
Alright, here's a list of things you can do.
1) Go to Blockbuster, get a membership. You now have access to game rentals for a very reasonable rate.
2) Find a local Redbox. $2 a day for games. If you hate it, return it after a day.
3) Buy from a store rather than online. Returning a game within a few day sis usually a full refund, or at least in-store credit.
4) Play a demo. A good chunk of games nowadays have demos available. Not all, but many.
5) Play at a demo kiosk. Best Buy, Gamestop, Target, Walmart, and many other stores have these available for you to play on.
6) Wait on buying it until the price comes down. This is usually a month or two. If it's a game you're not for sure buying first day, you can usually afford to wait a few more weeks.
7) Find someone who has it, maybe a friend, or make friends who game. Play with them.
And many more. There are ways to play games legally without buying them. And if you don't think you want to play a game... you don't have to have it. Just don't buy it, it won't kill you.
Give me one reason why I should bother to do all that crap when I can just download it for free and see if it's good? Why do I need to 1. Pay and 2. do way more stuff, registering/going to shop/refunding in case it's bad, if I just want to test the game? As long as I won't get full access to the game for at least a few hours with just as much trouble as downloading it from piratebay, I'm going to download it.
On December 01 2011 05:31 Karnage77 wrote: So many people here trying to justify stealing to ease their guilty minds. You are without permission, taking intellectual property that the owner intended to sell. If you don't have the money then you shouldn't have it.
We have access to gameplay footage on Youtube, tons of reviews, Blockbuster rentals, downloadable demos, and Gamefly. Don't tell me you don't know what game you're buying and need to just "test" it out via piracy (play the entire campaign). Same applies to music. Just because the song has the ability to be reproduced in a non-physical manner does not mean that you aren't stealing. They are SELLING entertainment. Are you not entertained?
And there are so many people trying to defend companys who again and again make shitty content just for the sake of making money. Quality or happy customers are just a Bi-product in a best case scenario for these people. I do not understand how anyone can defend companys like Activision, Ubisoft or EA for all the shit they have pulled through the years. Piracy is the perfect method to tell a company to fuck off because it is the only way to target the only thing they care about, the money.
that's a copout. if these game companies made the best game ever etc and did everything perfectly, people would still pirate the hell out of the games.
No, then they would get a pat on the back (the pat in this case being my money) and a job well done so they can make more games.
Wrong.
People would still pirate it.
If the game is so bad, then don't buy it and play it.
LIke I said nice try at justifying it.
Again, i only pirate games to see if they are good or not. If good, i buy it. If its bad i delete the thing and i'm still able to spend my 60$ on another game from a better developer. I don't see how this makes me close to the most vile evil thing in the world. And if you don't think that people actualy spend money on a game they have already priated, you are wrong.
It's not that you're evil, but people trying to justify piracy as "good" or "right" or even "ok" just need to stop. Even if it's not legally the same, it's stealing, and it's immoral. If you're ok with that, fine, whatever. People just need to stop trying to make it out like they're not doing anything wrong.
It's like cheating on a significant other. It's wrong, you know it's wrong, but if you can justify it to yourself, then whatever. I'll never do it, but if you realize that what you're doing is wrong and can accept that, go for it.
I understand how people can think/know/believe that it's wrong. That dose not mean that i agree that its wrong though. I don't know, i see it as kind of a protest and the fastest way to try and make something change. That may be a naive and stupid way to look at it in your eyes but to me it's not.
Agree to disagree and so forth... We don't need to muck up the thread with any more of this.
On November 30 2011 22:35 Inori wrote: 2.) People download because they can't afford it. 60 euro for a new game is too damn high (insert the too damn high meme here). In fact until recently I pirated 99% of games I played simply because I didn't have the heart to ask my parents for 1/8th of their monthly salary (yeah, min wage is low here) just so I could play a game for 4-5 hours.
Damn I can't afford that Lamborgini, guess I will just take it off the lot for free anyway... Seriously? What kind of point is that?
Except the Lamborghini will still be at the lot
I only buy games that I know are fully worth the money. Other than the really cheap steam deals and humble bundles I think the last games I bought were Starcraft 2 and Cataclysm.
On December 01 2011 05:31 Karnage77 wrote: So many people here trying to justify stealing to ease their guilty minds. You are without permission, taking intellectual property that the owner intended to sell. If you don't have the money then you shouldn't have it.
We have access to gameplay footage on Youtube, tons of reviews, Blockbuster rentals, downloadable demos, and Gamefly. Don't tell me you don't know what game you're buying and need to just "test" it out via piracy (play the entire campaign). Same applies to music. Just because the song has the ability to be reproduced in a non-physical manner does not mean that you aren't stealing. They are SELLING entertainment. Are you not entertained?
And there are so many people trying to defend companys who again and again make shitty content just for the sake of making money. Quality or happy customers are just a Bi-product in a best case scenario for these people. I do not understand how anyone can defend companys like Activision, Ubisoft or EA for all the shit they have pulled through the years. Piracy is the perfect method to tell a company to fuck off because it is the only way to target the only thing they care about, the money.
Really? Your argument is "it's a shitty game, but I want to play it anyway"? No. If you think a game is crap, don't play it at all. Don't pirate it, don't buy it. Playing it in any way is showing them that you want to play it. If a game goes un-bought and un-pirated, they'll know it's shit.
Don't act like you're some kind of Robin Hood trying to stick it to the man. They're providing a product that you don't like, but don't have to partake in. You're a stealing bastard, you're not teaching a lesson or anything.
How am i to know it's a bad game if i can't take it for a test drive?
The advertisment for the game is through the roof, everyone is talking about the game and how awesome it will be and every site who was able to play the game and write a review pre-release praises the game. Game comes out, i pay 50-70$ for it, and guess what it's shit. It's impossible to get a non biased view of the game if you don't play it yourself.
Alright, here's a list of things you can do.
1) Go to Blockbuster, get a membership. You now have access to game rentals for a very reasonable rate.
2) Find a local Redbox. $2 a day for games. If you hate it, return it after a day.
3) Buy from a store rather than online. Returning a game within a few day sis usually a full refund, or at least in-store credit.
4) Play a demo. A good chunk of games nowadays have demos available. Not all, but many.
5) Play at a demo kiosk. Best Buy, Gamestop, Target, Walmart, and many other stores have these available for you to play on.
6) Wait on buying it until the price comes down. This is usually a month or two. If it's a game you're not for sure buying first day, you can usually afford to wait a few more weeks.
7) Find someone who has it, maybe a friend, or make friends who game. Play with them.
And many more. There are ways to play games legally without buying them. And if you don't think you want to play a game... you don't have to have it. Just don't buy it, it won't kill you.
Give me one reason why I should bother to do all that crap when I can just download it for free and see if it's good? Why do I need to 1. Pay and 2. do way more stuff, registering/going to shop/refunding in case it's bad, if I just want to test the game? As long as I won't get full access to the game for at least a few hours with just as much trouble as downloading it from piratebay, I'm going to download it.
Because.... it's the right thing to do?
I mean, I don't mean to offend or anything, but that's pretty fucking amoral right there. All the things I listed are perfectly legitimite ways to play games without paying full price. If you're too lazy or stubborn to do anything, then there might be something wrong.
That's like, if you knew you could drive a car off the lot, take it for a test drive halfway across the country, and return it without a scratch without asking, you'd do it? I mean, sure, you're not hurting anyone, but what the fuck dude?
On December 01 2011 05:31 Karnage77 wrote: So many people here trying to justify stealing to ease their guilty minds. You are without permission, taking intellectual property that the owner intended to sell. If you don't have the money then you shouldn't have it.
We have access to gameplay footage on Youtube, tons of reviews, Blockbuster rentals, downloadable demos, and Gamefly. Don't tell me you don't know what game you're buying and need to just "test" it out via piracy (play the entire campaign). Same applies to music. Just because the song has the ability to be reproduced in a non-physical manner does not mean that you aren't stealing. They are SELLING entertainment. Are you not entertained?
And there are so many people trying to defend companys who again and again make shitty content just for the sake of making money. Quality or happy customers are just a Bi-product in a best case scenario for these people. I do not understand how anyone can defend companys like Activision, Ubisoft or EA for all the shit they have pulled through the years. Piracy is the perfect method to tell a company to fuck off because it is the only way to target the only thing they care about, the money.
Really? Your argument is "it's a shitty game, but I want to play it anyway"? No. If you think a game is crap, don't play it at all. Don't pirate it, don't buy it. Playing it in any way is showing them that you want to play it. If a game goes un-bought and un-pirated, they'll know it's shit.
Don't act like you're some kind of Robin Hood trying to stick it to the man. They're providing a product that you don't like, but don't have to partake in. You're a stealing bastard, you're not teaching a lesson or anything.
How am i to know it's a bad game if i can't take it for a test drive?
The advertisment for the game is through the roof, everyone is talking about the game and how awesome it will be and every site who was able to play the game and write a review pre-release praises the game. Game comes out, i pay 50-70$ for it, and guess what it's shit. It's impossible to get a non biased view of the game if you don't play it yourself.
Alright, here's a list of things you can do.
1) Go to Blockbuster, get a membership. You now have access to game rentals for a very reasonable rate.
2) Find a local Redbox. $2 a day for games. If you hate it, return it after a day.
3) Buy from a store rather than online. Returning a game within a few day sis usually a full refund, or at least in-store credit.
4) Play a demo. A good chunk of games nowadays have demos available. Not all, but many.
5) Play at a demo kiosk. Best Buy, Gamestop, Target, Walmart, and many other stores have these available for you to play on.
6) Wait on buying it until the price comes down. This is usually a month or two. If it's a game you're not for sure buying first day, you can usually afford to wait a few more weeks.
7) Find someone who has it, maybe a friend, or make friends who game. Play with them.
And many more. There are ways to play games legally without buying them. And if you don't think you want to play a game... you don't have to have it. Just don't buy it, it won't kill you.
Give me one reason why I should bother to do all that crap when I can just download it for free and see if it's good? Why do I need to 1. Pay and 2. do way more stuff, registering/going to shop/refunding in case it's bad, if I just want to test the game? As long as I won't get full access to the game for at least a few hours with just as much trouble as downloading it from piratebay, I'm going to download it.
Because.... it's the right thing to do?
I mean, I don't mean to offend or anything, but that's pretty fucking amoral right there. All the things I listed are perfectly legitimite ways to play games without paying full price. If you're too lazy or stubborn to do anything, then there might be something wrong.
That's like, if you knew you could drive a car off the lot, take it for a test drive halfway across the country, and return it without a scratch without asking, you'd do it? I mean, sure, you're not hurting anyone, but what the fuck dude?
You shouldn't be surprised when people scoff at the "because it's the right thing to do" reasoning. It's pretty arbitrary to tell someone that they can't enjoy something just because.
Damn I can't afford that Lamborgini, guess I will just take it off the lot for free anyway... Seriously? What kind of point is that?
That analogy does not work since you cannot copy a Lamborgini. Copying is not stealing. You could copy a Lamborgini if you wanted and no one would care about that. (different story if you tried to sell it)
On December 01 2011 06:26 HereAndNow wrote: That's like, if you knew you could drive a car off the lot, take it for a test drive halfway across the country, and return it without a scratch without asking, you'd do it? I mean, sure, you're not hurting anyone, but what the fuck dude?
That's like, if you could play music on your stream, would you play it?
On November 30 2011 22:35 Inori wrote: 2.) People download because they can't afford it. 60 euro for a new game is too damn high (insert the too damn high meme here). In fact until recently I pirated 99% of games I played simply because I didn't have the heart to ask my parents for 1/8th of their monthly salary (yeah, min wage is low here) just so I could play a game for 4-5 hours.
Damn I can't afford that Lamborgini, guess I will just take it off the lot for free anyway... Seriously? What kind of point is that?
Sorry, but no-one owns the copy I download. Someone does own that Lamborgini. You're taking someones property, I am not. You can't steal something that has no owner.
But, for your sake, let's say it's stealing. Why the fuck should I care? Should I just sit in front of computer and watch the screensaver when I don't have the money to buy a game? Or should I "steal" it without any consequences. The only difference is, that you have something to do. No-one loses money, no-one gains money.
The losers in piracy are not the developers. The losers are the people who paid for the game. To know that you paid 60 dollars to play something that others are playing for free makes you feel like a sucker. Yet, without these "suckers," there's no gaming industry.
I don't see how you can justify piracy. As more people pirate games there will be less and less games until that number is zero. If everyone pirates, we all lose. If some people pirate, the only losers are the paying customers.
Here's another thing about piracy: it's always going to just be accepted, but frowned upon.
If the gaming industry stated that they're ok with piracy, and encouraged the "pirate to try it" model, then it would collapse and die in a few days.
If they crack down harder, or start prosecuting people for pirating, it'll hurt them in the long run.
Honestly? I've come to the thought that it's wrong, but impossible to stop. I'll keep buying games, and encouraging others to do so, but I can't really imagine a world in the modern age where piracy is anything other than it is right now.
Damn I can't afford that Lamborgini, guess I will just take it off the lot for free anyway... Seriously? What kind of point is that?
That analogy does not work since you cannot copy a Lamborgini. Copying is not stealing. You could copy a Lamborgini if you wanted and no one would care about that. (different story if you tried to sell it)
I don't know...downloading a car off the Pirate Bay is pretty easy.
Also, to those that are saying that it is the right thing to do, that is purely a moral stance that does not reflect whether something is right or wrong.
These threads are always great because so many people attempt to rationalize what they're doing. I admit I pirate games/music/movies (note: not all, I do buy as well), but I don't have illusions about it. Movies and Music I don't really have qualms about because they're overpriced and ridiculous, games however, given the amount of hours that can be sunk into a good one, I will never download if I know it's good.
Also, stop with all of the analogies. If people can't rap their head around pirating games without equating it to cooking or cars or god knows what, then you wont be able to have a meaningful conversation with them anyway.
On December 01 2011 05:31 Karnage77 wrote: So many people here trying to justify stealing to ease their guilty minds. You are without permission, taking intellectual property that the owner intended to sell. If you don't have the money then you shouldn't have it.
We have access to gameplay footage on Youtube, tons of reviews, Blockbuster rentals, downloadable demos, and Gamefly. Don't tell me you don't know what game you're buying and need to just "test" it out via piracy (play the entire campaign). Same applies to music. Just because the song has the ability to be reproduced in a non-physical manner does not mean that you aren't stealing. They are SELLING entertainment. Are you not entertained?
And there are so many people trying to defend companys who again and again make shitty content just for the sake of making money. Quality or happy customers are just a Bi-product in a best case scenario for these people. I do not understand how anyone can defend companys like Activision, Ubisoft or EA for all the shit they have pulled through the years. Piracy is the perfect method to tell a company to fuck off because it is the only way to target the only thing they care about, the money.
Really? Your argument is "it's a shitty game, but I want to play it anyway"? No. If you think a game is crap, don't play it at all. Don't pirate it, don't buy it. Playing it in any way is showing them that you want to play it. If a game goes un-bought and un-pirated, they'll know it's shit.
Don't act like you're some kind of Robin Hood trying to stick it to the man. They're providing a product that you don't like, but don't have to partake in. You're a stealing bastard, you're not teaching a lesson or anything.
How am i to know it's a bad game if i can't take it for a test drive?
The advertisment for the game is through the roof, everyone is talking about the game and how awesome it will be and every site who was able to play the game and write a review pre-release praises the game. Game comes out, i pay 50-70$ for it, and guess what it's shit. It's impossible to get a non biased view of the game if you don't play it yourself.
Alright, here's a list of things you can do.
1) Go to Blockbuster, get a membership. You now have access to game rentals for a very reasonable rate.
2) Find a local Redbox. $2 a day for games. If you hate it, return it after a day.
3) Buy from a store rather than online. Returning a game within a few day sis usually a full refund, or at least in-store credit.
4) Play a demo. A good chunk of games nowadays have demos available. Not all, but many.
5) Play at a demo kiosk. Best Buy, Gamestop, Target, Walmart, and many other stores have these available for you to play on.
6) Wait on buying it until the price comes down. This is usually a month or two. If it's a game you're not for sure buying first day, you can usually afford to wait a few more weeks.
7) Find someone who has it, maybe a friend, or make friends who game. Play with them.
And many more. There are ways to play games legally without buying them. And if you don't think you want to play a game... you don't have to have it. Just don't buy it, it won't kill you.
Give me one reason why I should bother to do all that crap when I can just download it for free and see if it's good? Why do I need to 1. Pay and 2. do way more stuff, registering/going to shop/refunding in case it's bad, if I just want to test the game? As long as I won't get full access to the game for at least a few hours with just as much trouble as downloading it from piratebay, I'm going to download it.
Because.... it's the right thing to do?
I mean, I don't mean to offend or anything, but that's pretty fucking amoral right there. All the things I listed are perfectly legitimite ways to play games without paying full price. If you're too lazy or stubborn to do anything, then there might be something wrong.
That's like, if you knew you could drive a car off the lot, take it for a test drive halfway across the country, and return it without a scratch without asking, you'd do it? I mean, sure, you're not hurting anyone, but what the fuck dude?
Even at the chance of going more offtopic, what the fuck dude yourself, when you look at the news at what's going on in the world, you'll notice the "it's the right thing to do" is rare as unicorns these days.
Okay, why the F would taxes in my country have to be raised to cover some fkin idiotic spending say Greece with the recent crisis has been doing the last decade? Their politicians were corrupt, people were INHERITING government paid pensions and now all the sudden coz they cheated into euro with falsified financial records, suddenly the 5 million people country here in the fkin northern wasteland has to pay insane pieces of that bill? (no offense to greeks here, just an example)
Where was the right thing for a good decade or 2 back there?
It's just the funniest true story ever, steal a grand and you're a thief, steal 1000 billion and it's finance policy. Geez.
On December 01 2011 06:26 HereAndNow wrote: That's like, if you knew you could drive a car off the lot, take it for a test drive halfway across the country, and return it without a scratch without asking, you'd do it? I mean, sure, you're not hurting anyone, but what the fuck dude?
That's like, if you could play music on your stream, would you play it?
How is that in any way relevant to the discussion?
On December 01 2011 05:31 Karnage77 wrote: So many people here trying to justify stealing to ease their guilty minds. You are without permission, taking intellectual property that the owner intended to sell. If you don't have the money then you shouldn't have it.
We have access to gameplay footage on Youtube, tons of reviews, Blockbuster rentals, downloadable demos, and Gamefly. Don't tell me you don't know what game you're buying and need to just "test" it out via piracy (play the entire campaign). Same applies to music. Just because the song has the ability to be reproduced in a non-physical manner does not mean that you aren't stealing. They are SELLING entertainment. Are you not entertained?
And there are so many people trying to defend companys who again and again make shitty content just for the sake of making money. Quality or happy customers are just a Bi-product in a best case scenario for these people. I do not understand how anyone can defend companys like Activision, Ubisoft or EA for all the shit they have pulled through the years. Piracy is the perfect method to tell a company to fuck off because it is the only way to target the only thing they care about, the money.
Really? Your argument is "it's a shitty game, but I want to play it anyway"? No. If you think a game is crap, don't play it at all. Don't pirate it, don't buy it. Playing it in any way is showing them that you want to play it. If a game goes un-bought and un-pirated, they'll know it's shit.
Don't act like you're some kind of Robin Hood trying to stick it to the man. They're providing a product that you don't like, but don't have to partake in. You're a stealing bastard, you're not teaching a lesson or anything.
How am i to know it's a bad game if i can't take it for a test drive?
The advertisment for the game is through the roof, everyone is talking about the game and how awesome it will be and every site who was able to play the game and write a review pre-release praises the game. Game comes out, i pay 50-70$ for it, and guess what it's shit. It's impossible to get a non biased view of the game if you don't play it yourself.
Alright, here's a list of things you can do.
1) Go to Blockbuster, get a membership. You now have access to game rentals for a very reasonable rate.
2) Find a local Redbox. $2 a day for games. If you hate it, return it after a day.
3) Buy from a store rather than online. Returning a game within a few day sis usually a full refund, or at least in-store credit.
4) Play a demo. A good chunk of games nowadays have demos available. Not all, but many.
5) Play at a demo kiosk. Best Buy, Gamestop, Target, Walmart, and many other stores have these available for you to play on.
6) Wait on buying it until the price comes down. This is usually a month or two. If it's a game you're not for sure buying first day, you can usually afford to wait a few more weeks.
7) Find someone who has it, maybe a friend, or make friends who game. Play with them.
And many more. There are ways to play games legally without buying them. And if you don't think you want to play a game... you don't have to have it. Just don't buy it, it won't kill you.
Give me one reason why I should bother to do all that crap when I can just download it for free and see if it's good? Why do I need to 1. Pay and 2. do way more stuff, registering/going to shop/refunding in case it's bad, if I just want to test the game? As long as I won't get full access to the game for at least a few hours with just as much trouble as downloading it from piratebay, I'm going to download it.
Because.... it's the right thing to do?
I mean, I don't mean to offend or anything, but that's pretty fucking amoral right there. All the things I listed are perfectly legitimite ways to play games without paying full price. If you're too lazy or stubborn to do anything, then there might be something wrong.
That's like, if you knew you could drive a car off the lot, take it for a test drive halfway across the country, and return it without a scratch without asking, you'd do it? I mean, sure, you're not hurting anyone, but what the fuck dude?
You shouldn't be surprised when people scoff at the "because it's the right thing to do" reasoning. It's pretty arbitrary to tell someone that they can't enjoy something just because.
Alright. I know a guy with a psychological disorder. He's antisocial in the psychological meaning, that is, he likes to hurt other people. He takes medicine to control it.
If he could realistically get away with killing, say, your pet (or someone else's pet if you don't have one), and not get caught for it, why not? He enjoys it just because.
There's a reason we hail philosophers in every era: because humanity is a moral people. Going against that not only hurts yourself and the other person, but humanity as a whole.
I pirated Amnesia at first, and ended up buying it 2 times afterwords. Once for me, and once as a gift to my roommate. I don't think I would've taken the chance to buy the game based off of what I read online as I really didn't think it could possibly be as scary as it was. In that sense, I think pirating is alright if you have the morality to use it more like a demo. I must say though, the main reason I bought it was because I knew how much of a small scale operation it was, and loved the quality that came from it.
However I feel like a bit of a hypocrite because I don't really see downloading something of much larger scale that bad. If I pirated a mass marketed game such as one of the Modern Warfares, I wouldn't feel bad at all. I have also downloaded Photoshop in the past, and I would never pay that much for a program. I don't really feel too guilty about it.
Funny thing that forced me to go buy a game one time was one of the Zeldas for the DS. I have an R4 so I can play roms like normal games on my DS, and I got to one of the locations and a whole part to get off the train was removed due to anti piracy detection.
Truth is, pirate versions of games are easily available and will continue to be unless the entertainment issue gets their way lobbying draconian cencorship laws. Which obviously cannot be allowed.
If you are buying games from companies that you want to support, yes, this gives you a moral high ground over most pirates. You vote with your wallet and help drive game development into a good direction. I practice this too.
I don't see pirating in itself a bad thing by default - failure to support good game development when you have the means to do so certainly makes you a dick.
What game developers can do to combat piracy is giving players more options to support them directly, and providing good service in return.
On November 30 2011 22:35 Inori wrote: 2.) People download because they can't afford it. 60 euro for a new game is too damn high (insert the too damn high meme here). In fact until recently I pirated 99% of games I played simply because I didn't have the heart to ask my parents for 1/8th of their monthly salary (yeah, min wage is low here) just so I could play a game for 4-5 hours.
Damn I can't afford that Lamborgini, guess I will just take it off the lot for free anyway... Seriously? What kind of point is that?
Sorry, but no-one owns the copy I download. Someone does own that Lamborgini. You're taking someones property, I am not. You can't steal something that has no owner.
But, for your sake, let's say it's stealing. Why the fuck should I care? Should I just sit in front of computer and watch the screensaver when I don't have the money to buy a game? Or should I "steal" it without any consequences. The only difference is, that you have something to do. No-one loses money, no-one gains money.
Or you could, you know, have a hobby that you can afford and is legal. Go running, play futbol, date people, take long walks on the beach.
You act like "welp, if I'm not playing games, I might as well kill myself". That's a stupid argument.
Music - 3 hits 15 trash fillers Games - Create a boss game costing you a lot of money, but big returns as well. Then creating a shitty sequel riding on the fame of the previous title. Movies - Same thing as games. Followed by big production companies making crap because people have faith that their product will be good because they saw X movie from them a year ago.
If they stopped producing crap all the time to pad their pockets I would buy everything I want. Now, I gamefly and blockbuster almost everything before purchase because I don't feel like they actually put effort in making a game/movie I will enjoy, but making a game/movie I might pay for because I might be a sucker.
Damn I can't afford that Lamborgini, guess I will just take it off the lot for free anyway... Seriously? What kind of point is that?
That analogy does not work since you cannot copy a Lamborgini. Copying is not stealing. You could copy a Lamborgini if you wanted and no one would care about that. (different story if you tried to sell it)
Copying a game, movie, or music is against the law if it's distributed, for sale or for free, or is not for use of the purchaser. You are depriving the publisher/developer money they earned making and distributing the game if you give it away for free just like if you went to the store and took it off the shelf. So yes the analogy stands, especially if you read how he worded his point.
The people who make games are protected under the same copyright laws that protect music and movies and I believe people who put their time, effort, money, and souls into their "product", even if you can't touch it, should get the money they deserve for creating it. It is called Intellectual Property Rights and it is a part of the Copyright Laws.
On December 01 2011 05:31 Karnage77 wrote: So many people here trying to justify stealing to ease their guilty minds. You are without permission, taking intellectual property that the owner intended to sell. If you don't have the money then you shouldn't have it.
We have access to gameplay footage on Youtube, tons of reviews, Blockbuster rentals, downloadable demos, and Gamefly. Don't tell me you don't know what game you're buying and need to just "test" it out via piracy (play the entire campaign). Same applies to music. Just because the song has the ability to be reproduced in a non-physical manner does not mean that you aren't stealing. They are SELLING entertainment. Are you not entertained?
And there are so many people trying to defend companys who again and again make shitty content just for the sake of making money. Quality or happy customers are just a Bi-product in a best case scenario for these people. I do not understand how anyone can defend companys like Activision, Ubisoft or EA for all the shit they have pulled through the years. Piracy is the perfect method to tell a company to fuck off because it is the only way to target the only thing they care about, the money.
Really? Your argument is "it's a shitty game, but I want to play it anyway"? No. If you think a game is crap, don't play it at all. Don't pirate it, don't buy it. Playing it in any way is showing them that you want to play it. If a game goes un-bought and un-pirated, they'll know it's shit.
Don't act like you're some kind of Robin Hood trying to stick it to the man. They're providing a product that you don't like, but don't have to partake in. You're a stealing bastard, you're not teaching a lesson or anything.
How am i to know it's a bad game if i can't take it for a test drive?
The advertisment for the game is through the roof, everyone is talking about the game and how awesome it will be and every site who was able to play the game and write a review pre-release praises the game. Game comes out, i pay 50-70$ for it, and guess what it's shit. It's impossible to get a non biased view of the game if you don't play it yourself.
Alright, here's a list of things you can do.
1) Go to Blockbuster, get a membership. You now have access to game rentals for a very reasonable rate.
2) Find a local Redbox. $2 a day for games. If you hate it, return it after a day.
3) Buy from a store rather than online. Returning a game within a few day sis usually a full refund, or at least in-store credit.
4) Play a demo. A good chunk of games nowadays have demos available. Not all, but many.
5) Play at a demo kiosk. Best Buy, Gamestop, Target, Walmart, and many other stores have these available for you to play on.
6) Wait on buying it until the price comes down. This is usually a month or two. If it's a game you're not for sure buying first day, you can usually afford to wait a few more weeks.
7) Find someone who has it, maybe a friend, or make friends who game. Play with them.
And many more. There are ways to play games legally without buying them. And if you don't think you want to play a game... you don't have to have it. Just don't buy it, it won't kill you.
Give me one reason why I should bother to do all that crap when I can just download it for free and see if it's good? Why do I need to 1. Pay and 2. do way more stuff, registering/going to shop/refunding in case it's bad, if I just want to test the game? As long as I won't get full access to the game for at least a few hours with just as much trouble as downloading it from piratebay, I'm going to download it.
Minor point maybe, but isn't the role of a demo to fulfill this?
Damn I can't afford that Lamborgini, guess I will just take it off the lot for free anyway... Seriously? What kind of point is that?
That analogy does not work since you cannot copy a Lamborgini. Copying is not stealing. You could copy a Lamborgini if you wanted and no one would care about that. (different story if you tried to sell it)
Copying a game, movie, or music is against the law if it's distributed, for sale or for free, or is not for use of the purchaser. You are depriving the publisher/developer money they earned making and distributing the game if you give it away for free just like if you went to the store and took it off the shelf. So yes the analogy stands, especially if you read how he worded his point.
The people who make games are protected under the same copyright laws that protect music and movies and I believe people who put their time, effort, money, and souls into their "product", even if you can't touch it, should get the money they deserve for creating it. It is called Intellectual Property Rights and it is a part of the Copyright Laws.
So the only guy breaking the law is the guy who uploaded it.
On December 01 2011 06:40 NoobSkills wrote: Music - 3 hits 15 trash fillers Games - Create a boss game costing you a lot of money, but big returns as well. Then creating a shitty sequel riding on the fame of the previous title. Movies - Same thing as games. Followed by big production companies making crap because people have faith that their product will be good because they saw X movie from them a year ago.
If they stopped producing crap all the time to pad their pockets I would buy everything I want. Now, I gamefly and blockbuster almost everything before purchase because I don't feel like they actually put effort in making a game/movie I will enjoy, but making a game/movie I might pay for because I might be a sucker.
Music - You can buy individual songs now, only get the ones you want. Listen to them on Youtube or Grooveshark first if you want.
Games - If you think it's shit, don't play it. No one is forcing you to pirate and play shitty games.
Movies - Same thing as games. If you think it's going to suck, don't go see it. Wait for it to be on TV or something.
You people act like pirating and doing illegal shit is the only way to do anything. Holy fuck.
I pirate because the amount of money I will make is finite and if I spend less on games I can spend more on other things that are also useful, I will probably continue to do so as much as possible unless I have more money than I know what to do with (such as a big video game company CEO)
On December 01 2011 06:45 Divinek wrote: I pirate because the amount of money I will make is finite and if I spend less on games I can spend more on other things that are also useful, I will probably continue to do so as much as possible unless I have more money than I know what to do with (such as a big video game company CEO)
That's still a dumb argument. If you can't afford games, don't play them ffs. If they mean that much to you, prioritize money in your budget to get them. There's usually only one or two good games a month, that's ~$120 USD. If you can't budget that, or really really need 5+ games each month, then you need to reevaluate some shit, my friend.
I've pirated multiple games in my day, and will continue to do so. Until the time when someone makes some form of media that's actually worth the money myself, or everyone else, works for, I have no problem not paying for it. Movies and music especially, are absolute shit recently. NO ONE should be paying for that garbage.
My income is fixed, so if the gaming companies suffer because I'd rather buy food for a week, tough. Also, 120 a month is 1440 a year. I can spend that much more efficiently elsewhere.
On December 01 2011 06:45 Divinek wrote: I pirate because the amount of money I will make is finite and if I spend less on games I can spend more on other things that are also useful, I will probably continue to do so as much as possible unless I have more money than I know what to do with (such as a big video game company CEO)
That's still a dumb argument. If you can't afford games, don't play them ffs. If they mean that much to you, prioritize money in your budget to get them. There's usually only one or two good games a month, that's ~$120 USD. If you can't budget that, or really really need 5+ games each month, then you need to reevaluate some shit, my friend.
Like I said, people have a me me me mentality.
no one is forcing anybody to watch or play crappy movies/games.
Guaranteed Skyrim ( a great game ) will get pirated to hell too.
On December 01 2011 06:40 NoobSkills wrote: Music - 3 hits 15 trash fillers Games - Create a boss game costing you a lot of money, but big returns as well. Then creating a shitty sequel riding on the fame of the previous title. Movies - Same thing as games. Followed by big production companies making crap because people have faith that their product will be good because they saw X movie from them a year ago.
If they stopped producing crap all the time to pad their pockets I would buy everything I want. Now, I gamefly and blockbuster almost everything before purchase because I don't feel like they actually put effort in making a game/movie I will enjoy, but making a game/movie I might pay for because I might be a sucker.
Music - You can buy individual songs now, only get the ones you want. Listen to them on Youtube or Grooveshark first if you want.
Games - If you think it's shit, don't play it. No one is forcing you to pirate and play shitty games.
Movies - Same thing as games. If you think it's going to suck, don't go see it. Wait for it to be on TV or something.
You people act like pirating and doing illegal shit is the only way to do anything. Holy fuck.
"Wait for it to be on TV or something" Sure, that is good way to watch it in case you have a time machine. "If you think it's shit" How the fuck am I supposed to know whether or not it's shit?
On December 01 2011 06:48 Mortal wrote: I've pirated multiple games in my day, and will continue to do so. Until the time when someone makes some form of media that's actually worth the money myself, or everyone else, works for, I have no problem not paying for it. Movies and music especially, are absolute shit recently. NO ONE should be paying for that garbage.
My income is fixed, so if the gaming companies suffer because I'd rather buy food for a week, tough.
How are you using this as an argument? Have you ever done any type of argumentitive writing or debate before? Obviously not.
This is bad. But I need it. I really don't want it. But I'm going to pirate it anyway.
If you think it's bad, why do you need it? Is there a man in your house holding a gun to your head and forcing you to play games you think are shit? Or watch terrible movies? I'm going to go with no.
Copying a game, movie, or music is against the law if it's distributed, for sale or for free, or is not for use of the purchaser. You are depriving the publisher/developer money they earned making and distributing the game if you give it away for free just like if you went to the store and took it off the shelf. So yes the analogy stands, especially if you read how he worded his point.
Wrong, if you take a car, you are denying the owner of the car from using it, selling whatever, the some does not happen if you copy a cd, thats why copying a cd is not stealing. Your are no depriving the publisher money nor distributing. You are not taking a cd from a store.
The people who make games are protected under the same copyright laws that protect music and movies and I believe people who put their time, effort, money, and souls into their "product", even if you can't touch it, should get the money they deserve for creating it. It is called Intellectual Property Rights and it is a part of the Copyright Laws.
I agree, although I also do not mind if some one download a song or a game if he cannot afford it. Alot of singers do not mind either, they earn there money from concerts and not from cd sells.
On December 01 2011 06:40 NoobSkills wrote: Music - 3 hits 15 trash fillers Games - Create a boss game costing you a lot of money, but big returns as well. Then creating a shitty sequel riding on the fame of the previous title. Movies - Same thing as games. Followed by big production companies making crap because people have faith that their product will be good because they saw X movie from them a year ago.
If they stopped producing crap all the time to pad their pockets I would buy everything I want. Now, I gamefly and blockbuster almost everything before purchase because I don't feel like they actually put effort in making a game/movie I will enjoy, but making a game/movie I might pay for because I might be a sucker.
Music - You can buy individual songs now, only get the ones you want. Listen to them on Youtube or Grooveshark first if you want.
Games - If you think it's shit, don't play it. No one is forcing you to pirate and play shitty games.
Movies - Same thing as games. If you think it's going to suck, don't go see it. Wait for it to be on TV or something.
You people act like pirating and doing illegal shit is the only way to do anything. Holy fuck.
"Wait for it to be on TV or something" Sure, that is good way to watch it in case you have a time machine. "If you think it's shit" How the fuck am I supposed to know whether or not it's shit?
Your literal words were:
creating a shitty sequel riding on the fame of the previous title.
big production companies making crap
You have it in your mind that it's shit. Yet you want it. What kind of mentality is that? It's a petulant child mentality, that's what.
"I need everything that ever comes out ever but never want to pay" makes you a cheap tool.
Ah, the entitlement generation. You have a human right to anything you want. The evil corporations that take the risks hoping to earn a return on their investment deserve to be pirated. I can't believe I actually read posts in this thread that are complaining that game companies aren't putting out content up to your standards. WTF. If it's not good enough, ignore it. Some people are just plain retarded.
Damn I can't afford that Lamborgini, guess I will just take it off the lot for free anyway... Seriously? What kind of point is that?
That analogy does not work since you cannot copy a Lamborgini. Copying is not stealing. You could copy a Lamborgini if you wanted and no one would care about that. (different story if you tried to sell it)
Copying a game, movie, or music is against the law if it's distributed, for sale or for free, or is not for use of the purchaser. You are depriving the publisher/developer money they earned making and distributing the game if you give it away for free just like if you went to the store and took it off the shelf. So yes the analogy stands, especially if you read how he worded his point.
The people who make games are protected under the same copyright laws that protect music and movies and I believe people who put their time, effort, money, and souls into their "product", even if you can't touch it, should get the money they deserve for creating it. It is called Intellectual Property Rights and it is a part of the Copyright Laws.
So the only guy breaking the law is the guy who uploaded it.
No people who pirate are also in violation, it is the same thing as knowingly buying stolen property.
With internet bandwidth caps, DRM, warez sites that sling infectious viruses all over your computer, multiplayer glitches, lack of patching/support, guilt of theft, etc.... for me it's just easier to buy the damn game.
Do what you want with game pirates, I say. I don't lump into that crowd.
Whether or not the item is tangible is completely beside the point. You are stealing intellectual property. Even the name "pirating" implies its amoral essence. I won't lie, I have illegally downloaded music, software, and music... but I do it knowing I am a piece of shit. You are using someone's work for your personal gain at no benefit to them.
When you go to see your favorite band in concert you aren't receiving any item are you? No. You get to be entertained because of their hard work. Should the musicians not get paid for their hard work? What if you sit through the entire concert but they don't play your favorite song... should your ticket be refunded?
On December 01 2011 06:48 Mortal wrote: I've pirated multiple games in my day, and will continue to do so. Until the time when someone makes some form of media that's actually worth the money myself, or everyone else, works for, I have no problem not paying for it. Movies and music especially, are absolute shit recently. NO ONE should be paying for that garbage.
My income is fixed, so if the gaming companies suffer because I'd rather buy food for a week, tough.
How are you using this as an argument? Have you ever done any type of argumentitive writing or debate before? Obviously not.
This is bad. But I need it. I really don't want it. But I'm going to pirate it anyway.
If you think it's bad, why do you need it? Is there a man in your house holding a gun to your head and forcing you to play games you think are shit? Or watch terrible movies? I'm going to go with no.
It's more like, "I think this is good let me try it, and see for my self.". It's not "This is so fkn bad i am going to pirate trolololol." Why do you go too such extremes? Its not like all pirates download games they hate and sadisticly play them for hours on end.
Damn I can't afford that Lamborgini, guess I will just take it off the lot for free anyway... Seriously? What kind of point is that?
That analogy does not work since you cannot copy a Lamborgini. Copying is not stealing. You could copy a Lamborgini if you wanted and no one would care about that. (different story if you tried to sell it)
Copying a game, movie, or music is against the law if it's distributed, for sale or for free, or is not for use of the purchaser. You are depriving the publisher/developer money they earned making and distributing the game if you give it away for free just like if you went to the store and took it off the shelf. So yes the analogy stands, especially if you read how he worded his point.
The people who make games are protected under the same copyright laws that protect music and movies and I believe people who put their time, effort, money, and souls into their "product", even if you can't touch it, should get the money they deserve for creating it. It is called Intellectual Property Rights and it is a part of the Copyright Laws.
So the only guy breaking the law is the guy who uploaded it.
No people who pirate are also in violation, it is the same thing as knowingly buying stolen property.
Your downloading copied property for free . Did I miss something?
On December 01 2011 06:53 Karnage77 wrote: Whether or not the item is tangible is completely beside the point. You are stealing intellectual property. Even the name "pirating" implies its amoral essence. I won't lie, I have illegally downloaded music, software, and music... but I do it knowing I am a piece of shit. You are using someone's work for your personal gain at no benefit to them.
When you go to see your favorite band in concert you aren't receiving any item are you? No. You get to be entertained because of their hard work. Should the musicians not get paid for their hard work? What if you sit through the entire concert but they don't play your favorite song... should your ticket be refunded?
You sit in the concert listening as your favorite band is driveling in a drunken stupor and people shout them off the stage and leave the concert and then ask their money back because the concert was total shit, but you couldn't know that before you paid and listened, could you?
On December 01 2011 06:48 Mortal wrote: I've pirated multiple games in my day, and will continue to do so. Until the time when someone makes some form of media that's actually worth the money myself, or everyone else, works for, I have no problem not paying for it. Movies and music especially, are absolute shit recently. NO ONE should be paying for that garbage.
My income is fixed, so if the gaming companies suffer because I'd rather buy food for a week, tough.
How are you using this as an argument? Have you ever done any type of argumentitive writing or debate before? Obviously not.
This is bad. But I need it. I really don't want it. But I'm going to pirate it anyway.
If you think it's bad, why do you need it? Is there a man in your house holding a gun to your head and forcing you to play games you think are shit? Or watch terrible movies? I'm going to go with no.
Because last I checked, everyone needs a ways to spend what minimal free time they may have. If I want to download a movie and watch it, regardless of quality because I happen to have 2 hours to spare that day, so be it. Doesn't mean it's good, it's just a way to spend a little bit of time. Who said I need it? Where exactly did I say "I must watch movies, but I just don't know how to afford them!" I have a little time, so instead of learning another language or something, when I want to unwind, I download a movie or a game.
BTW, I didn't say the games are shit, I'm saying I could spend that money better somewhere else, it's not worth it. The resources exist, not my fault that they're there. I'm saying the other media (music/movies) are trash mostly, but it's a way to spend a little time.
Also, this guy.
It's more like, "I think this is good let me try it, and see for my self.". It's not "This is so fkn bad i am going to pirate trolololol." Why do you go too such extremes? Its not like all pirates download games they hate and sadisticly play them for hours on end.
On December 01 2011 06:48 Mortal wrote: I've pirated multiple games in my day, and will continue to do so. Until the time when someone makes some form of media that's actually worth the money myself, or everyone else, works for, I have no problem not paying for it. Movies and music especially, are absolute shit recently. NO ONE should be paying for that garbage.
My income is fixed, so if the gaming companies suffer because I'd rather buy food for a week, tough.
How are you using this as an argument? Have you ever done any type of argumentitive writing or debate before? Obviously not.
This is bad. But I need it. I really don't want it. But I'm going to pirate it anyway.
If you think it's bad, why do you need it? Is there a man in your house holding a gun to your head and forcing you to play games you think are shit? Or watch terrible movies? I'm going to go with no.
It's more like, "I think this is good let me try it, and see for my self.". It's not "This is so fkn bad i am going to pirate trolololol." Why do you go too such extremes? Its not like all pirates download games they hate and sadisticly play them for hours on end.
Did you read the post I responded to?
Until the time when someone makes some form of media that's actually worth the money myself, or everyone else, works for, I have no problem not paying for it. Movies and music especially, are absolute shit recently. NO ONE should be paying for that garbage.
He's literally saying that every entertainment media is shit, yet he needs it (for some reason) without paying. This is the general mentality of a lot of pirates. "It's bad but I want because I want gimme gimme gimme."
On December 01 2011 06:48 Mortal wrote: I've pirated multiple games in my day, and will continue to do so. Until the time when someone makes some form of media that's actually worth the money myself, or everyone else, works for, I have no problem not paying for it. Movies and music especially, are absolute shit recently. NO ONE should be paying for that garbage.
My income is fixed, so if the gaming companies suffer because I'd rather buy food for a week, tough.
How are you using this as an argument? Have you ever done any type of argumentitive writing or debate before? Obviously not.
This is bad. But I need it. I really don't want it. But I'm going to pirate it anyway.
If you think it's bad, why do you need it? Is there a man in your house holding a gun to your head and forcing you to play games you think are shit? Or watch terrible movies? I'm going to go with no.
Because last I checked, everyone needs a ways to spend what minimal free time they may have. If I want to download a movie and watch it, regardless of quality because I happen to have 2 hours to spare that day, so be it. Doesn't mean it's good, it's just a way to spend a little bit of time. Who said I need it? Where exactly did I say "I must watch movies, but I just don't know how to afford them!" I have a little time, so instead of learning another language or something, when I want to unwind, I download a movie or a game.
BTW, I didn't say the games are shit, I'm saying I could spend that money better somewhere else, it's not worth it. The resources exist, not my fault that they're there. I'm saying the other media (music/movies) are trash mostly, but it's a way to spend a little time.
It's been said here: there are ways you can spend your free time legally. Without paying! Go outside, or watch TV, or call someone, or play any of the many free to play games. Just because you want something doesn't mean it should automatically be given to you.
Damn I can't afford that Lamborgini, guess I will just take it off the lot for free anyway... Seriously? What kind of point is that?
That analogy does not work since you cannot copy a Lamborgini. Copying is not stealing. You could copy a Lamborgini if you wanted and no one would care about that. (different story if you tried to sell it)
Copying a game, movie, or music is against the law if it's distributed, for sale or for free, or is not for use of the purchaser. You are depriving the publisher/developer money they earned making and distributing the game if you give it away for free just like if you went to the store and took it off the shelf. So yes the analogy stands, especially if you read how he worded his point.
The people who make games are protected under the same copyright laws that protect music and movies and I believe people who put their time, effort, money, and souls into their "product", even if you can't touch it, should get the money they deserve for creating it. It is called Intellectual Property Rights and it is a part of the Copyright Laws.
So the only guy breaking the law is the guy who uploaded it.
No people who pirate are also in violation, it is the same thing as knowingly buying stolen property.
Your downloading copied property for free . Did I miss something?
Oh FFS people do I HAVE to dig out news reports of people who downloaded pirated music and had to pay some insanely high fine or go to jail... Do we really have to have a debate on something that is illegal for a fact and has been documented as such?
Copying intellectual property and distributing it is against the law and the same as stealing extra copies from the store. Knowingly using or buying stolen property is against the law as well. The legitimacy of copyright laws is something that can be discussed and is an OPINION, weather or not something is against the law or not when it is proven to be against the law is not debatable and a FACT...
On December 01 2011 06:53 Karnage77 wrote: Whether or not the item is tangible is completely beside the point. You are stealing intellectual property. Even the name "pirating" implies its amoral essence. I won't lie, I have illegally downloaded music, software, and music... but I do it knowing I am a piece of shit. You are using someone's work for your personal gain at no benefit to them.
When you go to see your favorite band in concert you aren't receiving any item are you? No. You get to be entertained because of their hard work. Should the musicians not get paid for their hard work? What if you sit through the entire concert but they don't play your favorite song... should your ticket be refunded?
You sit in the concert listening as your favorite band is driveling in a drunken stupor and people shout them off the stage and leave the concert and then ask their money back because the concert was total shit, but you couldn't know that before you paid and listened, could you?
Except the majority of the crowd was pleased with what they paid for. The only people wanting refunds are the ones who say it didn't meet their standards... aka entitled little brats.
Why would I pay $60 for a game that will last me 20 hours when I can pay $60 to buy starcraft and have unlimited hours of playtime? The problem is every game is treated as having equal value when they don't. This is why I download rpg's before I buy them these days.
On December 01 2011 06:48 Mortal wrote: I've pirated multiple games in my day, and will continue to do so. Until the time when someone makes some form of media that's actually worth the money myself, or everyone else, works for, I have no problem not paying for it. Movies and music especially, are absolute shit recently. NO ONE should be paying for that garbage.
My income is fixed, so if the gaming companies suffer because I'd rather buy food for a week, tough.
How are you using this as an argument? Have you ever done any type of argumentitive writing or debate before? Obviously not.
This is bad. But I need it. I really don't want it. But I'm going to pirate it anyway.
If you think it's bad, why do you need it? Is there a man in your house holding a gun to your head and forcing you to play games you think are shit? Or watch terrible movies? I'm going to go with no.
It's more like, "I think this is good let me try it, and see for my self.". It's not "This is so fkn bad i am going to pirate trolololol." Why do you go too such extremes? Its not like all pirates download games they hate and sadisticly play them for hours on end.
Until the time when someone makes some form of media that's actually worth the money myself, or everyone else, works for, I have no problem not paying for it. Movies and music especially, are absolute shit recently. NO ONE should be paying for that garbage.
He's literally saying that every entertainment media is shit, yet he needs it (for some reason) without paying. This is the general mentality of a lot of pirates. "It's bad but I want because I want gimme gimme gimme."
Yes i read his post, but i guess my answer was not only to you. It was a poor post to make.
What im trying to say is that alot of people (You included) in here seems too think that all pirates activley seek out games they know suck and proceeds to play them just because they can. I don't know if it's because im tired and i am reading stuff wrong but that how some posts look.
I don't know.. It's like.. It's kind of stupid.. The whole thing.
I mean, like.. How many watches playthroughs now a day instead of actually buying the game? I know I've watched a lot of playthroughs instead of buying the games. I feel that hurt developers more than if I would pirate, from my side at least. Because either way; I would not buy their game. Chances are I wouldn't buy it to begin with, but commentary playthroughs hurt the sale at least as much as piracy, I believe.
Developers (or I guess publishers) should stop being so uptight. What will happen with PC games if piracy keeps on (which it will) is that less money will be spent on huge graphics and more money will be spent on making the game easier to modify. As much as I dislike Minecraft, the idea is brilliant and that game will go on for a long time, until there's another game, as welcoming to modify as minecraft.
And I quite like that idea. Not only will it bring more variety than ever possible for a 'closed' game. It will also have the possibility to increase a lot of peoples knowledge, or indeed will to learn, about coding or whatever is needed to actually modify a game. I like knowledge.
Oh FFS people do I HAVE to dig out news reports of people who downloaded pirated music and had to pay some insanely high fine or go to jail... Do we really have to have a debate on something that is illegal for a fact and has been documented as such?
Thats only really happens in US. Why go to jail from copying something? A fine? Yes!
Damn I can't afford that Lamborgini, guess I will just take it off the lot for free anyway... Seriously? What kind of point is that?
That analogy does not work since you cannot copy a Lamborgini. Copying is not stealing. You could copy a Lamborgini if you wanted and no one would care about that. (different story if you tried to sell it)
Copying a game, movie, or music is against the law if it's distributed, for sale or for free, or is not for use of the purchaser. You are depriving the publisher/developer money they earned making and distributing the game if you give it away for free just like if you went to the store and took it off the shelf. So yes the analogy stands, especially if you read how he worded his point.
The people who make games are protected under the same copyright laws that protect music and movies and I believe people who put their time, effort, money, and souls into their "product", even if you can't touch it, should get the money they deserve for creating it. It is called Intellectual Property Rights and it is a part of the Copyright Laws.
So the only guy breaking the law is the guy who uploaded it.
No people who pirate are also in violation, it is the same thing as knowingly buying stolen property.
Your downloading copied property for free . Did I miss something?
Oh FFS people do I HAVE to dig out news reports of people who downloaded pirated music and had to pay some insanely high fine or go to jail... Do we really have to have a debate on something that is illegal for a fact and has been documented as such?
Please do because I've never heard of anyone having to pay anything unless his been sharing them. Although I could theoretically see that happening in US.
On December 01 2011 06:53 Karnage77 wrote: Whether or not the item is tangible is completely beside the point. You are stealing intellectual property. Even the name "pirating" implies its amoral essence. I won't lie, I have illegally downloaded music, software, and music... but I do it knowing I am a piece of shit. You are using someone's work for your personal gain at no benefit to them.
When you go to see your favorite band in concert you aren't receiving any item are you? No. You get to be entertained because of their hard work. Should the musicians not get paid for their hard work? What if you sit through the entire concert but they don't play your favorite song... should your ticket be refunded?
You sit in the concert listening as your favorite band is driveling in a drunken stupor and people shout them off the stage and leave the concert and then ask their money back because the concert was total shit, but you couldn't know that before you paid and listened, could you?
Except the majority of the crowd was pleased with what they paid for. The only people wanting refunds are the ones who say it didn't meet their standards... aka entitled little brats.
Not being worth the money doesn't necessarily mean that the game is absolute shit. Let's say a game offers 12 hours of gameplay. Depending on how fun it is it might be worth 20€ in my opinion but it's sold at 50€. Thus I pirate it because I can't justify spending that much money on it.
I think the games industry needs a better business model. I don't think I have pirated a single song since I started using spotify 4 months ago.
On November 30 2011 22:22 Fazzmania wrote: The Dark Souls example only worked because it was a console game. Any sort of similar security measure on PC could easily be circumvented by any decent scene group.
On December 01 2011 07:04 Maitolasi wrote: Not being worth the money doesn't necessarily mean that the game is absolute shit. Let's say a game offers 12 hours of gameplay. Depending on how fun it is it might be worth 20€ in my opinion but it's sold at 50€. Thus I pirate it because I can't justify spending that much money on it.
I think the games industry needs a better business model. I don't think I have pirated a single song since I started using spotify 4 months ago.
Or you could rent it, or you could buy it full price and return it and get something with the refund? Even if it's not full price refund, you get quite a bit back.
On December 01 2011 04:10 wei2coolman wrote: All I know is that all the industries that "piracy" supposedly hurts, are all growing.
As far as numbers go, these industries are expanding, not diminishing.
And they would grow larger and faster if they weren't being slowed by piracy. If every person who pirated actually bought the game/CD/movie as well (and don't try and pretend they do), the prices would go down because the makers would know the market is willing to pay.
Let's say you make a game and you need to make $120 between 5 people to break even. You know three of those five will pirate, so you price it at $60. If you knew all 5 people would buy it legally, you'd only charge $24.
That's how steam does it. Steam has proven that piracy isn't the issue, its the companies.
On December 01 2011 07:04 Maitolasi wrote: Not being worth the money doesn't necessarily mean that the game is absolute shit. Let's say a game offers 12 hours of gameplay. Depending on how fun it is it might be worth 20€ in my opinion but it's sold at 50€. Thus I pirate it because I can't justify spending that much money on it.
I think the games industry needs a better business model. I don't think I have pirated a single song since I started using spotify 4 months ago.
Or you could rent it, or you could buy it full price and return it and get something with the refund? Even if it's not full price refund, you get quite a bit back.
Damn I can't afford that Lamborgini, guess I will just take it off the lot for free anyway... Seriously? What kind of point is that?
That analogy does not work since you cannot copy a Lamborgini. Copying is not stealing. You could copy a Lamborgini if you wanted and no one would care about that. (different story if you tried to sell it)
Copying a game, movie, or music is against the law if it's distributed, for sale or for free, or is not for use of the purchaser. You are depriving the publisher/developer money they earned making and distributing the game if you give it away for free just like if you went to the store and took it off the shelf. So yes the analogy stands, especially if you read how he worded his point.
The people who make games are protected under the same copyright laws that protect music and movies and I believe people who put their time, effort, money, and souls into their "product", even if you can't touch it, should get the money they deserve for creating it. It is called Intellectual Property Rights and it is a part of the Copyright Laws.
So the only guy breaking the law is the guy who uploaded it.
No people who pirate are also in violation, it is the same thing as knowingly buying stolen property.
Your downloading copied property for free . Did I miss something?
Oh FFS people do I HAVE to dig out news reports of people who downloaded pirated music and had to pay some insanely high fine or go to jail... Do we really have to have a debate on something that is illegal for a fact and has been documented as such?
Please do because I've never heard of anyone having to pay anything unless his been sharing them. Although I could theoretically see that happening in US.
On December 01 2011 07:04 Maitolasi wrote: Not being worth the money doesn't necessarily mean that the game is absolute shit. Let's say a game offers 12 hours of gameplay. Depending on how fun it is it might be worth 20€ in my opinion but it's sold at 50€. Thus I pirate it because I can't justify spending that much money on it.
I think the games industry needs a better business model. I don't think I have pirated a single song since I started using spotify 4 months ago.
Or you could rent it, or you could buy it full price and return it and get something with the refund? Even if it's not full price refund, you get quite a bit back.
If you have had a good experience returning stuff to stores good for you (and i mean that!) But so many times at least i have tried to return something and the person behind the register just gives a big grin and says FUCK YOU! and you walk back out again with your crappy game in hand. Different countrys + different stores = Different results.
People always seem to overlook the type of games that get crushed by this type of piracy. Single player rpg's are right at the top of the list and thus we never really see any quality ones coming out these days. TW2 is an example of a game with heart and soul draped all over it that will never succeed because of the type of game it is.
Pirates need to wake up and realize how much they're hurting their industry. If a company has a choice between two concepts, one a mediocre shooter and one an amazing single player RPG they will always take the shooter because it will sell better, mostly because of online multiplayer.
Excuses for why people pirate don't hold water here when you look at the games that are getting hit by piracy.
On December 01 2011 07:04 Maitolasi wrote: Not being worth the money doesn't necessarily mean that the game is absolute shit. Let's say a game offers 12 hours of gameplay. Depending on how fun it is it might be worth 20€ in my opinion but it's sold at 50€. Thus I pirate it because I can't justify spending that much money on it.
I think the games industry needs a better business model. I don't think I have pirated a single song since I started using spotify 4 months ago.
>Implying length of game equates to worth
Portal 2 was full price and really short. Worth every penny.
Vanquish was full price and I knocked it out in a day. Best 3rd person shooter I've played in a long time, worth it.
On December 01 2011 07:08 KnT wrote: When I stop getting charged 260% of the cost of what other countries are charged, I will stop pirating games
$29.99 CAD = $28.65 AUD btw
Wow, the difference there is even worse than the 70% mark-up on Australian i-Tunes...
The ridiculous internet mark-ups for Australian buyers are undoubtedly the reason that we have the largest rate of piracy per capita in the world.
Also, atleast in the case of SC2, piracy figures could be inflated because people torrent the game files because downloading them from the Blizzard server is just too slow, even when they buy the game legitimately.
Damn I can't afford that Lamborgini, guess I will just take it off the lot for free anyway... Seriously? What kind of point is that?
That analogy does not work since you cannot copy a Lamborgini. Copying is not stealing. You could copy a Lamborgini if you wanted and no one would care about that. (different story if you tried to sell it)
Copying a game, movie, or music is against the law if it's distributed, for sale or for free, or is not for use of the purchaser. You are depriving the publisher/developer money they earned making and distributing the game if you give it away for free just like if you went to the store and took it off the shelf. So yes the analogy stands, especially if you read how he worded his point.
The people who make games are protected under the same copyright laws that protect music and movies and I believe people who put their time, effort, money, and souls into their "product", even if you can't touch it, should get the money they deserve for creating it. It is called Intellectual Property Rights and it is a part of the Copyright Laws.
So the only guy breaking the law is the guy who uploaded it.
No people who pirate are also in violation, it is the same thing as knowingly buying stolen property.
Your downloading copied property for free . Did I miss something?
Oh FFS people do I HAVE to dig out news reports of people who downloaded pirated music and had to pay some insanely high fine or go to jail... Do we really have to have a debate on something that is illegal for a fact and has been documented as such?
Please do because I've never heard of anyone having to pay anything unless his been sharing them. Although I could theoretically see that happening in US.
Damn I can't afford that Lamborgini, guess I will just take it off the lot for free anyway... Seriously? What kind of point is that?
That analogy does not work since you cannot copy a Lamborgini. Copying is not stealing. You could copy a Lamborgini if you wanted and no one would care about that. (different story if you tried to sell it)
Copying a game, movie, or music is against the law if it's distributed, for sale or for free, or is not for use of the purchaser. You are depriving the publisher/developer money they earned making and distributing the game if you give it away for free just like if you went to the store and took it off the shelf. So yes the analogy stands, especially if you read how he worded his point.
The people who make games are protected under the same copyright laws that protect music and movies and I believe people who put their time, effort, money, and souls into their "product", even if you can't touch it, should get the money they deserve for creating it. It is called Intellectual Property Rights and it is a part of the Copyright Laws.
So the only guy breaking the law is the guy who uploaded it.
No people who pirate are also in violation, it is the same thing as knowingly buying stolen property.
Your downloading copied property for free . Did I miss something?
Oh FFS people do I HAVE to dig out news reports of people who downloaded pirated music and had to pay some insanely high fine or go to jail... Do we really have to have a debate on something that is illegal for a fact and has been documented as such?
Please do because I've never heard of anyone having to pay anything unless his been sharing them. Although I could theoretically see that happening in US.
"against computer pirates who put illegal copies of movies and television series on the Internet" "Wednesday for illegally downloading and distributing popular songs either from the Internet or from CDs on mobile phones." "They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights. " I think I said "unless his been sharing them."
On December 01 2011 07:11 Filter wrote: People always seem to overlook the type of games that get crushed by this type of piracy. Single player rpg's are right at the top of the list and thus we never really see any quality ones coming out these days. TW2 is an example of a game with heart and soul draped all over it that will never succeed because of the type of game it is.
Pirates need to wake up and realize how much they're hurting their industry. If a company has a choice between two concepts, one a mediocre shooter and one an amazing single player RPG they will always take the shooter because it will sell better, mostly because of online multiplayer.
Excuses for why people pirate don't hold water here when you look at the games that are getting hit by piracy.
Damn I can't afford that Lamborgini, guess I will just take it off the lot for free anyway... Seriously? What kind of point is that?
That analogy does not work since you cannot copy a Lamborgini. Copying is not stealing. You could copy a Lamborgini if you wanted and no one would care about that. (different story if you tried to sell it)
Copying a game, movie, or music is against the law if it's distributed, for sale or for free, or is not for use of the purchaser. You are depriving the publisher/developer money they earned making and distributing the game if you give it away for free just like if you went to the store and took it off the shelf. So yes the analogy stands, especially if you read how he worded his point.
The people who make games are protected under the same copyright laws that protect music and movies and I believe people who put their time, effort, money, and souls into their "product", even if you can't touch it, should get the money they deserve for creating it. It is called Intellectual Property Rights and it is a part of the Copyright Laws.
So the only guy breaking the law is the guy who uploaded it.
No people who pirate are also in violation, it is the same thing as knowingly buying stolen property.
Your downloading copied property for free . Did I miss something?
Oh FFS people do I HAVE to dig out news reports of people who downloaded pirated music and had to pay some insanely high fine or go to jail... Do we really have to have a debate on something that is illegal for a fact and has been documented as such?
Please do because I've never heard of anyone having to pay anything unless his been sharing them. Although I could theoretically see that happening in US.
"against computer pirates who put illegal copies of movies and television series on the Internet" "Wednesday for illegally downloading and distributing popular songs either from the Internet or from CDs on mobile phones." "They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights. " I think I said "unless his been sharing them."
On December 01 2011 07:08 KnT wrote: When I stop getting charged 260% of the cost of what other countries are charged, I will stop pirating games
$29.99 CAD = $28.65 AUD btw
Wow, the difference there is even worse than the 70% mark-up on Australian i-Tunes...
The ridiculous internet mark-ups for Australian buyers are undoubtedly the reason that we have the largest rate of piracy per capita in the world.
Also, atleast in the case of SC2, piracy figures could be inflated because people torrent the game files because downloading them from the Blizzard server is just too slow, even when they buy the game legitimately.
Doesn't the problem hold with something about imports in general and AUS.
On December 01 2011 07:11 Filter wrote: People always seem to overlook the type of games that get crushed by this type of piracy. Single player rpg's are right at the top of the list and thus we never really see any quality ones coming out these days. TW2 is an example of a game with heart and soul draped all over it that will never succeed because of the type of game it is.
Pirates need to wake up and realize how much they're hurting their industry. If a company has a choice between two concepts, one a mediocre shooter and one an amazing single player RPG they will always take the shooter because it will sell better, mostly because of online multiplayer.
Excuses for why people pirate don't hold water here when you look at the games that are getting hit by piracy.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Tops 3.4 Million Retail Sales in First 2 Days.
Yeah There won't be a Elder scrolls VI with those kind of sales.
Polls like that are clearly designed to lead to skewed results. If you don't pirate music you either have really strict morals, or you don't care about music in general. I would say the latter is the most common.
If we use games as an example instead, which have a much more closed fanbase, you'll see why that poll is so skewed. Let's say you ask a number of ppl whether they pirate games or not. Now you've divided them into two groups, and if you examined them, you would see there's a distinct difference between the groups. The pirates consists 100% of gamers, while the non-pirates covers a larger spectrum, with ppl who doesn't want to pirate because of morals, ppl who doesn't know about pirating, and (the majority), ppl who doesn't care about games. If you look at things like that it's obvious that the pirates buys more games, they are gamers after all, and it's the same thing with music. If you don't pirate music, the chances are pretty high that you don't care much about music.
On December 01 2011 07:08 KnT wrote: When I stop getting charged 260% of the cost of what other countries are charged, I will stop pirating games
$29.99 CAD = $28.65 AUD btw
Wow, the difference there is even worse than the 70% mark-up on Australian i-Tunes...
The ridiculous internet mark-ups for Australian buyers are undoubtedly the reason that we have the largest rate of piracy per capita in the world.
Also, atleast in the case of SC2, piracy figures could be inflated because people torrent the game files because downloading them from the Blizzard server is just too slow, even when they buy the game legitimately.
Doesn't the problem hold with something about imports in general and AUS.
You're saying it'll cost $50 to import a CD in a box?
On December 01 2011 07:08 KnT wrote: When I stop getting charged 260% of the cost of what other countries are charged, I will stop pirating games
Did you take the Canadian to Australian dollar conversion into account?
Although it doesn't help you right now, but you are actually paying 272% for SC2 not 260%.
Edit: Point of post: it undermines your case if you don't get the math right.
Disclaimer: It is possible those are both in US dollars.
Why should I pay in foreign currency/directly converted from foreign currency for something I buy locally that does not even count as an import (digital discharge).
The companies are jewing what they consider lesser markets. Fuck 'em.
On December 01 2011 06:32 Brutefidget wrote: The losers in piracy are not the developers. The losers are the people who paid for the game. To know that you paid 60 dollars to play something that others are playing for free makes you feel like a sucker.
that's not how I feel. like, I used to pirate games. up until I was 18 years old, I had prolly played a couple thousand games (most of them really small games for dos), and bought something like, 5. (or wait I also bought some compilation cds attached to magazines containing 250 games so I prolly bought like 505.)
then two things happened: I became an adult with money, and it became easier to buy games online. now I don't pirate games anymore. very little changed regarding my perception of the morality of buying or pirating games. what changed was my ability to purchase games because I could now afford to do so, and that developers realized that it's a lot easier to distribute games through letting people download them less expensively online, than through people having to go down to some store.
I've never felt like a sucker now, now I feel like a regular adult who pays for games because I can, and because I want to support the developers. I never felt like a leech before, I felt like a regular kid who wanted to play games but couldn't afford to buy them. if pirating hadn't been an option while growing up, what would have happened is that I would have done something else than play games; and then I probably wouldn't be an adult who purchases computer games today..
http://www.switched.com/2009/06/19/woman-fined-1-9-million-for-downloading-24-songs/ A simple google search brought this up... I think you know how to use a browser.
Only in US that can be allowed. A mother of 4 children being sued by corporations for downloading 24 songs and sharing them at no profit would be fined 1.9 million dollars. That is so disgusting.
On December 01 2011 07:27 Gorguts wrote: piracy =/= lost sales.
I pirated your game, because it was EASY and FREE. if I couldn't pirate it, I wouldn't buy it anyways.
I've read a lot of things from a lot of people who advocate piracy.... admitting you're nothing but a thief and you're fine with that is certainly a rarity.
On December 01 2011 06:32 Brutefidget wrote: The losers in piracy are not the developers. The losers are the people who paid for the game. To know that you paid 60 dollars to play something that others are playing for free makes you feel like a sucker.
that's not how I feel. like, I used to pirate games. up until I was 18 years old, I had prolly played a couple thousand games (most of them really small games for dos), and bought something like, 5. (or wait I also bought some compilation cds attached to magazines containing 250 games so I prolly bought like 505.)
then two things happened: I became an adult with money, and it became easier to buy games online. now I don't pirate games anymore. very little changed regarding my perception of the morality of buying or pirating games. what changed was my ability to purchase games because I could now afford to do so, and that developers realized that it's a lot easier to distribute games through letting people download them less expensively online, than through people having to go down to some store.
I've never felt like a sucker now, now I feel like a regular adult who pays for games because I can, and because I want to support the developers. I never felt like a leech before, I felt like a regular kid who wanted to play games but couldn't afford to buy them. if pirating hadn't been an option while growing up, what would have happened is that I would have done something else than play games; and then I probably wouldn't be an adult who purchases computer games today..
100% agree. I'm a college student, I only buy games I feel that I think are totally worth my cash. For example, I bought Half Life, Half Life2, and all it's episodes. Why? Because I felt that it was the greatest thing ever, best single player ever.
Now let me tell you a story.... I pirated DA:O (dragon age origins), played it. fucking LOVED it. I reserved DA2, bought that shit, fucking loved it!
If i never pirated DA:O, wanna know what would happen? I would've never bought DA2.
Same applied to me for diablo, and diablo 2. Didn't buy diablo, pirated it, fucking fell in love with it. Bought diablo 2, fucking loved it. bought diablo 2, expansion.= guess what? I'm probably gunna buy diablo 3 as well.
Now for skyrim. I pirated morrowind, loved it. bought oblivion, hated it. pirated skyrim, loved it. Guess what I'm gunna do with Elder Scrolls VI, i might just buy it.
Pirating helps the industry as much as it hurts it.
On December 01 2011 06:30 chickenhawk wrote: [quote]
That analogy does not work since you cannot copy a Lamborgini. Copying is not stealing. You could copy a Lamborgini if you wanted and no one would care about that. (different story if you tried to sell it)
Copying a game, movie, or music is against the law if it's distributed, for sale or for free, or is not for use of the purchaser. You are depriving the publisher/developer money they earned making and distributing the game if you give it away for free just like if you went to the store and took it off the shelf. So yes the analogy stands, especially if you read how he worded his point.
The people who make games are protected under the same copyright laws that protect music and movies and I believe people who put their time, effort, money, and souls into their "product", even if you can't touch it, should get the money they deserve for creating it. It is called Intellectual Property Rights and it is a part of the Copyright Laws.
So the only guy breaking the law is the guy who uploaded it.
No people who pirate are also in violation, it is the same thing as knowingly buying stolen property.
Your downloading copied property for free . Did I miss something?
Oh FFS people do I HAVE to dig out news reports of people who downloaded pirated music and had to pay some insanely high fine or go to jail... Do we really have to have a debate on something that is illegal for a fact and has been documented as such?
Please do because I've never heard of anyone having to pay anything unless his been sharing them. Although I could theoretically see that happening in US.
"against computer pirates who put illegal copies of movies and television series on the Internet" "Wednesday for illegally downloading and distributing popular songs either from the Internet or from CDs on mobile phones." "They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights. " I think I said "unless his been sharing them."
And you actually want to pay to those fuckers ? No matter how much I have money, I wouldn't. But anyway, I don't know about US laws, but I do know that if you download anything here, you will get absolutely nothing for it. I don't actually even know if you could be sued for it here, and I couldn't care less. If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game. I don't know if that'll change when I'm able to afford them without any problems, but right now I want to play, and I want to eat, and as long as it's possible to do both then I'm going to do it.
http://www.switched.com/2009/06/19/woman-fined-1-9-million-for-downloading-24-songs/ A simple google search brought this up... I think you know how to use a browser.
Only in US that can be allowed. A mother of 4 children being sued by corporations for downloading 24 songs and sharing them at no profit would be fined 1.9 million dollars. That is so disgusting.
So if she was a unmarried billionaire it would be OK to you right? Her marital status or how many kids doesn't change the fact that what she did was against the law. Like I said we can have a discussion over if the law is right or not, what you can't argue is if it is against the law or not because it is a FACT it is against the law.
http://www.switched.com/2009/06/19/woman-fined-1-9-million-for-downloading-24-songs/ A simple google search brought this up... I think you know how to use a browser.
Only in US that can be allowed. A mother of 4 children being sued by corporations for downloading 24 songs and sharing them at no profit would be fined 1.9 million dollars. That is so disgusting.
So if she was a unmarried billionaire it would be OK to you right? Her marital status or how many kids doesn't change the fact that what she did was against the law. Like I said we can have a discussion over if the law is right or not, what you can't argue is if it is against the law or not because it is a FACT it is against the law.
Equal punishment equivalent to the weight of the crime.
So stealing 24 dollars worth of candy is equivalent to a 1.9million dollar fine? No, If you stole 24 candy bars you get slapped with a 500 dollar fine, and possibly some jail time.
http://www.switched.com/2009/06/19/woman-fined-1-9-million-for-downloading-24-songs/ A simple google search brought this up... I think you know how to use a browser.
Only in US that can be allowed. A mother of 4 children being sued by corporations for downloading 24 songs and sharing them at no profit would be fined 1.9 million dollars. That is so disgusting.
So if she was a unmarried billionaire it would be OK to you right? Her marital status or how many kids doesn't change the fact that what she did was against the law. Like I said we can have a discussion over if the law is right or not, what you can't argue is if it is against the law or not because it is a FACT it is against the law.
How about you descend back to earth and think what you just said. You defend some idiots who want to destroy a mothers and her kids life just to give an example? Thats not about money or to punish her, it's ONLY to frighten others. Fuck you.
http://www.switched.com/2009/06/19/woman-fined-1-9-million-for-downloading-24-songs/ A simple google search brought this up... I think you know how to use a browser.
Only in US that can be allowed. A mother of 4 children being sued by corporations for downloading 24 songs and sharing them at no profit would be fined 1.9 million dollars. That is so disgusting.
So if she was a unmarried billionaire it would be OK to you right? Her marital status or how many kids doesn't change the fact that what she did was against the law. Like I said we can have a discussion over if the law is right or not, what you can't argue is if it is against the law or not because it is a FACT it is against the law.
Actually the original source (at least from an older articel of the same site, I don't suppose the facts changed) reads differently: CNET
A jury in Minneapolis decided today that she was liable for $1.5 million in copyright infringement damages to Capitol Records, or $62,500 for each song she illegally shared in April 2006.
I find it disgusting that someone can be sued up to $80,000 per song. The majority of people who pirate songs don't normally pirate one or two songs, they pirate 50 up to thousands upon thousands. It is incredibly stupid in my opinion to ruin someone's life instantly for doing something that barely changes the life of the artist. Buying one song from iTunes will not give the artist that much money, yet they are allowed to sue $80,000? Oh America.....
On December 01 2011 07:11 Filter wrote: People always seem to overlook the type of games that get crushed by this type of piracy. Single player rpg's are right at the top of the list and thus we never really see any quality ones coming out these days. TW2 is an example of a game with heart and soul draped all over it that will never succeed because of the type of game it is.
Pirates need to wake up and realize how much they're hurting their industry. If a company has a choice between two concepts, one a mediocre shooter and one an amazing single player RPG they will always take the shooter because it will sell better, mostly because of online multiplayer.
Excuses for why people pirate don't hold water here when you look at the games that are getting hit by piracy.
the game mentioned in the OP is Witcher 2. it is a single player rpg. it has not been "crushed by piracy", in fact as has been shown by this thread, it has made a nice profit. and as was just mentioned by another poster, skyrim was released 3 weeks ago. that's the biggest and most anticipated, and guess what, most bought, single player rpg ever. and the next elder scrolls game is going to be even bigger, with even more quests, more voice actors, better graphics, more sales, and more pirated copies, because despite piracy, and arguably, partially due to piracy, the game industry keeps growing and growing and growing, and it will continue doing so.
small indie developers are hurt by piracy though, and that sucks. but these blanket "piracy is always wrong" "piracy equals theft" "piracy hurts everyone but the pirate" "piracy is illegal thus it is immoral" statements.. they're just a way of simplifying reality in a stupidifying manner.
the witcher 2 is worst example ever and not a basis to go on :
at the release of the game , ppl who bought the game couldn't activate it so after a week , the studio decided to remove the DRM. After that , the game was playable without a crack.
Witcher 2 devellopers were on the side of the players, not about the money and that's the only things to care about!
Do you prefer to pay 70$ for 3hours of play? or devellopers saying "okay we fucked up , let's remove the DRM" about a good RPG?
So if she was a unmarried billionaire it would be OK to you right? Her marital status or how many kids doesn't change the fact that what she did was against the law. Like I said we can have a discussion over if the law is right or not, what you can't argue is if it is against the law or not because it is a FACT it is against the law.
The law must be fair for everyone!
So if she was a unmarried billionaire it would be OK to you right?
Yes it would, but there is not point in discussion this point since we have different background and education. She was sue for 80 000 dollars per song! When they cost around 0.99 dollars? That is so pathetic,
On December 01 2011 06:41 Yergidy wrote: [quote] Copying a game, movie, or music is against the law if it's distributed, for sale or for free, or is not for use of the purchaser. You are depriving the publisher/developer money they earned making and distributing the game if you give it away for free just like if you went to the store and took it off the shelf. So yes the analogy stands, especially if you read how he worded his point.
The people who make games are protected under the same copyright laws that protect music and movies and I believe people who put their time, effort, money, and souls into their "product", even if you can't touch it, should get the money they deserve for creating it. It is called Intellectual Property Rights and it is a part of the Copyright Laws.
So the only guy breaking the law is the guy who uploaded it.
No people who pirate are also in violation, it is the same thing as knowingly buying stolen property.
Your downloading copied property for free . Did I miss something?
Oh FFS people do I HAVE to dig out news reports of people who downloaded pirated music and had to pay some insanely high fine or go to jail... Do we really have to have a debate on something that is illegal for a fact and has been documented as such?
Please do because I've never heard of anyone having to pay anything unless his been sharing them. Although I could theoretically see that happening in US.
"against computer pirates who put illegal copies of movies and television series on the Internet" "Wednesday for illegally downloading and distributing popular songs either from the Internet or from CDs on mobile phones." "They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights. " I think I said "unless his been sharing them."
And you actually want to pay to those fuckers ? No matter how much I have money, I wouldn't. But anyway, I don't know about US laws, but I do know that if you download anything here, you will get absolutely nothing for it. I don't actually even know if you could be sued for it here, and I couldn't care less. If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game. I don't know if that'll change when I'm able to afford them without any problems, but right now I want to play, and I want to eat, and as long as it's possible to do both then I'm going to do it.
Oh no, they punished her for doing something illegal? How cruel!
While it's a dumb story, and the fine is exorbitant, it very clearly states in many places how much you'll be fined for illegally downloading stuff. You take a risk, sometimes you get fucked.
Your mindset is immature. "I want I want I want gimme gimme gimme" makes you sound like a child who doesn't know the value of a dollar.
"If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game." How petulant. If you can't afford something, you don't get it. Just because this type of theft is easy to pull off doesn't make you tough, doesn't make you right, and just makes you a punk. Get over yourself.
On December 01 2011 06:32 Brutefidget wrote: The losers in piracy are not the developers. The losers are the people who paid for the game. To know that you paid 60 dollars to play something that others are playing for free makes you feel like a sucker.
that's not how I feel. like, I used to pirate games. up until I was 18 years old, I had prolly played a couple thousand games (most of them really small games for dos), and bought something like, 5. (or wait I also bought some compilation cds attached to magazines containing 250 games so I prolly bought like 505.)
then two things happened: I became an adult with money, and it became easier to buy games online. now I don't pirate games anymore. very little changed regarding my perception of the morality of buying or pirating games. what changed was my ability to purchase games because I could now afford to do so, and that developers realized that it's a lot easier to distribute games through letting people download them less expensively online, than through people having to go down to some store.
I've never felt like a sucker now, now I feel like a regular adult who pays for games because I can, and because I want to support the developers. I never felt like a leech before, I felt like a regular kid who wanted to play games but couldn't afford to buy them. if pirating hadn't been an option while growing up, what would have happened is that I would have done something else than play games; and then I probably wouldn't be an adult who purchases computer games today..
Your story is interesting but it still doesn't change the fact that if everyone did what you did we'd have no more games. For this reason, people who buy games have an animosity towards those who do not. One party is guaranteeing the continuance of the industry while the other gains all the benefit. Whether or not you feel like a leech doesn't change whether or not you are one.
Arguing with piracy advocates is a complete waste of time though. Feels like the midwest in this thread with how many straw men there are.
Oh no, they punished her for doing something illegal? How cruel!
While it's a dumb story, and the fine is exorbitant, it very clearly states in many places how much you'll be fined for illegally downloading stuff. You take a risk, sometimes you get fucked.
Your mindset is immature. "I want I want I want gimme gimme gimme" makes you sound like a child who doesn't know the value of a dollar.
"If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game." How petulant. If you can't afford something, you don't get it. Just because this type of theft is easy to pull off doesn't make you tough, doesn't make you right, and just makes you a punk. Get over yourself.
Actually she was only fined 50 thousand dollars, then the Corporations gave her an opinion of paying just half, she refused, she is an hero and not a criminal.
Oh no, they punished her for doing something illegal? How cruel!
While it's a dumb story, and the fine is exorbitant, it very clearly states in many places how much you'll be fined for illegally downloading stuff. You take a risk, sometimes you get fucked.
Your mindset is immature. "I want I want I want gimme gimme gimme" makes you sound like a child who doesn't know the value of a dollar.
"If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game." How petulant. If you can't afford something, you don't get it. Just because this type of theft is easy to pull off doesn't make you tough, doesn't make you right, and just makes you a punk. Get over yourself.
Actually she was only fined 50 thousand dollars, then the Corporations gave her an opinion of paying just half, she refused, she is an hero and not a criminal.
That still makes her a criminal, just one who decided to make up for it. The corporations aren't the bad guys here, they said they'll fine people who pirate and seed, and then they followed through on it. They even offered to let her pay half.
On December 01 2011 07:46 Zodiac7777 wrote: I find it disgusting that someone can be sued up to $80,000 per song. The majority of people who pirate songs don't normally pirate one or two songs, they pirate 50 up to thousands upon thousands. It is incredibly stupid in my opinion to ruin someone's life instantly for doing something that barely changes the life of the artist. Buying one song from iTunes will not give the artist that much money, yet they are allowed to sue $80,000? Oh America.....
The reasons for these exorbitant fines are that most songs are downloaded through a file sharing or peer to peer application. The downloading of the single song is not viewed as the entirety of the crime; it also needs to be accounted for that the person who downloaded the song also made it available for others to download from them. Thus the attribution of a fine much more costly due to the loss of potential income being that much greater.
On December 01 2011 06:43 Mammel wrote: [quote] So the only guy breaking the law is the guy who uploaded it.
No people who pirate are also in violation, it is the same thing as knowingly buying stolen property.
Your downloading copied property for free . Did I miss something?
Oh FFS people do I HAVE to dig out news reports of people who downloaded pirated music and had to pay some insanely high fine or go to jail... Do we really have to have a debate on something that is illegal for a fact and has been documented as such?
Please do because I've never heard of anyone having to pay anything unless his been sharing them. Although I could theoretically see that happening in US.
"against computer pirates who put illegal copies of movies and television series on the Internet" "Wednesday for illegally downloading and distributing popular songs either from the Internet or from CDs on mobile phones." "They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights. " I think I said "unless his been sharing them."
And you actually want to pay to those fuckers ? No matter how much I have money, I wouldn't. But anyway, I don't know about US laws, but I do know that if you download anything here, you will get absolutely nothing for it. I don't actually even know if you could be sued for it here, and I couldn't care less. If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game. I don't know if that'll change when I'm able to afford them without any problems, but right now I want to play, and I want to eat, and as long as it's possible to do both then I'm going to do it.
Oh no, they punished her for doing something illegal? How cruel!
While it's a dumb story, and the fine is exorbitant, it very clearly states in many places how much you'll be fined for illegally downloading stuff. You take a risk, sometimes you get fucked.
Your mindset is immature. "I want I want I want gimme gimme gimme" makes you sound like a child who doesn't know the value of a dollar.
"If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game." How petulant. If you can't afford something, you don't get it. Just because this type of theft is easy to pull off doesn't make you tough, doesn't make you right, and just makes you a punk. Get over yourself.
I just don't think it's bad to take something you aren't willing to buy as long as taking it hurts no one.
On December 01 2011 06:32 Brutefidget wrote: The losers in piracy are not the developers. The losers are the people who paid for the game. To know that you paid 60 dollars to play something that others are playing for free makes you feel like a sucker.
that's not how I feel. like, I used to pirate games. up until I was 18 years old, I had prolly played a couple thousand games (most of them really small games for dos), and bought something like, 5. (or wait I also bought some compilation cds attached to magazines containing 250 games so I prolly bought like 505.)
then two things happened: I became an adult with money, and it became easier to buy games online. now I don't pirate games anymore. very little changed regarding my perception of the morality of buying or pirating games. what changed was my ability to purchase games because I could now afford to do so, and that developers realized that it's a lot easier to distribute games through letting people download them less expensively online, than through people having to go down to some store.
I've never felt like a sucker now, now I feel like a regular adult who pays for games because I can, and because I want to support the developers. I never felt like a leech before, I felt like a regular kid who wanted to play games but couldn't afford to buy them. if pirating hadn't been an option while growing up, what would have happened is that I would have done something else than play games; and then I probably wouldn't be an adult who purchases computer games today..
Your story is interesting but it still doesn't change the fact that if everyone did what you did we'd have no more games. For this reason, people who buy games have an animosity towards those who do not. One party is guaranteeing the continuance of the industry while the other gains all the benefit. Whether or not you feel like a leech doesn't change whether or not you are one.
Arguing with piracy advocates is a complete waste of time though. Feels like the midwest in this thread with how many straw men there are.
OK, so if I pirate games for any reason I'm a leech? Just want to clarify that.
Sure, you don't have to pay a dime to get something, sounds great. But when I think about it, the people who made the product get cheated. You love the game enough to pirate it, yet you can't be decent and give the company that made it some money to reward them?
Fuck, no wonder why some games are shit awful these days. People are just going to pirate it if its too amazing.
On December 01 2011 06:53 Yergidy wrote: [quote] No people who pirate are also in violation, it is the same thing as knowingly buying stolen property.
Your downloading copied property for free . Did I miss something?
Oh FFS people do I HAVE to dig out news reports of people who downloaded pirated music and had to pay some insanely high fine or go to jail... Do we really have to have a debate on something that is illegal for a fact and has been documented as such?
Please do because I've never heard of anyone having to pay anything unless his been sharing them. Although I could theoretically see that happening in US.
"against computer pirates who put illegal copies of movies and television series on the Internet" "Wednesday for illegally downloading and distributing popular songs either from the Internet or from CDs on mobile phones." "They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights. " I think I said "unless his been sharing them."
And you actually want to pay to those fuckers ? No matter how much I have money, I wouldn't. But anyway, I don't know about US laws, but I do know that if you download anything here, you will get absolutely nothing for it. I don't actually even know if you could be sued for it here, and I couldn't care less. If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game. I don't know if that'll change when I'm able to afford them without any problems, but right now I want to play, and I want to eat, and as long as it's possible to do both then I'm going to do it.
Oh no, they punished her for doing something illegal? How cruel!
While it's a dumb story, and the fine is exorbitant, it very clearly states in many places how much you'll be fined for illegally downloading stuff. You take a risk, sometimes you get fucked.
Your mindset is immature. "I want I want I want gimme gimme gimme" makes you sound like a child who doesn't know the value of a dollar.
"If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game." How petulant. If you can't afford something, you don't get it. Just because this type of theft is easy to pull off doesn't make you tough, doesn't make you right, and just makes you a punk. Get over yourself.
I just don't think it's bad to take something you aren't willing to buy as long as taking it hurts no one.
This is such a flawed line of reasoning. It's the exact reason we have things such as the tragedy of the commons.
On December 01 2011 06:32 Brutefidget wrote: The losers in piracy are not the developers. The losers are the people who paid for the game. To know that you paid 60 dollars to play something that others are playing for free makes you feel like a sucker.
that's not how I feel. like, I used to pirate games. up until I was 18 years old, I had prolly played a couple thousand games (most of them really small games for dos), and bought something like, 5. (or wait I also bought some compilation cds attached to magazines containing 250 games so I prolly bought like 505.)
then two things happened: I became an adult with money, and it became easier to buy games online. now I don't pirate games anymore. very little changed regarding my perception of the morality of buying or pirating games. what changed was my ability to purchase games because I could now afford to do so, and that developers realized that it's a lot easier to distribute games through letting people download them less expensively online, than through people having to go down to some store.
I've never felt like a sucker now, now I feel like a regular adult who pays for games because I can, and because I want to support the developers. I never felt like a leech before, I felt like a regular kid who wanted to play games but couldn't afford to buy them. if pirating hadn't been an option while growing up, what would have happened is that I would have done something else than play games; and then I probably wouldn't be an adult who purchases computer games today..
Your story is interesting but it still doesn't change the fact that if everyone did what you did we'd have no more games. For this reason, people who buy games have an animosity towards those who do not. One party is guaranteeing the continuance of the industry while the other gains all the benefit. Whether or not you feel like a leech doesn't change whether or not you are one.
Arguing with piracy advocates is a complete waste of time though. Feels like the midwest in this thread with how many straw men there are.
no.. people have different abilities to pay for stuff through different periods of their lives. if everyone did what I did, then kids, who are largely pirates today, would be pirates anyway, and adults, who are largely consumers today, would be consumers anyway. the industry makes enough money to continuously expand and make more games with more resources poured into them. I could understand the whole "piracy kills gaming"! argument if the gaming industry was deteriorating and becoming smaller every year, like if it had peaked in 2002 or something. but that's not the case, it's increasing, games are becoming more expensive to make, and sales numbers are higher than they used to be.
I _do_ feel bad for small indie developers who make good games and get very little money out of it, but even if being an indie game developer means that you're just scraping by doing something you love with the potential of building a name for yourself that might get picked up by a bigger developer, then that's not too different from how say, the music or acting industry have been for decades. and both industries are still very big, and consumers have a wider variety of options than ever before. stuff is mostly good and piracy is not wholly bad.
That still makes her a criminal, just one who decided to make up for it. The corporations aren't the bad guys here, they said they'll fine people who pirate and seed, and then they followed through on it. They even offered to let her pay half.
Although I have little knowledge from US law, if she was sued by corporation that means it was a civil case and therefore, even if she lost it, she is not a criminal?
They even offered to let her pay half.
Because they did not want a judgment from a judge saying that 80 000 dollars per song was to much.
In my country only the government can fine people.
On December 01 2011 07:59 Cloud9157 wrote: Honestly, this is why I hate piracy.
Sure, you don't have to pay a dime to get something, sounds great. But when I think about it, the people who made the product get cheated. You love the game enough to pirate it, yet you can't be decent and give the company that made it some money to reward them?
Fuck, no wonder why some games are shit awful these days. People are just going to pirate it if its too amazing.
No the devs are not losing anything cause you wouldn't have bought it anyway. Either you realize the game is worth it after pirating it and buy it then or you don't think it's worth it and don't buy it.
On December 01 2011 06:53 Yergidy wrote: [quote] No people who pirate are also in violation, it is the same thing as knowingly buying stolen property.
Your downloading copied property for free . Did I miss something?
Oh FFS people do I HAVE to dig out news reports of people who downloaded pirated music and had to pay some insanely high fine or go to jail... Do we really have to have a debate on something that is illegal for a fact and has been documented as such?
Please do because I've never heard of anyone having to pay anything unless his been sharing them. Although I could theoretically see that happening in US.
"against computer pirates who put illegal copies of movies and television series on the Internet" "Wednesday for illegally downloading and distributing popular songs either from the Internet or from CDs on mobile phones." "They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights. " I think I said "unless his been sharing them."
And you actually want to pay to those fuckers ? No matter how much I have money, I wouldn't. But anyway, I don't know about US laws, but I do know that if you download anything here, you will get absolutely nothing for it. I don't actually even know if you could be sued for it here, and I couldn't care less. If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game. I don't know if that'll change when I'm able to afford them without any problems, but right now I want to play, and I want to eat, and as long as it's possible to do both then I'm going to do it.
Oh no, they punished her for doing something illegal? How cruel!
While it's a dumb story, and the fine is exorbitant, it very clearly states in many places how much you'll be fined for illegally downloading stuff. You take a risk, sometimes you get fucked.
Your mindset is immature. "I want I want I want gimme gimme gimme" makes you sound like a child who doesn't know the value of a dollar.
"If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game." How petulant. If you can't afford something, you don't get it. Just because this type of theft is easy to pull off doesn't make you tough, doesn't make you right, and just makes you a punk. Get over yourself.
I just don't think it's bad to take something you aren't willing to buy as long as taking it hurts no one.
That type of mentality is fine if it wasn't thousands (millions?) of people thinking the same thing for gaming, movies, and music.
"Oh, I'll only pirate a couple games, maybe $500 worth. $500 isn't that much to a big game company."
And then another person thinks that. Then another person. Then another. How long before there are millions, billions of dollars worth of pirated material out there? $60 doesn't hurt anyone. $60 a million times does.
It's like voting in America. You don't think your one vote counts, so you don't vote. Then thousands of people think the same, and the election is completely fucked one way or the other.
On December 01 2011 07:46 Zodiac7777 wrote: I find it disgusting that someone can be sued up to $80,000 per song. The majority of people who pirate songs don't normally pirate one or two songs, they pirate 50 up to thousands upon thousands. It is incredibly stupid in my opinion to ruin someone's life instantly for doing something that barely changes the life of the artist. Buying one song from iTunes will not give the artist that much money, yet they are allowed to sue $80,000? Oh America.....
The reasons for these exorbitant fines are that most songs are downloaded through a file sharing or peer to peer application. The downloading of the single song is not viewed as the entirety of the crime; it also needs to be accounted for that the person who downloaded the song also made it available for others to download from them. Thus the attribution of a fine much more costly due to the loss of potential income being that much greater.
Well what about all the free advertising that is done with the pirating? I want to put out there that i know stealing is bad but this is a VERY special case of stealing. People in the music industry understand that pirating is actually a very useful tool to get their name out there. The artists themselves rarely ever get mad at the pirates. I hate to say it but i pirate all my music and if i could not do that i would not have any music downloaded.
Sites like grooveshark, pandora, google music, ect. make this very easy. They save playlists and let you livestream all the music you want for free. In this day and age you actually don't need to pay for music, but enough people do that the "good" artists get paid.
The reasons for these exorbitant fines are that most songs are downloaded through a file sharing or peer to peer application. The downloading of the single song is not viewed as the entirety of the crime; it also needs to be accounted for that the person who downloaded the song also made it available for others to download from them. Thus the attribution of a fine much more costly due to the loss of potential income being that much greater.
The lost was quantified , around 1700 songs, or around 1700 dollars today. How did that go to 80 000 dollars per song is behind me.
I seem to remember reading that TW2 made a healthy amount of profit, certainly more than they were expecting. Just looking at the number '4.5 million pirate downloads' sounds bad, but you have to think about whether any one of those would've actually bought the game even if they had the money & the inclination to use it. Not that many I think. In fact I think a good proportion of those who procured the game illegally & enjoyed it will consider buying related products in the future to support the developer. Also CD Projeckt recently announced that they're working on producing multiple titles (new witcher title as well as new IP) and they're currently hiring extra staff. I don't think the piracy affected them that much. I think the majority of those who were either going to, or thinking about buying it did, and those who didn't really have an interest but decided to check it out because of the good reviews, forms the majority of the pirate downloads. I'll admit this is just conjecture, but it really doesn't seem like the piracy ate too much into their target audience much.
On December 01 2011 06:55 Mammel wrote: [quote] Your downloading copied property for free . Did I miss something?
Oh FFS people do I HAVE to dig out news reports of people who downloaded pirated music and had to pay some insanely high fine or go to jail... Do we really have to have a debate on something that is illegal for a fact and has been documented as such?
Please do because I've never heard of anyone having to pay anything unless his been sharing them. Although I could theoretically see that happening in US.
"against computer pirates who put illegal copies of movies and television series on the Internet" "Wednesday for illegally downloading and distributing popular songs either from the Internet or from CDs on mobile phones." "They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights. " I think I said "unless his been sharing them."
And you actually want to pay to those fuckers ? No matter how much I have money, I wouldn't. But anyway, I don't know about US laws, but I do know that if you download anything here, you will get absolutely nothing for it. I don't actually even know if you could be sued for it here, and I couldn't care less. If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game. I don't know if that'll change when I'm able to afford them without any problems, but right now I want to play, and I want to eat, and as long as it's possible to do both then I'm going to do it.
Oh no, they punished her for doing something illegal? How cruel!
While it's a dumb story, and the fine is exorbitant, it very clearly states in many places how much you'll be fined for illegally downloading stuff. You take a risk, sometimes you get fucked.
Your mindset is immature. "I want I want I want gimme gimme gimme" makes you sound like a child who doesn't know the value of a dollar.
"If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game." How petulant. If you can't afford something, you don't get it. Just because this type of theft is easy to pull off doesn't make you tough, doesn't make you right, and just makes you a punk. Get over yourself.
I just don't think it's bad to take something you aren't willing to buy as long as taking it hurts no one.
This is such a flawed line of reasoning. It's the exact reason we have things such as the tragedy of the commons.
"tragedy of the commons" Never heard of that term before. I assume you mean US bank crisis few years back + Greece in EU right now? I don't see the correlation between copying a game for yourself and taking too much loan, hiding your true deficit and not paying your dept... But I'm not saying this as an economist.
That type of mentality is fine if it wasn't thousands (millions?) of people thinking the same thing for gaming, movies, and music.
"Oh, I'll only pirate a couple games, maybe $500 worth. $500 isn't that much to a big game company."
And then another person thinks that. Then another person. Then another. How long before there are millions, billions of dollars worth of pirated material out there? $60 doesn't hurt anyone. $60 a million times does.
It's like voting in America. You don't think your one vote counts, so you don't vote. Then thousands of people think the same, and the election is completely fucked one way or the other.
That's exactly what I didn't say. I can't afford it anyway. The company is ever going to get exactly 0$ from me. If, I'm still able to pirate the game, then sure as hell I'm going to.
And no, that still doesn't make it 60$ lost for the company.
On December 01 2011 07:59 Cloud9157 wrote: Honestly, this is why I hate piracy.
Sure, you don't have to pay a dime to get something, sounds great. But when I think about it, the people who made the product get cheated. You love the game enough to pirate it, yet you can't be decent and give the company that made it some money to reward them?
Fuck, no wonder why some games are shit awful these days. People are just going to pirate it if its too amazing.
No the devs are not losing anything cause you wouldn't have bought it anyway. Either you realize the game is worth it after pirating it and buy it then or you don't think it's worth it and don't buy it.
I guess reviews/trailers/previous games of some video game series don't have anything to do with that (see Skyrim).
The reasons for these exorbitant fines are that most songs are downloaded through a file sharing or peer to peer application. The downloading of the single song is not viewed as the entirety of the crime; it also needs to be accounted for that the person who downloaded the song also made it available for others to download from them. Thus the attribution of a fine much more costly due to the loss of potential income being that much greater.
The lost was quantified , around 1700 songs, or around 1700 dollars today. How did that go to 80 000 dollars per song is behind me.
Read what I wrote. By downloading the song and running a p2p application, the criminal made it AVAILABLE to numerous other people. That's why the fine is so large.
On December 01 2011 06:58 Yergidy wrote: [quote] Oh FFS people do I HAVE to dig out news reports of people who downloaded pirated music and had to pay some insanely high fine or go to jail... Do we really have to have a debate on something that is illegal for a fact and has been documented as such?
Please do because I've never heard of anyone having to pay anything unless his been sharing them. Although I could theoretically see that happening in US.
"against computer pirates who put illegal copies of movies and television series on the Internet" "Wednesday for illegally downloading and distributing popular songs either from the Internet or from CDs on mobile phones." "They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights. " I think I said "unless his been sharing them."
And you actually want to pay to those fuckers ? No matter how much I have money, I wouldn't. But anyway, I don't know about US laws, but I do know that if you download anything here, you will get absolutely nothing for it. I don't actually even know if you could be sued for it here, and I couldn't care less. If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game. I don't know if that'll change when I'm able to afford them without any problems, but right now I want to play, and I want to eat, and as long as it's possible to do both then I'm going to do it.
Oh no, they punished her for doing something illegal? How cruel!
While it's a dumb story, and the fine is exorbitant, it very clearly states in many places how much you'll be fined for illegally downloading stuff. You take a risk, sometimes you get fucked.
Your mindset is immature. "I want I want I want gimme gimme gimme" makes you sound like a child who doesn't know the value of a dollar.
"If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game." How petulant. If you can't afford something, you don't get it. Just because this type of theft is easy to pull off doesn't make you tough, doesn't make you right, and just makes you a punk. Get over yourself.
I just don't think it's bad to take something you aren't willing to buy as long as taking it hurts no one.
This is such a flawed line of reasoning. It's the exact reason we have things such as the tragedy of the commons.
"tragedy of the commons" Never heard of that term before. I assume you mean US bank crisis few years back + Greece in EU right now? I don't see the correlation between copying a game for yourself and taking too much loan, hiding your true deficit and not paying your dept... But I'm not saying this as an economist.
On December 01 2011 06:58 Yergidy wrote: [quote] Oh FFS people do I HAVE to dig out news reports of people who downloaded pirated music and had to pay some insanely high fine or go to jail... Do we really have to have a debate on something that is illegal for a fact and has been documented as such?
Please do because I've never heard of anyone having to pay anything unless his been sharing them. Although I could theoretically see that happening in US.
"against computer pirates who put illegal copies of movies and television series on the Internet" "Wednesday for illegally downloading and distributing popular songs either from the Internet or from CDs on mobile phones." "They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights. " I think I said "unless his been sharing them."
And you actually want to pay to those fuckers ? No matter how much I have money, I wouldn't. But anyway, I don't know about US laws, but I do know that if you download anything here, you will get absolutely nothing for it. I don't actually even know if you could be sued for it here, and I couldn't care less. If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game. I don't know if that'll change when I'm able to afford them without any problems, but right now I want to play, and I want to eat, and as long as it's possible to do both then I'm going to do it.
Oh no, they punished her for doing something illegal? How cruel!
While it's a dumb story, and the fine is exorbitant, it very clearly states in many places how much you'll be fined for illegally downloading stuff. You take a risk, sometimes you get fucked.
Your mindset is immature. "I want I want I want gimme gimme gimme" makes you sound like a child who doesn't know the value of a dollar.
"If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game." How petulant. If you can't afford something, you don't get it. Just because this type of theft is easy to pull off doesn't make you tough, doesn't make you right, and just makes you a punk. Get over yourself.
I just don't think it's bad to take something you aren't willing to buy as long as taking it hurts no one.
This is such a flawed line of reasoning. It's the exact reason we have things such as the tragedy of the commons.
"tragedy of the commons" Never heard of that term before. I assume you mean US bank crisis few years back + Greece in EU right now? I don't see the correlation between copying a game for yourself and taking too much loan, hiding your true deficit and not paying your dept... But I'm not saying this as an economist.
Everyone thinks "It's ok if I do this, it's not that bad". Thinking only of themselves, expecting the rest of the world to take care of itself together. Until everyone starts thinking like this, and it falls apart because everyone is an individual and not a group.
One person pirating a CD doesn't cost much to the publisher. A million people pirating dozens each does.
Ideas like "The industry does fine without me buying games" and "If games weren't so overpriced then I would buy them" are poison to the gaming industry. If everyone started acting like this, we'd all have no games. I've made this exact same point like 4 times and I have yet to see anyone refute it. Please, piracy advocates, explain how if everyone pirates that there would still be a gaming industry.
Read what I wrote. By downloading the song and running a p2p application, the criminal made it AVAILABLE to numerous other people. That's why the fine is so large.
Read the source, she download 24 songs and shared them 1700 times.
On December 01 2011 08:15 Brutefidget wrote: Ideas like "The industry does fine without me buying games" and "If games weren't so overpriced then I would buy them" are poison to the gaming industry. If everyone started acting like this, we'd all have no games. I've made this exact same point like 4 times and I have yet to see anyone refute it. Please, piracy advocates, explain how if everyone pirates that there would still be a gaming industry.
*edited for grammar
Their argument turns into : well if the companies didn't release garbage or if they lowered the cost then I'd buy it.
Obviously, knowing that neither of those are likely to happen it means they can say it and then move on to another topic.
Read what I wrote. By downloading the song and running a p2p application, the criminal made it AVAILABLE to numerous other people. That's why the fine is so large.
Read the source, she download 24 songs and shared them 1700 times.
On December 01 2011 06:58 Yergidy wrote: [quote] Oh FFS people do I HAVE to dig out news reports of people who downloaded pirated music and had to pay some insanely high fine or go to jail... Do we really have to have a debate on something that is illegal for a fact and has been documented as such?
Please do because I've never heard of anyone having to pay anything unless his been sharing them. Although I could theoretically see that happening in US.
"against computer pirates who put illegal copies of movies and television series on the Internet" "Wednesday for illegally downloading and distributing popular songs either from the Internet or from CDs on mobile phones." "They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights. " I think I said "unless his been sharing them."
And you actually want to pay to those fuckers ? No matter how much I have money, I wouldn't. But anyway, I don't know about US laws, but I do know that if you download anything here, you will get absolutely nothing for it. I don't actually even know if you could be sued for it here, and I couldn't care less. If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game. I don't know if that'll change when I'm able to afford them without any problems, but right now I want to play, and I want to eat, and as long as it's possible to do both then I'm going to do it.
Oh no, they punished her for doing something illegal? How cruel!
While it's a dumb story, and the fine is exorbitant, it very clearly states in many places how much you'll be fined for illegally downloading stuff. You take a risk, sometimes you get fucked.
Your mindset is immature. "I want I want I want gimme gimme gimme" makes you sound like a child who doesn't know the value of a dollar.
"If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game." How petulant. If you can't afford something, you don't get it. Just because this type of theft is easy to pull off doesn't make you tough, doesn't make you right, and just makes you a punk. Get over yourself.
I just don't think it's bad to take something you aren't willing to buy as long as taking it hurts no one.
This is such a flawed line of reasoning. It's the exact reason we have things such as the tragedy of the commons.
"tragedy of the commons" Never heard of that term before. I assume you mean US bank crisis few years back + Greece in EU right now? I don't see the correlation between copying a game for yourself and taking too much loan, hiding your true deficit and not paying your dept... But I'm not saying this as an economist.
That type of mentality is fine if it wasn't thousands (millions?) of people thinking the same thing for gaming, movies, and music.
"Oh, I'll only pirate a couple games, maybe $500 worth. $500 isn't that much to a big game company."
And then another person thinks that. Then another person. Then another. How long before there are millions, billions of dollars worth of pirated material out there? $60 doesn't hurt anyone. $60 a million times does.
It's like voting in America. You don't think your one vote counts, so you don't vote. Then thousands of people think the same, and the election is completely fucked one way or the other.
That's exactly what I didn't say. I can't afford it anyway. The company is ever going to get exactly 0$ from me. If, I'm still able to pirate the game, then sure as hell I'm going to.
And no, that still doesn't make it 60$ lost for the company.
I'll quote wikipedia because it says it better then I can.
'The tragedy of the commons is a dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource, even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long-term interest for this to happen.'
It is very prevalent in the environmental world as for the longest time businesses damaged the environment by dumping waste. It made all the sense in the world individually to do so as it would only increase costs to dispose of it in a healthier way. But that's not sustainable as when the environment becomes degraded the cost of doing business becomes greater then if you properly disposed of waste in the first place.
In this case, the very things pirates are supposedly fighting against(crappy games, draconian DRM, cookie-cutter formula) is caused by pirates. 15 years ago before pirating was so wide-spread, the most you had to deal with was a simple CD key. The increase in pirating caused an increase in DRM as well as companies creating games that maximize profit. You think you really aren't hurting anything since you wouldn't buy it anyways, but in fact you're the reason companies act like they do now.
edit: I'll clarify in saying pirates didn't cause crappy games that follow a cookie-cutter formula, but I do feel they hold significant responsibility for the increase in these over the last decade.
On December 01 2011 06:53 Yergidy wrote: [quote] No people who pirate are also in violation, it is the same thing as knowingly buying stolen property.
Your downloading copied property for free . Did I miss something?
Oh FFS people do I HAVE to dig out news reports of people who downloaded pirated music and had to pay some insanely high fine or go to jail... Do we really have to have a debate on something that is illegal for a fact and has been documented as such?
Please do because I've never heard of anyone having to pay anything unless his been sharing them. Although I could theoretically see that happening in US.
"against computer pirates who put illegal copies of movies and television series on the Internet" "Wednesday for illegally downloading and distributing popular songs either from the Internet or from CDs on mobile phones." "They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights. " I think I said "unless his been sharing them."
And you actually want to pay to those fuckers ? No matter how much I have money, I wouldn't. But anyway, I don't know about US laws, but I do know that if you download anything here, you will get absolutely nothing for it. I don't actually even know if you could be sued for it here, and I couldn't care less. If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game. I don't know if that'll change when I'm able to afford them without any problems, but right now I want to play, and I want to eat, and as long as it's possible to do both then I'm going to do it.
Oh no, they punished her for doing something illegal? How cruel!
While it's a dumb story, and the fine is exorbitant, it very clearly states in many places how much you'll be fined for illegally downloading stuff. You take a risk, sometimes you get fucked.
Your mindset is immature. "I want I want I want gimme gimme gimme" makes you sound like a child who doesn't know the value of a dollar.
"If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game." How petulant. If you can't afford something, you don't get it. Just because this type of theft is easy to pull off doesn't make you tough, doesn't make you right, and just makes you a punk. Get over yourself.
I just don't think it's bad to take something you aren't willing to buy as long as taking it hurts no one.
No it's not fine, because that person has a right to payment for his product, and you are abusing his property rights. In effect, by not paying for it, you ARE hurting him, even if you wouldn't buy it anyway. You aren't going to pay for it? Don't play it. You want to play it? Buy it. You do not have a right to play any game you want even if you wouldn't buy it.
To the people who want to post a comment : Please read the thread beforehand. This is a very interesting topic but the discussion tends to go in circle. I'm not trying to play the backseat moderator but I'm actually interested in this thread and I want it to keep going in a proper way
On December 01 2011 07:01 Mammel wrote: [quote] Please do because I've never heard of anyone having to pay anything unless his been sharing them. Although I could theoretically see that happening in US.
"against computer pirates who put illegal copies of movies and television series on the Internet" "Wednesday for illegally downloading and distributing popular songs either from the Internet or from CDs on mobile phones." "They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights. " I think I said "unless his been sharing them."
And you actually want to pay to those fuckers ? No matter how much I have money, I wouldn't. But anyway, I don't know about US laws, but I do know that if you download anything here, you will get absolutely nothing for it. I don't actually even know if you could be sued for it here, and I couldn't care less. If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game. I don't know if that'll change when I'm able to afford them without any problems, but right now I want to play, and I want to eat, and as long as it's possible to do both then I'm going to do it.
Oh no, they punished her for doing something illegal? How cruel!
While it's a dumb story, and the fine is exorbitant, it very clearly states in many places how much you'll be fined for illegally downloading stuff. You take a risk, sometimes you get fucked.
Your mindset is immature. "I want I want I want gimme gimme gimme" makes you sound like a child who doesn't know the value of a dollar.
"If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game." How petulant. If you can't afford something, you don't get it. Just because this type of theft is easy to pull off doesn't make you tough, doesn't make you right, and just makes you a punk. Get over yourself.
I just don't think it's bad to take something you aren't willing to buy as long as taking it hurts no one.
This is such a flawed line of reasoning. It's the exact reason we have things such as the tragedy of the commons.
"tragedy of the commons" Never heard of that term before. I assume you mean US bank crisis few years back + Greece in EU right now? I don't see the correlation between copying a game for yourself and taking too much loan, hiding your true deficit and not paying your dept... But I'm not saying this as an economist.
That type of mentality is fine if it wasn't thousands (millions?) of people thinking the same thing for gaming, movies, and music.
"Oh, I'll only pirate a couple games, maybe $500 worth. $500 isn't that much to a big game company."
And then another person thinks that. Then another person. Then another. How long before there are millions, billions of dollars worth of pirated material out there? $60 doesn't hurt anyone. $60 a million times does.
It's like voting in America. You don't think your one vote counts, so you don't vote. Then thousands of people think the same, and the election is completely fucked one way or the other.
That's exactly what I didn't say. I can't afford it anyway. The company is ever going to get exactly 0$ from me. If, I'm still able to pirate the game, then sure as hell I'm going to.
And no, that still doesn't make it 60$ lost for the company.
I'll quote wikipedia because it says it better then I can.
'The tragedy of the commons is a dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource, even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long-term interest for this to happen.'
It is very prevalent in the environmental world as for the longest time businesses damaged the environment by dumping waste. It made all the sense in the world individually to do so as it would only increase costs to dispose of it in a healthier way. But that's not sustainable as when the environment becomes degraded the cost of doing business becomes greater then if you properly disposed of waste in the first place.
In this case, the very things pirates are supposedly fighting against(crappy games, draconian DRM, cookie-cutter formula) is caused by pirates. 15 years ago before pirating was so wide-spread, the most you had to deal with was a simple CD key. The increase in pirating caused an increase in DRM as well as companies creating games that maximize profit. You think you really aren't hurting anything since you wouldn't buy it anyways, but in fact you're the reason companies act like they do now.
Well, developers screwd with people before piracy became what it is today. So saying that it's piracys fault that we have DRM is only half true. It's childish but, developers started it all.
On December 01 2011 08:15 Brutefidget wrote: Ideas like "The industry does fine without me buying games" and "If games weren't so overpriced then I would buy them" are poison to the gaming industry. If everyone started acting like this, we'd all have no games. I've made this exact same point like 4 times and I have yet to see anyone refute it. Please, piracy advocates, explain how if everyone pirates that there would still be a gaming industry.
the point is that it isn't a point, because not everyone pirates. people buy stuff if they can afford it and if what they purchase is better than what they pirate. many can afford it, and BECAUSE of piracy, game distributors have finally managed to provide an equally good service as pirates do.
this thread is full of horrible analogies, so allow me to make some more. basically, many things are illegal in society. in norway, it's illegal to urinate in public. generally, it's seen as a good thing, that not everyone urinates in public, but it is also preferable if people are occasionally able to urinate in public without being fined as opposed to pissing their pants. your idea that "if everyone pirated, we'd have to gaming industry", is akin to a statement such as "if everyone pissed in public, our cities would smell like piss", but both are just.. meaningless statements, because not everyone pirates, not everyone wants to pirate, just like not everyone urinates in public because not everyone wants to urinate in public. but sometimes, pirating is preferable to not playing a game, and urinating in public is preferable to pissing your pants. you can say "but you shouldn't have gone out drinking knowing that you might find yourself having to piss without a suitable toilet nearby", just as you can say "well maybe you should have done something else than play a game you weren't able to afford", the fact is, in neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers. meanwhile, lawbreakers have improved life quality specifically because they broke the law, and for me, as an innocent bystander, I'm both happy that mr pissypants didn't accidentially stumble into me soaking me in his piss, just as I am happy that my peg-legged friend recommended me and gave me a copy of dune 2 19 years ago which kickstarted my RTS gaming experience and ensured that I would contribute to the gaming industry for the rest of my adult life.
Personally I loved brood war but waited for iccup before i could play it online. I could always afford it and I remember just looking at the starcraft "battlechest" edition for years whenever Im in the local mall thinking "eh i should buy this because it has given me so much joy and this is the only real pc game i will ever play", still after 10 years - nothing. Yes, I am hurting Esports
"against computer pirates who put illegal copies of movies and television series on the Internet" "Wednesday for illegally downloading and distributing popular songs either from the Internet or from CDs on mobile phones." "They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights. " I think I said "unless his been sharing them."
And you actually want to pay to those fuckers ? No matter how much I have money, I wouldn't. But anyway, I don't know about US laws, but I do know that if you download anything here, you will get absolutely nothing for it. I don't actually even know if you could be sued for it here, and I couldn't care less. If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game. I don't know if that'll change when I'm able to afford them without any problems, but right now I want to play, and I want to eat, and as long as it's possible to do both then I'm going to do it.
Oh no, they punished her for doing something illegal? How cruel!
While it's a dumb story, and the fine is exorbitant, it very clearly states in many places how much you'll be fined for illegally downloading stuff. You take a risk, sometimes you get fucked.
Your mindset is immature. "I want I want I want gimme gimme gimme" makes you sound like a child who doesn't know the value of a dollar.
"If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game." How petulant. If you can't afford something, you don't get it. Just because this type of theft is easy to pull off doesn't make you tough, doesn't make you right, and just makes you a punk. Get over yourself.
I just don't think it's bad to take something you aren't willing to buy as long as taking it hurts no one.
This is such a flawed line of reasoning. It's the exact reason we have things such as the tragedy of the commons.
"tragedy of the commons" Never heard of that term before. I assume you mean US bank crisis few years back + Greece in EU right now? I don't see the correlation between copying a game for yourself and taking too much loan, hiding your true deficit and not paying your dept... But I'm not saying this as an economist.
That type of mentality is fine if it wasn't thousands (millions?) of people thinking the same thing for gaming, movies, and music.
"Oh, I'll only pirate a couple games, maybe $500 worth. $500 isn't that much to a big game company."
And then another person thinks that. Then another person. Then another. How long before there are millions, billions of dollars worth of pirated material out there? $60 doesn't hurt anyone. $60 a million times does.
It's like voting in America. You don't think your one vote counts, so you don't vote. Then thousands of people think the same, and the election is completely fucked one way or the other.
That's exactly what I didn't say. I can't afford it anyway. The company is ever going to get exactly 0$ from me. If, I'm still able to pirate the game, then sure as hell I'm going to.
And no, that still doesn't make it 60$ lost for the company.
I'll quote wikipedia because it says it better then I can.
'The tragedy of the commons is a dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource, even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long-term interest for this to happen.'
It is very prevalent in the environmental world as for the longest time businesses damaged the environment by dumping waste. It made all the sense in the world individually to do so as it would only increase costs to dispose of it in a healthier way. But that's not sustainable as when the environment becomes degraded the cost of doing business becomes greater then if you properly disposed of waste in the first place.
In this case, the very things pirates are supposedly fighting against(crappy games, draconian DRM, cookie-cutter formula) is caused by pirates. 15 years ago before pirating was so wide-spread, the most you had to deal with was a simple CD key. The increase in pirating caused an increase in DRM as well as companies creating games that maximize profit. You think you really aren't hurting anything since you wouldn't buy it anyways, but in fact you're the reason companies act like they do now.
Well, developers screwd with people before piracy became what it is today. So saying that it's piracys fault that we have DRM is only half true. It's childish but, developers started it all.
Explain. Developers have always made poor games, but I don't remember any nasty DRM coming around until after P2P became widespread.
edit: I suppose I should clarify, the pirates didn't cause crappy games and a cookie cutter format, they've always been there, but I do feel they've partially responsible for the increase in these games we've seen over the years.
Why are you arguing if it is right or wrong? What's right or wrong anyways. The point of the thread is how to combat piracy, i dont think any SP game have found a way to combat it properly.
On December 01 2011 07:15 Mammel wrote: [quote] "against computer pirates who put illegal copies of movies and television series on the Internet" "Wednesday for illegally downloading and distributing popular songs either from the Internet or from CDs on mobile phones." "They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights. " I think I said "unless his been sharing them."
And you actually want to pay to those fuckers ? No matter how much I have money, I wouldn't. But anyway, I don't know about US laws, but I do know that if you download anything here, you will get absolutely nothing for it. I don't actually even know if you could be sued for it here, and I couldn't care less. If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game. I don't know if that'll change when I'm able to afford them without any problems, but right now I want to play, and I want to eat, and as long as it's possible to do both then I'm going to do it.
Oh no, they punished her for doing something illegal? How cruel!
While it's a dumb story, and the fine is exorbitant, it very clearly states in many places how much you'll be fined for illegally downloading stuff. You take a risk, sometimes you get fucked.
Your mindset is immature. "I want I want I want gimme gimme gimme" makes you sound like a child who doesn't know the value of a dollar.
"If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game." How petulant. If you can't afford something, you don't get it. Just because this type of theft is easy to pull off doesn't make you tough, doesn't make you right, and just makes you a punk. Get over yourself.
I just don't think it's bad to take something you aren't willing to buy as long as taking it hurts no one.
This is such a flawed line of reasoning. It's the exact reason we have things such as the tragedy of the commons.
"tragedy of the commons" Never heard of that term before. I assume you mean US bank crisis few years back + Greece in EU right now? I don't see the correlation between copying a game for yourself and taking too much loan, hiding your true deficit and not paying your dept... But I'm not saying this as an economist.
That type of mentality is fine if it wasn't thousands (millions?) of people thinking the same thing for gaming, movies, and music.
"Oh, I'll only pirate a couple games, maybe $500 worth. $500 isn't that much to a big game company."
And then another person thinks that. Then another person. Then another. How long before there are millions, billions of dollars worth of pirated material out there? $60 doesn't hurt anyone. $60 a million times does.
It's like voting in America. You don't think your one vote counts, so you don't vote. Then thousands of people think the same, and the election is completely fucked one way or the other.
That's exactly what I didn't say. I can't afford it anyway. The company is ever going to get exactly 0$ from me. If, I'm still able to pirate the game, then sure as hell I'm going to.
And no, that still doesn't make it 60$ lost for the company.
I'll quote wikipedia because it says it better then I can.
'The tragedy of the commons is a dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource, even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long-term interest for this to happen.'
It is very prevalent in the environmental world as for the longest time businesses damaged the environment by dumping waste. It made all the sense in the world individually to do so as it would only increase costs to dispose of it in a healthier way. But that's not sustainable as when the environment becomes degraded the cost of doing business becomes greater then if you properly disposed of waste in the first place.
In this case, the very things pirates are supposedly fighting against(crappy games, draconian DRM, cookie-cutter formula) is caused by pirates. 15 years ago before pirating was so wide-spread, the most you had to deal with was a simple CD key. The increase in pirating caused an increase in DRM as well as companies creating games that maximize profit. You think you really aren't hurting anything since you wouldn't buy it anyways, but in fact you're the reason companies act like they do now.
Well, developers screwd with people before piracy became what it is today. So saying that it's piracys fault that we have DRM is only half true. It's childish but, developers started it all.
Explain. Developers have always made poor games, but I don't remember any nasty DRM coming around until after P2P became widespread.
Yeah, and thats my point. Developers made bad games that were more or less designed to "rip people off", there for, piracy! I don't have facts on it, but it has to be one of many reasons.
On December 01 2011 07:15 Mammel wrote: [quote] "against computer pirates who put illegal copies of movies and television series on the Internet" "Wednesday for illegally downloading and distributing popular songs either from the Internet or from CDs on mobile phones." "They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights. " I think I said "unless his been sharing them."
And you actually want to pay to those fuckers ? No matter how much I have money, I wouldn't. But anyway, I don't know about US laws, but I do know that if you download anything here, you will get absolutely nothing for it. I don't actually even know if you could be sued for it here, and I couldn't care less. If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game. I don't know if that'll change when I'm able to afford them without any problems, but right now I want to play, and I want to eat, and as long as it's possible to do both then I'm going to do it.
Oh no, they punished her for doing something illegal? How cruel!
While it's a dumb story, and the fine is exorbitant, it very clearly states in many places how much you'll be fined for illegally downloading stuff. You take a risk, sometimes you get fucked.
Your mindset is immature. "I want I want I want gimme gimme gimme" makes you sound like a child who doesn't know the value of a dollar.
"If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game." How petulant. If you can't afford something, you don't get it. Just because this type of theft is easy to pull off doesn't make you tough, doesn't make you right, and just makes you a punk. Get over yourself.
I just don't think it's bad to take something you aren't willing to buy as long as taking it hurts no one.
This is such a flawed line of reasoning. It's the exact reason we have things such as the tragedy of the commons.
"tragedy of the commons" Never heard of that term before. I assume you mean US bank crisis few years back + Greece in EU right now? I don't see the correlation between copying a game for yourself and taking too much loan, hiding your true deficit and not paying your dept... But I'm not saying this as an economist.
That type of mentality is fine if it wasn't thousands (millions?) of people thinking the same thing for gaming, movies, and music.
"Oh, I'll only pirate a couple games, maybe $500 worth. $500 isn't that much to a big game company."
And then another person thinks that. Then another person. Then another. How long before there are millions, billions of dollars worth of pirated material out there? $60 doesn't hurt anyone. $60 a million times does.
It's like voting in America. You don't think your one vote counts, so you don't vote. Then thousands of people think the same, and the election is completely fucked one way or the other.
That's exactly what I didn't say. I can't afford it anyway. The company is ever going to get exactly 0$ from me. If, I'm still able to pirate the game, then sure as hell I'm going to.
And no, that still doesn't make it 60$ lost for the company.
I'll quote wikipedia because it says it better then I can.
'The tragedy of the commons is a dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource, even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long-term interest for this to happen.'
It is very prevalent in the environmental world as for the longest time businesses damaged the environment by dumping waste. It made all the sense in the world individually to do so as it would only increase costs to dispose of it in a healthier way. But that's not sustainable as when the environment becomes degraded the cost of doing business becomes greater then if you properly disposed of waste in the first place.
In this case, the very things pirates are supposedly fighting against(crappy games, draconian DRM, cookie-cutter formula) is caused by pirates. 15 years ago before pirating was so wide-spread, the most you had to deal with was a simple CD key. The increase in pirating caused an increase in DRM as well as companies creating games that maximize profit. You think you really aren't hurting anything since you wouldn't buy it anyways, but in fact you're the reason companies act like they do now.
Well, developers screwd with people before piracy became what it is today. So saying that it's piracys fault that we have DRM is only half true. It's childish but, developers started it all.
Explain. Developers have always made poor games, but I don't remember any nasty DRM coming around until after P2P became widespread.
edit: I suppose I should clarify, the pirates didn't cause crappy games and a cookie cutter format, they've always been there, but I do feel they've partially responsible for the increase in these games we've seen over the years.
I don't have stats, but I really don't think piracy amounts to a bigger percentage of games played vs games sold now than before.
And you actually want to pay to those fuckers ? No matter how much I have money, I wouldn't. But anyway, I don't know about US laws, but I do know that if you download anything here, you will get absolutely nothing for it. I don't actually even know if you could be sued for it here, and I couldn't care less. If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game. I don't know if that'll change when I'm able to afford them without any problems, but right now I want to play, and I want to eat, and as long as it's possible to do both then I'm going to do it.
Oh no, they punished her for doing something illegal? How cruel!
While it's a dumb story, and the fine is exorbitant, it very clearly states in many places how much you'll be fined for illegally downloading stuff. You take a risk, sometimes you get fucked.
Your mindset is immature. "I want I want I want gimme gimme gimme" makes you sound like a child who doesn't know the value of a dollar.
"If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game." How petulant. If you can't afford something, you don't get it. Just because this type of theft is easy to pull off doesn't make you tough, doesn't make you right, and just makes you a punk. Get over yourself.
I just don't think it's bad to take something you aren't willing to buy as long as taking it hurts no one.
This is such a flawed line of reasoning. It's the exact reason we have things such as the tragedy of the commons.
"tragedy of the commons" Never heard of that term before. I assume you mean US bank crisis few years back + Greece in EU right now? I don't see the correlation between copying a game for yourself and taking too much loan, hiding your true deficit and not paying your dept... But I'm not saying this as an economist.
That type of mentality is fine if it wasn't thousands (millions?) of people thinking the same thing for gaming, movies, and music.
"Oh, I'll only pirate a couple games, maybe $500 worth. $500 isn't that much to a big game company."
And then another person thinks that. Then another person. Then another. How long before there are millions, billions of dollars worth of pirated material out there? $60 doesn't hurt anyone. $60 a million times does.
It's like voting in America. You don't think your one vote counts, so you don't vote. Then thousands of people think the same, and the election is completely fucked one way or the other.
That's exactly what I didn't say. I can't afford it anyway. The company is ever going to get exactly 0$ from me. If, I'm still able to pirate the game, then sure as hell I'm going to.
And no, that still doesn't make it 60$ lost for the company.
I'll quote wikipedia because it says it better then I can.
'The tragedy of the commons is a dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource, even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long-term interest for this to happen.'
It is very prevalent in the environmental world as for the longest time businesses damaged the environment by dumping waste. It made all the sense in the world individually to do so as it would only increase costs to dispose of it in a healthier way. But that's not sustainable as when the environment becomes degraded the cost of doing business becomes greater then if you properly disposed of waste in the first place.
In this case, the very things pirates are supposedly fighting against(crappy games, draconian DRM, cookie-cutter formula) is caused by pirates. 15 years ago before pirating was so wide-spread, the most you had to deal with was a simple CD key. The increase in pirating caused an increase in DRM as well as companies creating games that maximize profit. You think you really aren't hurting anything since you wouldn't buy it anyways, but in fact you're the reason companies act like they do now.
Well, developers screwd with people before piracy became what it is today. So saying that it's piracys fault that we have DRM is only half true. It's childish but, developers started it all.
Explain. Developers have always made poor games, but I don't remember any nasty DRM coming around until after P2P became widespread.
edit: I suppose I should clarify, the pirates didn't cause crappy games and a cookie cutter format, they've always been there, but I do feel they've partially responsible for the increase in these games we've seen over the years.
I don't have stats, but I really don't think piracy amounts to a bigger percentage of games played vs games sold now than before.
I suppose it's valid to hold the hypothesis that the increase of piracy has been accompanied by an increase in overall game popularity which has resulted in more sales despite the piracy. But I'll also say that they ease of obtaining pirate copies is so much easier now that it's just as valid to say it's far more prevalent then in the past.
Until we see some data it's impossible to say for sure either way.
On December 01 2011 07:37 Mammel wrote: [quote] And you actually want to pay to those fuckers ? No matter how much I have money, I wouldn't. But anyway, I don't know about US laws, but I do know that if you download anything here, you will get absolutely nothing for it. I don't actually even know if you could be sued for it here, and I couldn't care less. If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game. I don't know if that'll change when I'm able to afford them without any problems, but right now I want to play, and I want to eat, and as long as it's possible to do both then I'm going to do it.
Oh no, they punished her for doing something illegal? How cruel!
While it's a dumb story, and the fine is exorbitant, it very clearly states in many places how much you'll be fined for illegally downloading stuff. You take a risk, sometimes you get fucked.
Your mindset is immature. "I want I want I want gimme gimme gimme" makes you sound like a child who doesn't know the value of a dollar.
"If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game." How petulant. If you can't afford something, you don't get it. Just because this type of theft is easy to pull off doesn't make you tough, doesn't make you right, and just makes you a punk. Get over yourself.
I just don't think it's bad to take something you aren't willing to buy as long as taking it hurts no one.
This is such a flawed line of reasoning. It's the exact reason we have things such as the tragedy of the commons.
"tragedy of the commons" Never heard of that term before. I assume you mean US bank crisis few years back + Greece in EU right now? I don't see the correlation between copying a game for yourself and taking too much loan, hiding your true deficit and not paying your dept... But I'm not saying this as an economist.
That type of mentality is fine if it wasn't thousands (millions?) of people thinking the same thing for gaming, movies, and music.
"Oh, I'll only pirate a couple games, maybe $500 worth. $500 isn't that much to a big game company."
And then another person thinks that. Then another person. Then another. How long before there are millions, billions of dollars worth of pirated material out there? $60 doesn't hurt anyone. $60 a million times does.
It's like voting in America. You don't think your one vote counts, so you don't vote. Then thousands of people think the same, and the election is completely fucked one way or the other.
That's exactly what I didn't say. I can't afford it anyway. The company is ever going to get exactly 0$ from me. If, I'm still able to pirate the game, then sure as hell I'm going to.
And no, that still doesn't make it 60$ lost for the company.
I'll quote wikipedia because it says it better then I can.
'The tragedy of the commons is a dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource, even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long-term interest for this to happen.'
It is very prevalent in the environmental world as for the longest time businesses damaged the environment by dumping waste. It made all the sense in the world individually to do so as it would only increase costs to dispose of it in a healthier way. But that's not sustainable as when the environment becomes degraded the cost of doing business becomes greater then if you properly disposed of waste in the first place.
In this case, the very things pirates are supposedly fighting against(crappy games, draconian DRM, cookie-cutter formula) is caused by pirates. 15 years ago before pirating was so wide-spread, the most you had to deal with was a simple CD key. The increase in pirating caused an increase in DRM as well as companies creating games that maximize profit. You think you really aren't hurting anything since you wouldn't buy it anyways, but in fact you're the reason companies act like they do now.
Well, developers screwd with people before piracy became what it is today. So saying that it's piracys fault that we have DRM is only half true. It's childish but, developers started it all.
Explain. Developers have always made poor games, but I don't remember any nasty DRM coming around until after P2P became widespread.
edit: I suppose I should clarify, the pirates didn't cause crappy games and a cookie cutter format, they've always been there, but I do feel they've partially responsible for the increase in these games we've seen over the years.
I don't have stats, but I really don't think piracy amounts to a bigger percentage of games played vs games sold now than before.
I suppose it's valid to hold the hypothesis that the increase of piracy has been accompanied by an increase in overall game popularity which has resulted in more sales despite the piracy. But I'll also say that they ease of obtaining pirate copies is so much easier now that it's just as valid to say it's far more prevalent then in the past.
Until we see some data it's impossible to say for sure either way.
I don't think it's possible to get data of the games you copied from your friends or of illegal copies you bought for basically free. I remember copying most of the games from my friends when I was a kid and buying tons of pirate copies from Estonia when we went there every now and then. How many I (or my parents) bought legally.. maybe 1/10? The amount of games was also much smaller, but the lack of high speed internet didn't really do much.
On December 01 2011 08:15 Brutefidget wrote: Ideas like "The industry does fine without me buying games" and "If games weren't so overpriced then I would buy them" are poison to the gaming industry. If everyone started acting like this, we'd all have no games. I've made this exact same point like 4 times and I have yet to see anyone refute it. Please, piracy advocates, explain how if everyone pirates that there would still be a gaming industry.
the point is that it isn't a point, because not everyone pirates. people buy stuff if they can afford it and if what they purchase is better than what they pirate. many can afford it, and BECAUSE of piracy, game distributors have finally managed to provide an equally good service as pirates do.
this thread is full of horrible analogies, so allow me to make some more. basically, many things are illegal in society. in norway, it's illegal to urinate in public. generally, it's seen as a good thing, that not everyone urinates in public, but it is also preferable if people are occasionally able to urinate in public without being fined as opposed to pissing their pants. your idea that "if everyone pirated, we'd have to gaming industry", is akin to a statement such as "if everyone pissed in public, our cities would smell like piss", but both are just.. meaningless statements, because not everyone pirates, not everyone wants to pirate, just like not everyone urinates in public because not everyone wants to urinate in public. but sometimes, pirating is preferable to not playing a game, and urinating in public is preferable to pissing your pants. you can say "but you shouldn't have gone out drinking knowing that you might find yourself having to piss without a suitable toilet nearby", just as you can say "well maybe you should have done something else than play a game you weren't able to afford", the fact is, in neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers. meanwhile, lawbreakers have improved life quality specifically because they broke the law, and for me, as an innocent bystander, I'm both happy that mr pissypants didn't accidentially stumble into me soaking me in his piss, just as I am happy that my peg-legged friend recommended me and gave me a copy of dune 2 19 years ago which kickstarted my RTS gaming experience and ensured that I would contribute to the gaming industry for the rest of my adult life.
Many people in this topic already have admitted to not buying stuff if they can afford it. If you just download a game, you save 60 dollars towards a new car! Why ever buy a game, right guys?
You can't say it's not a point. You can say it's not reality, but that doesn't make it any less of a point. That is the exact reason why urinating in public is illegal and should be illegal, and piracy should be no different. Society would be much worse off if everyone adopted that behavior. It's very selfish to think that your actions, which are detrimental, are ok because you're only one person. To me, the person who buys games, if you don't pay for it of course I'd prefer for you to not play it. It's the same as me thinking that I'd much rather have people acting responsibly and finding a toilet rather than peeing all over my city.
"Not everyone wants to pirate" - Untrue. Everyone would prefer to have something free, but those who don't want to pirate are those who understand that it hurts the gaming industry. So while not everyone wants to "pirate," everyone wants the same thing the pirates take.
"In neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers." - I fail to see how society benefits from public urination ever, but I'm just going to abandon your analogy for that point. Maybe right now, with the current ratio of lawbreakers to paying customers, the actions are not so detrimental. However, if more people decide to become lawbreakers, it will destroy the industry. You can't honestly think it's ok to break the law just because it's only a few people doing it?
On December 01 2011 08:15 Brutefidget wrote: Ideas like "The industry does fine without me buying games" and "If games weren't so overpriced then I would buy them" are poison to the gaming industry. If everyone started acting like this, we'd all have no games. I've made this exact same point like 4 times and I have yet to see anyone refute it. Please, piracy advocates, explain how if everyone pirates that there would still be a gaming industry.
the point is that it isn't a point, because not everyone pirates. people buy stuff if they can afford it and if what they purchase is better than what they pirate. many can afford it, and BECAUSE of piracy, game distributors have finally managed to provide an equally good service as pirates do.
this thread is full of horrible analogies, so allow me to make some more. basically, many things are illegal in society. in norway, it's illegal to urinate in public. generally, it's seen as a good thing, that not everyone urinates in public, but it is also preferable if people are occasionally able to urinate in public without being fined as opposed to pissing their pants. your idea that "if everyone pirated, we'd have to gaming industry", is akin to a statement such as "if everyone pissed in public, our cities would smell like piss", but both are just.. meaningless statements, because not everyone pirates, not everyone wants to pirate, just like not everyone urinates in public because not everyone wants to urinate in public. but sometimes, pirating is preferable to not playing a game, and urinating in public is preferable to pissing your pants. you can say "but you shouldn't have gone out drinking knowing that you might find yourself having to piss without a suitable toilet nearby", just as you can say "well maybe you should have done something else than play a game you weren't able to afford", the fact is, in neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers. meanwhile, lawbreakers have improved life quality specifically because they broke the law, and for me, as an innocent bystander, I'm both happy that mr pissypants didn't accidentially stumble into me soaking me in his piss, just as I am happy that my peg-legged friend recommended me and gave me a copy of dune 2 19 years ago which kickstarted my RTS gaming experience and ensured that I would contribute to the gaming industry for the rest of my adult life.
Many people in this topic already have admitted to not buying stuff if they can afford it. If you just download a game, you save 60 dollars towards a new car! Why ever buy a game, right guys?
You can't say it's not a point. You can say it's not reality, but that doesn't make it any less of a point. That is the exact reason why urinating in public is illegal and should be illegal, and piracy should be no different. Society would be much worse off if everyone adopted that behavior. It's very selfish to think that your actions, which are detrimental, are ok because you're only one person. To me, the person who buys games, if you don't pay for it of course I'd prefer for you to not play it. It's the same as me thinking that I'd much rather have people acting responsibly and finding a toilet rather than peeing all over my city.
"Not everyone wants to pirate" - Untrue. Everyone would prefer to have something free, but those who don't want to pirate are those who understand that it hurts the gaming industry. So while not everyone wants to "pirate," everyone wants the same thing the pirates take.
"In neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers." - I fail to see how society benefits from public urination ever, but I'm just going to abandon your analogy for that point. Maybe right now, with the current ratio of lawbreakers to paying customers, the actions are not so detrimental. However, if more people decide to become lawbreakers, it will destroy the industry. You can't honestly think it's ok to break the law just because it's only a few people doing it?
I don't want to pirate. But developers have made me do it due to thier insane DRMs, crappy console ports and close to illegal hype campaigns surrounding certain games. When i say illegal i mean it as in false advertising. Something like Ubisoft dose from time to time. Show stuff off saying it will be in the game, but come release said feature is nowhere to be found.
On December 01 2011 08:15 Brutefidget wrote: Ideas like "The industry does fine without me buying games" and "If games weren't so overpriced then I would buy them" are poison to the gaming industry. If everyone started acting like this, we'd all have no games. I've made this exact same point like 4 times and I have yet to see anyone refute it. Please, piracy advocates, explain how if everyone pirates that there would still be a gaming industry.
the point is that it isn't a point, because not everyone pirates. people buy stuff if they can afford it and if what they purchase is better than what they pirate. many can afford it, and BECAUSE of piracy, game distributors have finally managed to provide an equally good service as pirates do.
this thread is full of horrible analogies, so allow me to make some more. basically, many things are illegal in society. in norway, it's illegal to urinate in public. generally, it's seen as a good thing, that not everyone urinates in public, but it is also preferable if people are occasionally able to urinate in public without being fined as opposed to pissing their pants. your idea that "if everyone pirated, we'd have to gaming industry", is akin to a statement such as "if everyone pissed in public, our cities would smell like piss", but both are just.. meaningless statements, because not everyone pirates, not everyone wants to pirate, just like not everyone urinates in public because not everyone wants to urinate in public. but sometimes, pirating is preferable to not playing a game, and urinating in public is preferable to pissing your pants. you can say "but you shouldn't have gone out drinking knowing that you might find yourself having to piss without a suitable toilet nearby", just as you can say "well maybe you should have done something else than play a game you weren't able to afford", the fact is, in neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers. meanwhile, lawbreakers have improved life quality specifically because they broke the law, and for me, as an innocent bystander, I'm both happy that mr pissypants didn't accidentially stumble into me soaking me in his piss, just as I am happy that my peg-legged friend recommended me and gave me a copy of dune 2 19 years ago which kickstarted my RTS gaming experience and ensured that I would contribute to the gaming industry for the rest of my adult life.
Many people in this topic already have admitted to not buying stuff if they can afford it. If you just download a game, you save 60 dollars towards a new car! Why ever buy a game, right guys?
You can't say it's not a point. You can say it's not reality, but that doesn't make it any less of a point. That is the exact reason why urinating in public is illegal and should be illegal, and piracy should be no different. Society would be much worse off if everyone adopted that behavior. It's very selfish to think that your actions, which are detrimental, are ok because you're only one person. To me, the person who buys games, if you don't pay for it of course I'd prefer for you to not play it. It's the same as me thinking that I'd much rather have people acting responsibly and finding a toilet rather than peeing all over my city.
"Not everyone wants to pirate" - Untrue. Everyone would prefer to have something free, but those who don't want to pirate are those who understand that it hurts the gaming industry. So while not everyone wants to "pirate," everyone wants the same thing the pirates take.
"In neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers." - I fail to see how society benefits from public urination ever, but I'm just going to abandon your analogy for that point. Maybe right now, with the current ratio of lawbreakers to paying customers, the actions are not so detrimental. However, if more people decide to become lawbreakers, it will destroy the industry. You can't honestly think it's ok to break the law just because it's only a few people doing it?
I don't want to pirate. But developers have made me do it due to thier insane DRMs, crappy console ports and close to illegal hype campaigns surrounding certain games. When i say illegal i mean it as in false advertising. Something like Ubisoft dose from time to time. Show stuff off saying it will be in the game, but come release said feature is nowhere to be found.
I love the idea that, because you wont purchase a product, stealing it is acceptable. Believe it or not, just by existing you're not entitled to own/play every game that comes out.
On December 01 2011 08:15 Brutefidget wrote: Ideas like "The industry does fine without me buying games" and "If games weren't so overpriced then I would buy them" are poison to the gaming industry. If everyone started acting like this, we'd all have no games. I've made this exact same point like 4 times and I have yet to see anyone refute it. Please, piracy advocates, explain how if everyone pirates that there would still be a gaming industry.
the point is that it isn't a point, because not everyone pirates. people buy stuff if they can afford it and if what they purchase is better than what they pirate. many can afford it, and BECAUSE of piracy, game distributors have finally managed to provide an equally good service as pirates do.
this thread is full of horrible analogies, so allow me to make some more. basically, many things are illegal in society. in norway, it's illegal to urinate in public. generally, it's seen as a good thing, that not everyone urinates in public, but it is also preferable if people are occasionally able to urinate in public without being fined as opposed to pissing their pants. your idea that "if everyone pirated, we'd have to gaming industry", is akin to a statement such as "if everyone pissed in public, our cities would smell like piss", but both are just.. meaningless statements, because not everyone pirates, not everyone wants to pirate, just like not everyone urinates in public because not everyone wants to urinate in public. but sometimes, pirating is preferable to not playing a game, and urinating in public is preferable to pissing your pants. you can say "but you shouldn't have gone out drinking knowing that you might find yourself having to piss without a suitable toilet nearby", just as you can say "well maybe you should have done something else than play a game you weren't able to afford", the fact is, in neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers. meanwhile, lawbreakers have improved life quality specifically because they broke the law, and for me, as an innocent bystander, I'm both happy that mr pissypants didn't accidentially stumble into me soaking me in his piss, just as I am happy that my peg-legged friend recommended me and gave me a copy of dune 2 19 years ago which kickstarted my RTS gaming experience and ensured that I would contribute to the gaming industry for the rest of my adult life.
Many people in this topic already have admitted to not buying stuff if they can afford it. If you just download a game, you save 60 dollars towards a new car! Why ever buy a game, right guys?
You can't say it's not a point. You can say it's not reality, but that doesn't make it any less of a point. That is the exact reason why urinating in public is illegal and should be illegal, and piracy should be no different. Society would be much worse off if everyone adopted that behavior. It's very selfish to think that your actions, which are detrimental, are ok because you're only one person. To me, the person who buys games, if you don't pay for it of course I'd prefer for you to not play it. It's the same as me thinking that I'd much rather have people acting responsibly and finding a toilet rather than peeing all over my city.
"Not everyone wants to pirate" - Untrue. Everyone would prefer to have something free, but those who don't want to pirate are those who understand that it hurts the gaming industry. So while not everyone wants to "pirate," everyone wants the same thing the pirates take.
"In neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers." - I fail to see how society benefits from public urination ever, but I'm just going to abandon your analogy for that point. Maybe right now, with the current ratio of lawbreakers to paying customers, the actions are not so detrimental. However, if more people decide to become lawbreakers, it will destroy the industry. You can't honestly think it's ok to break the law just because it's only a few people doing it?
I don't want to pirate. But developers have made me do it due to thier insane DRMs, crappy console ports and close to illegal hype campaigns surrounding certain games. When i say illegal i mean it as in false advertising. Something like Ubisoft dose from time to time. Show stuff off saying it will be in the game, but come release said feature is nowhere to be found.
I love the idea that, because you wont purchase a product, stealing it is acceptable. Believe it or not, just by existing you're not entitled to own/play every game that comes out.
I WANT too purchase products and support developers. But when they make it impossible to make a clear decision, why not pirate, see if its good and then buy it? I am a potential customer like everyone else but i am trying to make a informed decision.
my point is that laws should not be absolute. while laws are generally formed from a consensus of morality or whatever, morality is not completely derived from law. the point is, YES, if everyone adopts a certain type of behavior, then society crumbles. but if you are in a particular circumstance (say, you're speeding because your pregnant wife is about to give birth, or you urinate in some alley because you're about to piss your pants, or you download a game illegaly because you're 14 years old and you wouldn't be able to buy it anyway but want to play it), then society is not negatively affected in a significant manner by you breaking the law - in fact it might be affected in a positive manner (probably more safe to drive while speeding slightly than while wife is giving birth, it's better if people urinate publicly than piss their pants, and companys might make more money from exposure gotten through piracy than through a 14 year old not buying their game. ).
basically it's like, if you're a 24 year old male and you just went out drinking last night and spent $120 on alcohol, and then the day after you wanna play a game and then instead of paying $15 on steam for bastion, you pirate it, and then you play it for 9 hours and you enjoyed it a lot, but then you still don't buy it, then I would also regard that as condemnable behavior. but not all piracy is bad by default..
On December 01 2011 08:15 Brutefidget wrote: Ideas like "The industry does fine without me buying games" and "If games weren't so overpriced then I would buy them" are poison to the gaming industry. If everyone started acting like this, we'd all have no games. I've made this exact same point like 4 times and I have yet to see anyone refute it. Please, piracy advocates, explain how if everyone pirates that there would still be a gaming industry.
the point is that it isn't a point, because not everyone pirates. people buy stuff if they can afford it and if what they purchase is better than what they pirate. many can afford it, and BECAUSE of piracy, game distributors have finally managed to provide an equally good service as pirates do.
this thread is full of horrible analogies, so allow me to make some more. basically, many things are illegal in society. in norway, it's illegal to urinate in public. generally, it's seen as a good thing, that not everyone urinates in public, but it is also preferable if people are occasionally able to urinate in public without being fined as opposed to pissing their pants. your idea that "if everyone pirated, we'd have to gaming industry", is akin to a statement such as "if everyone pissed in public, our cities would smell like piss", but both are just.. meaningless statements, because not everyone pirates, not everyone wants to pirate, just like not everyone urinates in public because not everyone wants to urinate in public. but sometimes, pirating is preferable to not playing a game, and urinating in public is preferable to pissing your pants. you can say "but you shouldn't have gone out drinking knowing that you might find yourself having to piss without a suitable toilet nearby", just as you can say "well maybe you should have done something else than play a game you weren't able to afford", the fact is, in neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers. meanwhile, lawbreakers have improved life quality specifically because they broke the law, and for me, as an innocent bystander, I'm both happy that mr pissypants didn't accidentially stumble into me soaking me in his piss, just as I am happy that my peg-legged friend recommended me and gave me a copy of dune 2 19 years ago which kickstarted my RTS gaming experience and ensured that I would contribute to the gaming industry for the rest of my adult life.
Many people in this topic already have admitted to not buying stuff if they can afford it. If you just download a game, you save 60 dollars towards a new car! Why ever buy a game, right guys?
You can't say it's not a point. You can say it's not reality, but that doesn't make it any less of a point. That is the exact reason why urinating in public is illegal and should be illegal, and piracy should be no different. Society would be much worse off if everyone adopted that behavior. It's very selfish to think that your actions, which are detrimental, are ok because you're only one person. To me, the person who buys games, if you don't pay for it of course I'd prefer for you to not play it. It's the same as me thinking that I'd much rather have people acting responsibly and finding a toilet rather than peeing all over my city.
"Not everyone wants to pirate" - Untrue. Everyone would prefer to have something free, but those who don't want to pirate are those who understand that it hurts the gaming industry. So while not everyone wants to "pirate," everyone wants the same thing the pirates take.
"In neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers." - I fail to see how society benefits from public urination ever, but I'm just going to abandon your analogy for that point. Maybe right now, with the current ratio of lawbreakers to paying customers, the actions are not so detrimental. However, if more people decide to become lawbreakers, it will destroy the industry. You can't honestly think it's ok to break the law just because it's only a few people doing it?
I don't want to pirate. But developers have made me do it due to thier insane DRMs, crappy console ports and close to illegal hype campaigns surrounding certain games. When i say illegal i mean it as in false advertising. Something like Ubisoft dose from time to time. Show stuff off saying it will be in the game, but come release said feature is nowhere to be found.
I love the idea that, because you wont purchase a product, stealing it is acceptable. Believe it or not, just by existing you're not entitled to own/play every game that comes out.
I WANT too purchase products and support developers. But when they make it impossible to make a clear decission, why not pirate, see if its good and then buy it? I am a potential customer like everyone else but i am trying to make a informed decision.
As has been discussed numerous times, downloading to try and then buying is fine to an extent. However, despite what people say, that is a vocal minority of pirates. The more likely occurrence is when they download a game, like or dislike, continue to play it. That means the person is either hypocritical for playing a bad game they wont pay or or not paying for a good game they should.
There has been a lot of discussion and a lot of names, so it is easy to get lost as to who said what when it comes to specifics.
On December 01 2011 08:15 Brutefidget wrote: Ideas like "The industry does fine without me buying games" and "If games weren't so overpriced then I would buy them" are poison to the gaming industry. If everyone started acting like this, we'd all have no games. I've made this exact same point like 4 times and I have yet to see anyone refute it. Please, piracy advocates, explain how if everyone pirates that there would still be a gaming industry.
the point is that it isn't a point, because not everyone pirates. people buy stuff if they can afford it and if what they purchase is better than what they pirate. many can afford it, and BECAUSE of piracy, game distributors have finally managed to provide an equally good service as pirates do.
this thread is full of horrible analogies, so allow me to make some more. basically, many things are illegal in society. in norway, it's illegal to urinate in public. generally, it's seen as a good thing, that not everyone urinates in public, but it is also preferable if people are occasionally able to urinate in public without being fined as opposed to pissing their pants. your idea that "if everyone pirated, we'd have to gaming industry", is akin to a statement such as "if everyone pissed in public, our cities would smell like piss", but both are just.. meaningless statements, because not everyone pirates, not everyone wants to pirate, just like not everyone urinates in public because not everyone wants to urinate in public. but sometimes, pirating is preferable to not playing a game, and urinating in public is preferable to pissing your pants. you can say "but you shouldn't have gone out drinking knowing that you might find yourself having to piss without a suitable toilet nearby", just as you can say "well maybe you should have done something else than play a game you weren't able to afford", the fact is, in neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers. meanwhile, lawbreakers have improved life quality specifically because they broke the law, and for me, as an innocent bystander, I'm both happy that mr pissypants didn't accidentially stumble into me soaking me in his piss, just as I am happy that my peg-legged friend recommended me and gave me a copy of dune 2 19 years ago which kickstarted my RTS gaming experience and ensured that I would contribute to the gaming industry for the rest of my adult life.
Many people in this topic already have admitted to not buying stuff if they can afford it. If you just download a game, you save 60 dollars towards a new car! Why ever buy a game, right guys?
You can't say it's not a point. You can say it's not reality, but that doesn't make it any less of a point. That is the exact reason why urinating in public is illegal and should be illegal, and piracy should be no different. Society would be much worse off if everyone adopted that behavior. It's very selfish to think that your actions, which are detrimental, are ok because you're only one person. To me, the person who buys games, if you don't pay for it of course I'd prefer for you to not play it. It's the same as me thinking that I'd much rather have people acting responsibly and finding a toilet rather than peeing all over my city.
"Not everyone wants to pirate" - Untrue. Everyone would prefer to have something free, but those who don't want to pirate are those who understand that it hurts the gaming industry. So while not everyone wants to "pirate," everyone wants the same thing the pirates take.
"In neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers." - I fail to see how society benefits from public urination ever, but I'm just going to abandon your analogy for that point. Maybe right now, with the current ratio of lawbreakers to paying customers, the actions are not so detrimental. However, if more people decide to become lawbreakers, it will destroy the industry. You can't honestly think it's ok to break the law just because it's only a few people doing it?
I don't want to pirate. But developers have made me do it due to thier insane DRMs, crappy console ports and close to illegal hype campaigns surrounding certain games. When i say illegal i mean it as in false advertising. Something like Ubisoft dose from time to time. Show stuff off saying it will be in the game, but come release said feature is nowhere to be found.
If you don't like DRM, crappy console ports, and overhyped games then...don't buy them! If you don't like it, don't play it! Shockingly simple really. It's pathetic how you attempt to justify it, just be a man and admit you're being immoral and get on with your pirating. Since this thread loves half-baked analogies...I don't want to cheat on my wife, but she nags me all the time and makes me do my own laundry so really she made me do it. Leaving her is not an option because there are some things I like about her and would miss out on. But seriously it's all her fault.
On December 01 2011 08:15 Brutefidget wrote: Ideas like "The industry does fine without me buying games" and "If games weren't so overpriced then I would buy them" are poison to the gaming industry. If everyone started acting like this, we'd all have no games. I've made this exact same point like 4 times and I have yet to see anyone refute it. Please, piracy advocates, explain how if everyone pirates that there would still be a gaming industry.
the point is that it isn't a point, because not everyone pirates. people buy stuff if they can afford it and if what they purchase is better than what they pirate. many can afford it, and BECAUSE of piracy, game distributors have finally managed to provide an equally good service as pirates do.
this thread is full of horrible analogies, so allow me to make some more. basically, many things are illegal in society. in norway, it's illegal to urinate in public. generally, it's seen as a good thing, that not everyone urinates in public, but it is also preferable if people are occasionally able to urinate in public without being fined as opposed to pissing their pants. your idea that "if everyone pirated, we'd have to gaming industry", is akin to a statement such as "if everyone pissed in public, our cities would smell like piss", but both are just.. meaningless statements, because not everyone pirates, not everyone wants to pirate, just like not everyone urinates in public because not everyone wants to urinate in public. but sometimes, pirating is preferable to not playing a game, and urinating in public is preferable to pissing your pants. you can say "but you shouldn't have gone out drinking knowing that you might find yourself having to piss without a suitable toilet nearby", just as you can say "well maybe you should have done something else than play a game you weren't able to afford", the fact is, in neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers. meanwhile, lawbreakers have improved life quality specifically because they broke the law, and for me, as an innocent bystander, I'm both happy that mr pissypants didn't accidentially stumble into me soaking me in his piss, just as I am happy that my peg-legged friend recommended me and gave me a copy of dune 2 19 years ago which kickstarted my RTS gaming experience and ensured that I would contribute to the gaming industry for the rest of my adult life.
Many people in this topic already have admitted to not buying stuff if they can afford it. If you just download a game, you save 60 dollars towards a new car! Why ever buy a game, right guys?
You can't say it's not a point. You can say it's not reality, but that doesn't make it any less of a point. That is the exact reason why urinating in public is illegal and should be illegal, and piracy should be no different. Society would be much worse off if everyone adopted that behavior. It's very selfish to think that your actions, which are detrimental, are ok because you're only one person. To me, the person who buys games, if you don't pay for it of course I'd prefer for you to not play it. It's the same as me thinking that I'd much rather have people acting responsibly and finding a toilet rather than peeing all over my city.
"Not everyone wants to pirate" - Untrue. Everyone would prefer to have something free, but those who don't want to pirate are those who understand that it hurts the gaming industry. So while not everyone wants to "pirate," everyone wants the same thing the pirates take.
"In neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers." - I fail to see how society benefits from public urination ever, but I'm just going to abandon your analogy for that point. Maybe right now, with the current ratio of lawbreakers to paying customers, the actions are not so detrimental. However, if more people decide to become lawbreakers, it will destroy the industry. You can't honestly think it's ok to break the law just because it's only a few people doing it?
I don't want to pirate. But developers have made me do it due to thier insane DRMs, crappy console ports and close to illegal hype campaigns surrounding certain games. When i say illegal i mean it as in false advertising. Something like Ubisoft dose from time to time. Show stuff off saying it will be in the game, but come release said feature is nowhere to be found.
I love the idea that, because you wont purchase a product, stealing it is acceptable. Believe it or not, just by existing you're not entitled to own/play every game that comes out.
I WANT too purchase products and support developers. But when they make it impossible to make a clear decission, why not pirate, see if its good and then buy it? I am a potential customer like everyone else but i am trying to make a informed decision.
As has been discussed numerous times, downloading to try and then buying is fine to an extent. However, despite what people say, that is a vocal minority of pirates. The more likely occurrence is when they download a game, like or dislike, continue to play it. That means the person is either hypocritical for playing a bad game they wont pay or or not paying for a good game they should.
There has been a lot of discussion and a lot of names, so it is easy to get lost as to who said what when it comes to specifics.
Yeah... But i agree with your post. As i agree with everything Liquid'Drone has said so far as well. And i am not trying to defend all piracy, i may not have been vocal enough about that.
But i don't know if the "vocal minority" is the right word. Alot of people i know pirate in the same way as i do. And if you ever come across a good torrent site, people in comments and in forums encourage others too buy games they feel deserve it.
On December 01 2011 08:15 Brutefidget wrote: Ideas like "The industry does fine without me buying games" and "If games weren't so overpriced then I would buy them" are poison to the gaming industry. If everyone started acting like this, we'd all have no games. I've made this exact same point like 4 times and I have yet to see anyone refute it. Please, piracy advocates, explain how if everyone pirates that there would still be a gaming industry.
the point is that it isn't a point, because not everyone pirates. people buy stuff if they can afford it and if what they purchase is better than what they pirate. many can afford it, and BECAUSE of piracy, game distributors have finally managed to provide an equally good service as pirates do.
this thread is full of horrible analogies, so allow me to make some more. basically, many things are illegal in society. in norway, it's illegal to urinate in public. generally, it's seen as a good thing, that not everyone urinates in public, but it is also preferable if people are occasionally able to urinate in public without being fined as opposed to pissing their pants. your idea that "if everyone pirated, we'd have to gaming industry", is akin to a statement such as "if everyone pissed in public, our cities would smell like piss", but both are just.. meaningless statements, because not everyone pirates, not everyone wants to pirate, just like not everyone urinates in public because not everyone wants to urinate in public. but sometimes, pirating is preferable to not playing a game, and urinating in public is preferable to pissing your pants. you can say "but you shouldn't have gone out drinking knowing that you might find yourself having to piss without a suitable toilet nearby", just as you can say "well maybe you should have done something else than play a game you weren't able to afford", the fact is, in neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers. meanwhile, lawbreakers have improved life quality specifically because they broke the law, and for me, as an innocent bystander, I'm both happy that mr pissypants didn't accidentially stumble into me soaking me in his piss, just as I am happy that my peg-legged friend recommended me and gave me a copy of dune 2 19 years ago which kickstarted my RTS gaming experience and ensured that I would contribute to the gaming industry for the rest of my adult life.
Many people in this topic already have admitted to not buying stuff if they can afford it. If you just download a game, you save 60 dollars towards a new car! Why ever buy a game, right guys?
You can't say it's not a point. You can say it's not reality, but that doesn't make it any less of a point. That is the exact reason why urinating in public is illegal and should be illegal, and piracy should be no different. Society would be much worse off if everyone adopted that behavior. It's very selfish to think that your actions, which are detrimental, are ok because you're only one person. To me, the person who buys games, if you don't pay for it of course I'd prefer for you to not play it. It's the same as me thinking that I'd much rather have people acting responsibly and finding a toilet rather than peeing all over my city.
"Not everyone wants to pirate" - Untrue. Everyone would prefer to have something free, but those who don't want to pirate are those who understand that it hurts the gaming industry. So while not everyone wants to "pirate," everyone wants the same thing the pirates take.
"In neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers." - I fail to see how society benefits from public urination ever, but I'm just going to abandon your analogy for that point. Maybe right now, with the current ratio of lawbreakers to paying customers, the actions are not so detrimental. However, if more people decide to become lawbreakers, it will destroy the industry. You can't honestly think it's ok to break the law just because it's only a few people doing it?
I don't want to pirate. But developers have made me do it due to thier insane DRMs, crappy console ports and close to illegal hype campaigns surrounding certain games. When i say illegal i mean it as in false advertising. Something like Ubisoft dose from time to time. Show stuff off saying it will be in the game, but come release said feature is nowhere to be found.
If you don't like DRM, crappy console ports, and overhyped games then...don't buy them! If you don't like it, don't play it! Shockingly simple really. It's pathetic how you attempt to justify it, just be a man and admit you're being immoral and get on with your pirating. Since this thread loves half-baked analogies...I don't want to cheat on my wife, but she nags me all the time and makes me do my own laundry so really she made me do it. Leaving her is not an option because there are some things I like about her and would miss out on. But seriously it's all her fault.
You have not read the whole thread i guess... Some of the games that have insane DRMs and are crappy console ports and are overhyped can still be a good game (belive it or not). A good example is TES: Oblivion. I actualy enjoyd that game but would not have bought it if i had not pirated it due to all the shit it got from everyone i know.
And how you can call me immoral for not wanting to get cheated by a developer is beyond me. Are they not being immoral for not being honest about thier product?
On December 01 2011 08:15 Brutefidget wrote: Ideas like "The industry does fine without me buying games" and "If games weren't so overpriced then I would buy them" are poison to the gaming industry. If everyone started acting like this, we'd all have no games. I've made this exact same point like 4 times and I have yet to see anyone refute it. Please, piracy advocates, explain how if everyone pirates that there would still be a gaming industry.
the point is that it isn't a point, because not everyone pirates. people buy stuff if they can afford it and if what they purchase is better than what they pirate. many can afford it, and BECAUSE of piracy, game distributors have finally managed to provide an equally good service as pirates do.
this thread is full of horrible analogies, so allow me to make some more. basically, many things are illegal in society. in norway, it's illegal to urinate in public. generally, it's seen as a good thing, that not everyone urinates in public, but it is also preferable if people are occasionally able to urinate in public without being fined as opposed to pissing their pants. your idea that "if everyone pirated, we'd have to gaming industry", is akin to a statement such as "if everyone pissed in public, our cities would smell like piss", but both are just.. meaningless statements, because not everyone pirates, not everyone wants to pirate, just like not everyone urinates in public because not everyone wants to urinate in public. but sometimes, pirating is preferable to not playing a game, and urinating in public is preferable to pissing your pants. you can say "but you shouldn't have gone out drinking knowing that you might find yourself having to piss without a suitable toilet nearby", just as you can say "well maybe you should have done something else than play a game you weren't able to afford", the fact is, in neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers. meanwhile, lawbreakers have improved life quality specifically because they broke the law, and for me, as an innocent bystander, I'm both happy that mr pissypants didn't accidentially stumble into me soaking me in his piss, just as I am happy that my peg-legged friend recommended me and gave me a copy of dune 2 19 years ago which kickstarted my RTS gaming experience and ensured that I would contribute to the gaming industry for the rest of my adult life.
Many people in this topic already have admitted to not buying stuff if they can afford it. If you just download a game, you save 60 dollars towards a new car! Why ever buy a game, right guys?
You can't say it's not a point. You can say it's not reality, but that doesn't make it any less of a point. That is the exact reason why urinating in public is illegal and should be illegal, and piracy should be no different. Society would be much worse off if everyone adopted that behavior. It's very selfish to think that your actions, which are detrimental, are ok because you're only one person. To me, the person who buys games, if you don't pay for it of course I'd prefer for you to not play it. It's the same as me thinking that I'd much rather have people acting responsibly and finding a toilet rather than peeing all over my city.
"Not everyone wants to pirate" - Untrue. Everyone would prefer to have something free, but those who don't want to pirate are those who understand that it hurts the gaming industry. So while not everyone wants to "pirate," everyone wants the same thing the pirates take.
"In neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers." - I fail to see how society benefits from public urination ever, but I'm just going to abandon your analogy for that point. Maybe right now, with the current ratio of lawbreakers to paying customers, the actions are not so detrimental. However, if more people decide to become lawbreakers, it will destroy the industry. You can't honestly think it's ok to break the law just because it's only a few people doing it?
I don't want to pirate. But developers have made me do it due to thier insane DRMs, crappy console ports and close to illegal hype campaigns surrounding certain games. When i say illegal i mean it as in false advertising. Something like Ubisoft dose from time to time. Show stuff off saying it will be in the game, but come release said feature is nowhere to be found.
If you don't like DRM, crappy console ports, and overhyped games then...don't buy them! If you don't like it, don't play it! Shockingly simple really. It's pathetic how you attempt to justify it, just be a man and admit you're being immoral and get on with your pirating. Since this thread loves half-baked analogies...I don't want to cheat on my wife, but she nags me all the time and makes me do my own laundry so really she made me do it. Leaving her is not an option because there are some things I like about her and would miss out on. But seriously it's all her fault.
You have not read the whole thread i guess... Some of the games that have insane DRMs and are crappy console ports and are overhyped can still be a good game (belive it or not). A good example is TES: Oblivion. I actualy enjoyd that game but would not have bought it if i had not pirated it due to all the shit it got from everyone i know.
And how you can call me immoral for not wanting to get cheated by a developer is beyond me. Are they not being immoral for not being honest about thier product?
The developer isn't cheating you. If you aren't convinced by the product, then don't buy it. DRM, porting, etc is all part of the product. I don't throw a hissy fit like a child when I order a meal at a restaurant that I don't like, and you shouldn't whine like a child when you buy a game and end up not liking it. Next time, I'll order a burger because I know it's going to be alright, and you can stick to X developer whose games you always enjoy if you're too immature to handle trying new things and not liking them.
not gonna lie, I pirate single player games all the time, why should I pay $60 for a game with no multi player? I'd buy FFXIII if it was $30 but it was $60! I'm not gonna buy it now because I heard it was shit, so fuck that. If you're wondering, yeah I did it, I pirated skyrim. I never pirate multiplayer games.
For a guy who makes his money off of selling video games, Gabe clearly isn't worried about piracy. All other points are moot.
I agree with him.
People will buy if you provide a better service then what piracy can provide. There will still be piracy, as there are a % of people who will get it for free if they can, but I also think a % of people do want to support developers if possible. It the latter % that feels dupped and used when they try to support a developer by purchasing and get shoddy work and intrusive DRM. This is another 'tragedy of the commons' as too many developers(I'm looking at you Ubisoft and Activision) seem to think more DRM with cookie-cutter, profit maximizing games will discourage piracy when in fact it just drives people to pirate more since you get a better product if you do. As much as I think pirates started the problem, developers have only perpetuated it themselves.
On December 01 2011 08:15 Brutefidget wrote: Ideas like "The industry does fine without me buying games" and "If games weren't so overpriced then I would buy them" are poison to the gaming industry. If everyone started acting like this, we'd all have no games. I've made this exact same point like 4 times and I have yet to see anyone refute it. Please, piracy advocates, explain how if everyone pirates that there would still be a gaming industry.
the point is that it isn't a point, because not everyone pirates. people buy stuff if they can afford it and if what they purchase is better than what they pirate. many can afford it, and BECAUSE of piracy, game distributors have finally managed to provide an equally good service as pirates do.
this thread is full of horrible analogies, so allow me to make some more. basically, many things are illegal in society. in norway, it's illegal to urinate in public. generally, it's seen as a good thing, that not everyone urinates in public, but it is also preferable if people are occasionally able to urinate in public without being fined as opposed to pissing their pants. your idea that "if everyone pirated, we'd have to gaming industry", is akin to a statement such as "if everyone pissed in public, our cities would smell like piss", but both are just.. meaningless statements, because not everyone pirates, not everyone wants to pirate, just like not everyone urinates in public because not everyone wants to urinate in public. but sometimes, pirating is preferable to not playing a game, and urinating in public is preferable to pissing your pants. you can say "but you shouldn't have gone out drinking knowing that you might find yourself having to piss without a suitable toilet nearby", just as you can say "well maybe you should have done something else than play a game you weren't able to afford", the fact is, in neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers. meanwhile, lawbreakers have improved life quality specifically because they broke the law, and for me, as an innocent bystander, I'm both happy that mr pissypants didn't accidentially stumble into me soaking me in his piss, just as I am happy that my peg-legged friend recommended me and gave me a copy of dune 2 19 years ago which kickstarted my RTS gaming experience and ensured that I would contribute to the gaming industry for the rest of my adult life.
Many people in this topic already have admitted to not buying stuff if they can afford it. If you just download a game, you save 60 dollars towards a new car! Why ever buy a game, right guys?
You can't say it's not a point. You can say it's not reality, but that doesn't make it any less of a point. That is the exact reason why urinating in public is illegal and should be illegal, and piracy should be no different. Society would be much worse off if everyone adopted that behavior. It's very selfish to think that your actions, which are detrimental, are ok because you're only one person. To me, the person who buys games, if you don't pay for it of course I'd prefer for you to not play it. It's the same as me thinking that I'd much rather have people acting responsibly and finding a toilet rather than peeing all over my city.
"Not everyone wants to pirate" - Untrue. Everyone would prefer to have something free, but those who don't want to pirate are those who understand that it hurts the gaming industry. So while not everyone wants to "pirate," everyone wants the same thing the pirates take.
"In neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers." - I fail to see how society benefits from public urination ever, but I'm just going to abandon your analogy for that point. Maybe right now, with the current ratio of lawbreakers to paying customers, the actions are not so detrimental. However, if more people decide to become lawbreakers, it will destroy the industry. You can't honestly think it's ok to break the law just because it's only a few people doing it?
I don't want to pirate. But developers have made me do it due to thier insane DRMs, crappy console ports and close to illegal hype campaigns surrounding certain games. When i say illegal i mean it as in false advertising. Something like Ubisoft dose from time to time. Show stuff off saying it will be in the game, but come release said feature is nowhere to be found.
If you don't like DRM, crappy console ports, and overhyped games then...don't buy them! If you don't like it, don't play it! Shockingly simple really. It's pathetic how you attempt to justify it, just be a man and admit you're being immoral and get on with your pirating. Since this thread loves half-baked analogies...I don't want to cheat on my wife, but she nags me all the time and makes me do my own laundry so really she made me do it. Leaving her is not an option because there are some things I like about her and would miss out on. But seriously it's all her fault.
You have not read the whole thread i guess... Some of the games that have insane DRMs and are crappy console ports and are overhyped can still be a good game (belive it or not). A good example is TES: Oblivion. I actualy enjoyd that game but would not have bought it if i had not pirated it due to all the shit it got from everyone i know.
And how you can call me immoral for not wanting to get cheated by a developer is beyond me. Are they not being immoral for not being honest about thier product?
The developer isn't cheating you. If you aren't convinced by the product, then don't buy it. DRM, porting, etc is all part of the product. I don't throw a hissy fit like a child when I order a meal at a restaurant that I don't like, and you shouldn't whine like a child when you buy a game and end up not liking it. Next time, I'll order a burger because I know it's going to be alright, and you can stick to X developer whose games you always enjoy if you're too immature to handle trying new things and not liking them.
It's not about not liking the type of game or anything. But it happens quite often that a developer sells a game that is broken. Broken to the point where it is impossible to play it. I think you would say something if you bought a burger that turned out only to be made of lettuce but it promised too be a regular burger.
This is a fairly straight forward issue really in which the law has very little real relevance. Smart businesses will realize that when it comes to piracy some people simply will not purchase the game/music/movie. These people are not real customers however they could help to promote the product at some point so it isn't all bad. In some markets a portion of potential customers may be currently pirating. However I don't think it is productive to see them as criminals. It is better to see it as customers that prefer pirates services that need to be won back. You can't fight your customers and win.
Winning these people back is simply a matter of providing more convenient distribution at the right price (even free). So say a company is losing money to pirated movies. They could allow people to watch the movie on your tv/online (with ads) for free (or for a subscription fee) at 480p. Then to watch it at 1080p+ quality you would have to pay an extra fee (it has to be as good or better quality than the blu-ray rips available). If all this could be done without the customer leaving the couch you will only lose those customers who wouldn't buy it anyway. Those people who want to download 10-40gb blu-ray rips over torrent can do so, but I think most people will just go with the easier and faster service.
For music it is also simple make the lower quality mp3's cheap online or even free via ad supported services but have premium collectors editions or vinyls for sale at a higher price. The premium version could be an uncompressed .wav file with other extras like t-shirts etc. That way people who would buy it anyway will still buy it and feel like they are supporting the artist and people who would pirate (or maybe are just vaguely interested) will have easier access to it for free but the ads will make up for it.
On December 01 2011 08:15 Brutefidget wrote: Ideas like "The industry does fine without me buying games" and "If games weren't so overpriced then I would buy them" are poison to the gaming industry. If everyone started acting like this, we'd all have no games. I've made this exact same point like 4 times and I have yet to see anyone refute it. Please, piracy advocates, explain how if everyone pirates that there would still be a gaming industry.
the point is that it isn't a point, because not everyone pirates. people buy stuff if they can afford it and if what they purchase is better than what they pirate. many can afford it, and BECAUSE of piracy, game distributors have finally managed to provide an equally good service as pirates do.
this thread is full of horrible analogies, so allow me to make some more. basically, many things are illegal in society. in norway, it's illegal to urinate in public. generally, it's seen as a good thing, that not everyone urinates in public, but it is also preferable if people are occasionally able to urinate in public without being fined as opposed to pissing their pants. your idea that "if everyone pirated, we'd have to gaming industry", is akin to a statement such as "if everyone pissed in public, our cities would smell like piss", but both are just.. meaningless statements, because not everyone pirates, not everyone wants to pirate, just like not everyone urinates in public because not everyone wants to urinate in public. but sometimes, pirating is preferable to not playing a game, and urinating in public is preferable to pissing your pants. you can say "but you shouldn't have gone out drinking knowing that you might find yourself having to piss without a suitable toilet nearby", just as you can say "well maybe you should have done something else than play a game you weren't able to afford", the fact is, in neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers. meanwhile, lawbreakers have improved life quality specifically because they broke the law, and for me, as an innocent bystander, I'm both happy that mr pissypants didn't accidentially stumble into me soaking me in his piss, just as I am happy that my peg-legged friend recommended me and gave me a copy of dune 2 19 years ago which kickstarted my RTS gaming experience and ensured that I would contribute to the gaming industry for the rest of my adult life.
Many people in this topic already have admitted to not buying stuff if they can afford it. If you just download a game, you save 60 dollars towards a new car! Why ever buy a game, right guys?
You can't say it's not a point. You can say it's not reality, but that doesn't make it any less of a point. That is the exact reason why urinating in public is illegal and should be illegal, and piracy should be no different. Society would be much worse off if everyone adopted that behavior. It's very selfish to think that your actions, which are detrimental, are ok because you're only one person. To me, the person who buys games, if you don't pay for it of course I'd prefer for you to not play it. It's the same as me thinking that I'd much rather have people acting responsibly and finding a toilet rather than peeing all over my city.
"Not everyone wants to pirate" - Untrue. Everyone would prefer to have something free, but those who don't want to pirate are those who understand that it hurts the gaming industry. So while not everyone wants to "pirate," everyone wants the same thing the pirates take.
"In neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers." - I fail to see how society benefits from public urination ever, but I'm just going to abandon your analogy for that point. Maybe right now, with the current ratio of lawbreakers to paying customers, the actions are not so detrimental. However, if more people decide to become lawbreakers, it will destroy the industry. You can't honestly think it's ok to break the law just because it's only a few people doing it?
I don't want to pirate. But developers have made me do it due to thier insane DRMs, crappy console ports and close to illegal hype campaigns surrounding certain games. When i say illegal i mean it as in false advertising. Something like Ubisoft dose from time to time. Show stuff off saying it will be in the game, but come release said feature is nowhere to be found.
If you don't like DRM, crappy console ports, and overhyped games then...don't buy them! If you don't like it, don't play it! Shockingly simple really. It's pathetic how you attempt to justify it, just be a man and admit you're being immoral and get on with your pirating. Since this thread loves half-baked analogies...I don't want to cheat on my wife, but she nags me all the time and makes me do my own laundry so really she made me do it. Leaving her is not an option because there are some things I like about her and would miss out on. But seriously it's all her fault.
You have not read the whole thread i guess... Some of the games that have insane DRMs and are crappy console ports and are overhyped can still be a good game (belive it or not). A good example is TES: Oblivion. I actualy enjoyd that game but would not have bought it if i had not pirated it due to all the shit it got from everyone i know.
And how you can call me immoral for not wanting to get cheated by a developer is beyond me. Are they not being immoral for not being honest about thier product?
The developer isn't cheating you. If you aren't convinced by the product, then don't buy it. DRM, porting, etc is all part of the product. I don't throw a hissy fit like a child when I order a meal at a restaurant that I don't like, and you shouldn't whine like a child when you buy a game and end up not liking it. Next time, I'll order a burger because I know it's going to be alright, and you can stick to X developer whose games you always enjoy if you're too immature to handle trying new things and not liking them.
maybe the restaurant business would actually produce a better product if consumers could have delivered free samples of their food prior to visiting to ensure that this restaurant makes food that I am willing to pay x for.. I mean, there'd be some decline in visits because some would prefer to simply eat for free at home, but others who could afford it, would still go visit the restaurant to ensure that they make enough money to produce tasty food, for the feeling of companionship with whomever they went together with, and the waitering. meanwhile, crappy restaurants experience an even steeper decline in visits because as people could try their food prior to going, they realized it was crap and didn't have to.
Quite simply, I would not have bought most of the games I had if I hadn't pirated stuff. The games industry entire is better off because I pirated. I would also like to think that I buy higher quality games hence support good developers (If I pirate a bad game, I don't go buy it do I?).
Also, any anti-pirate software on PC is far more annoying to paying customers than pirates.
PS. you reminded me that I never bought oblivion. brb
On December 01 2011 09:38 nekoconeco wrote: This is a fairly straight forward issue really in which the law has very little real relevance. Smart businesses will realize that when it comes to piracy some people simply will not purchase the game/music/movie. These people are not real customers however they could help to promote the product at some point so it isn't all bad. In some markets a portion of potential customers may be currently pirating. However I don't think it is productive to see them as criminals. It is better to see it as customers that prefer pirates services that need to be won back. You can't fight your customers and win.
Winning these people back is simply a matter of providing more convenient distribution at the right price (even free). So say a company is losing money to pirated movies. They could allow people to watch the movie on your tv/online (with ads) for free (or for a subscription fee) at 480p. Then to watch it at 1080p+ quality you would have to pay an extra fee (it has to be as good or better quality than the blu-ray rips available). If all this could be done without the customer leaving the couch you will only lose those customers who wouldn't buy it anyway. Those people who want to download 10-40gb blu-ray rips over torrent can do so, but I think most people will just go with the easier and faster service.
For music it is also simple make the lower quality mp3's cheap online or even free via ad supported services but have premium collectors editions or vinyls for sale at a higher price. The premium version could be an uncompressed .wav file with other extras like t-shirts etc. That way people who would buy it anyway will still buy it and feel like they are supporting the artist and people who would pirate (or maybe are just vaguely interested) will have easier access to it for free but the ads will make up for it.
man speaks truth. I totally agree, companies shouldn't be fighting their customers
On November 30 2011 22:24 Interloper wrote: Many people who pirate do so because they want to try a game out. If they enjoy the game, they will buy it too support the developer. 4,5 million downloads becomes a useless figure since you can not in any way know how many of those 4,5 million purchased the game afterwards. I feel that piracy is a good way to get rid of shitty developers how make crappy games only for the sake of making money (Well all developers want to make money ofc, but i hope you get my point). Good developers get the money they need and then some. Piracy will not be the end of gaming.
This is the most common reason that has been given to me but more than often the person is also an expert at procrastination and gives the "oh I'll buy it later excuse". In the case of single player games, what usually winds up happening is that they'll beat the game and it becomes forgotten on their computers. Either way, I'd be willing to be a huge chunk of those who pirated wouldn't have bothered buying the game if piracy wasn't an option in the first place (in which case nothing would have been lost anyway).
I would rather prefer to see game demos be more prominent to get rid of that whole "I wanted to try the game" excuse.
But demos aren't the full game! They often don't give you enough experience to decide. Also the game can look promising in the beginning but turn out shitty.
For example. I pirated Portal 2. I liked it. I went out and bought it months after I completed the game just because I wanted to support Valve.
I pirated Amnesia. I liked it. I am planning on buying it soon (tight on cash).
I pirated CoD. It sucked. I didnt buy it. Everybody's happy (except Activision trying to steal my money).
So? I don't get your point? Name one other industry where you get to enjoy the full benefit of the product and then get to CHOOSE whether or not you pay for it? If you went into a restaurant, asked for a steak, ate the entire thing then told them you won't pay them cause it wasn't good enough, they would probably tell you to keep dreaming and phone the police.
I'm not being some holy Internet warrior trying to fight pirates. I have pirated stuff before myself. But stop trying to make excuses about why what you are doing is ok. Sorry but just because you feel you are entitled to enjoy the entire content of a good before you choose whether or not it deserves your money doesn't make it right. I hate to break it to you but your opinion on whether or not a game deserves money means next to nothing.
If you are gonna pirate fine, but stop trying to justify to yourself that it is 'right'.
On November 30 2011 22:24 Interloper wrote: Many people who pirate do so because they want to try a game out. If they enjoy the game, they will buy it too support the developer. 4,5 million downloads becomes a useless figure since you can not in any way know how many of those 4,5 million purchased the game afterwards. I feel that piracy is a good way to get rid of shitty developers how make crappy games only for the sake of making money (Well all developers want to make money ofc, but i hope you get my point). Good developers get the money they need and then some. Piracy will not be the end of gaming.
This is the most common reason that has been given to me but more than often the person is also an expert at procrastination and gives the "oh I'll buy it later excuse". In the case of single player games, what usually winds up happening is that they'll beat the game and it becomes forgotten on their computers. Either way, I'd be willing to be a huge chunk of those who pirated wouldn't have bothered buying the game if piracy wasn't an option in the first place (in which case nothing would have been lost anyway).
I would rather prefer to see game demos be more prominent to get rid of that whole "I wanted to try the game" excuse.
But demos aren't the full game! They often don't give you enough experience to decide. Also the game can look promising in the beginning but turn out shitty.
For example. I pirated Portal 2. I liked it. I went out and bought it months after I completed the game just because I wanted to support Valve.
I pirated Amnesia. I liked it. I am planning on buying it soon (tight on cash).
I pirated CoD. It sucked. I didnt buy it. Everybody's happy (except Activision trying to steal my money).
So? I don't get your point? Name one other industry where you get to enjoy the full benefit of the product and then get to CHOOSE whether or not you pay for it? If you went into a restaurant, asked for a steak, ate the entire thing then told them you won't pay them cause it wasn't good enough, they would probably tell you to keep dreaming and phone the police.
I'm not being some holy Internet warrior trying to fight pirates. I have pirated stuff before myself. But stop trying to make excuses about why what you are doing is ok. Sorry but just because you feel you are entitled to enjoy the entire content of a good before you choose whether or not it deserves your money doesn't make it right. I hate to break it to you but your opinion on whether or not a game deserves money means next to nothing.
If you are gonna pirate fine, but stop trying to justify to yourself that it is 'right'.
I know it has been done before where people pay what they think something is worth. I think it was Radiohead who released thier album for free. If you liked it you could donate how ever much money you think it was worth. Same concept with a resturant not too far away from where i live. When i still was in school they guy who owned the place came and had a lecture, and he said they neither lost nor gained a noteworthy amount of cash from this method. Some would be douchebags and pay nothing even though it was nothing wrong with the food, others would pay huge amounts for the food and service. So it's not an insane concept.
On December 01 2011 08:15 Brutefidget wrote: Ideas like "The industry does fine without me buying games" and "If games weren't so overpriced then I would buy them" are poison to the gaming industry. If everyone started acting like this, we'd all have no games. I've made this exact same point like 4 times and I have yet to see anyone refute it. Please, piracy advocates, explain how if everyone pirates that there would still be a gaming industry.
the point is that it isn't a point, because not everyone pirates. people buy stuff if they can afford it and if what they purchase is better than what they pirate. many can afford it, and BECAUSE of piracy, game distributors have finally managed to provide an equally good service as pirates do.
this thread is full of horrible analogies, so allow me to make some more. basically, many things are illegal in society. in norway, it's illegal to urinate in public. generally, it's seen as a good thing, that not everyone urinates in public, but it is also preferable if people are occasionally able to urinate in public without being fined as opposed to pissing their pants. your idea that "if everyone pirated, we'd have to gaming industry", is akin to a statement such as "if everyone pissed in public, our cities would smell like piss", but both are just.. meaningless statements, because not everyone pirates, not everyone wants to pirate, just like not everyone urinates in public because not everyone wants to urinate in public. but sometimes, pirating is preferable to not playing a game, and urinating in public is preferable to pissing your pants. you can say "but you shouldn't have gone out drinking knowing that you might find yourself having to piss without a suitable toilet nearby", just as you can say "well maybe you should have done something else than play a game you weren't able to afford", the fact is, in neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers. meanwhile, lawbreakers have improved life quality specifically because they broke the law, and for me, as an innocent bystander, I'm both happy that mr pissypants didn't accidentially stumble into me soaking me in his piss, just as I am happy that my peg-legged friend recommended me and gave me a copy of dune 2 19 years ago which kickstarted my RTS gaming experience and ensured that I would contribute to the gaming industry for the rest of my adult life.
Many people in this topic already have admitted to not buying stuff if they can afford it. If you just download a game, you save 60 dollars towards a new car! Why ever buy a game, right guys?
You can't say it's not a point. You can say it's not reality, but that doesn't make it any less of a point. That is the exact reason why urinating in public is illegal and should be illegal, and piracy should be no different. Society would be much worse off if everyone adopted that behavior. It's very selfish to think that your actions, which are detrimental, are ok because you're only one person. To me, the person who buys games, if you don't pay for it of course I'd prefer for you to not play it. It's the same as me thinking that I'd much rather have people acting responsibly and finding a toilet rather than peeing all over my city.
"Not everyone wants to pirate" - Untrue. Everyone would prefer to have something free, but those who don't want to pirate are those who understand that it hurts the gaming industry. So while not everyone wants to "pirate," everyone wants the same thing the pirates take.
"In neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers." - I fail to see how society benefits from public urination ever, but I'm just going to abandon your analogy for that point. Maybe right now, with the current ratio of lawbreakers to paying customers, the actions are not so detrimental. However, if more people decide to become lawbreakers, it will destroy the industry. You can't honestly think it's ok to break the law just because it's only a few people doing it?
I don't want to pirate. But developers have made me do it due to thier insane DRMs, crappy console ports and close to illegal hype campaigns surrounding certain games. When i say illegal i mean it as in false advertising. Something like Ubisoft dose from time to time. Show stuff off saying it will be in the game, but come release said feature is nowhere to be found.
If you don't like DRM, crappy console ports, and overhyped games then...don't buy them! If you don't like it, don't play it! Shockingly simple really. It's pathetic how you attempt to justify it, just be a man and admit you're being immoral and get on with your pirating. Since this thread loves half-baked analogies...I don't want to cheat on my wife, but she nags me all the time and makes me do my own laundry so really she made me do it. Leaving her is not an option because there are some things I like about her and would miss out on. But seriously it's all her fault.
You have not read the whole thread i guess... Some of the games that have insane DRMs and are crappy console ports and are overhyped can still be a good game (belive it or not). A good example is TES: Oblivion. I actualy enjoyd that game but would not have bought it if i had not pirated it due to all the shit it got from everyone i know.
And how you can call me immoral for not wanting to get cheated by a developer is beyond me. Are they not being immoral for not being honest about thier product?
The developer isn't cheating you. If you aren't convinced by the product, then don't buy it. DRM, porting, etc is all part of the product. I don't throw a hissy fit like a child when I order a meal at a restaurant that I don't like, and you shouldn't whine like a child when you buy a game and end up not liking it. Next time, I'll order a burger because I know it's going to be alright, and you can stick to X developer whose games you always enjoy if you're too immature to handle trying new things and not liking them.
If I'm promised +40 hours of gameplay and I finish it under 10 after doing everything, is it not cheating? If I buy a game and DRM/Securom/whatever makes it impossible to play, is it not cheating? If I'm promised X in game, but i get just /, is it not cheating? Yes it is, and that happens. Alot.. It's just the same as buying a new computer but when it arrives it has 3 year old components. And I sure as hell would start whining about it. Your an idiot if you don't.
And this is also the reason why you are able to check most of the items beforehand so you can avoid nasty surprises.
On December 01 2011 08:15 Brutefidget wrote: Ideas like "The industry does fine without me buying games" and "If games weren't so overpriced then I would buy them" are poison to the gaming industry. If everyone started acting like this, we'd all have no games. I've made this exact same point like 4 times and I have yet to see anyone refute it. Please, piracy advocates, explain how if everyone pirates that there would still be a gaming industry.
the point is that it isn't a point, because not everyone pirates. people buy stuff if they can afford it and if what they purchase is better than what they pirate. many can afford it, and BECAUSE of piracy, game distributors have finally managed to provide an equally good service as pirates do.
this thread is full of horrible analogies, so allow me to make some more. basically, many things are illegal in society. in norway, it's illegal to urinate in public. generally, it's seen as a good thing, that not everyone urinates in public, but it is also preferable if people are occasionally able to urinate in public without being fined as opposed to pissing their pants. your idea that "if everyone pirated, we'd have to gaming industry", is akin to a statement such as "if everyone pissed in public, our cities would smell like piss", but both are just.. meaningless statements, because not everyone pirates, not everyone wants to pirate, just like not everyone urinates in public because not everyone wants to urinate in public. but sometimes, pirating is preferable to not playing a game, and urinating in public is preferable to pissing your pants. you can say "but you shouldn't have gone out drinking knowing that you might find yourself having to piss without a suitable toilet nearby", just as you can say "well maybe you should have done something else than play a game you weren't able to afford", the fact is, in neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers. meanwhile, lawbreakers have improved life quality specifically because they broke the law, and for me, as an innocent bystander, I'm both happy that mr pissypants didn't accidentially stumble into me soaking me in his piss, just as I am happy that my peg-legged friend recommended me and gave me a copy of dune 2 19 years ago which kickstarted my RTS gaming experience and ensured that I would contribute to the gaming industry for the rest of my adult life.
Many people in this topic already have admitted to not buying stuff if they can afford it. If you just download a game, you save 60 dollars towards a new car! Why ever buy a game, right guys?
You can't say it's not a point. You can say it's not reality, but that doesn't make it any less of a point. That is the exact reason why urinating in public is illegal and should be illegal, and piracy should be no different. Society would be much worse off if everyone adopted that behavior. It's very selfish to think that your actions, which are detrimental, are ok because you're only one person. To me, the person who buys games, if you don't pay for it of course I'd prefer for you to not play it. It's the same as me thinking that I'd much rather have people acting responsibly and finding a toilet rather than peeing all over my city.
"Not everyone wants to pirate" - Untrue. Everyone would prefer to have something free, but those who don't want to pirate are those who understand that it hurts the gaming industry. So while not everyone wants to "pirate," everyone wants the same thing the pirates take.
"In neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers." - I fail to see how society benefits from public urination ever, but I'm just going to abandon your analogy for that point. Maybe right now, with the current ratio of lawbreakers to paying customers, the actions are not so detrimental. However, if more people decide to become lawbreakers, it will destroy the industry. You can't honestly think it's ok to break the law just because it's only a few people doing it?
I don't want to pirate. But developers have made me do it due to thier insane DRMs, crappy console ports and close to illegal hype campaigns surrounding certain games. When i say illegal i mean it as in false advertising. Something like Ubisoft dose from time to time. Show stuff off saying it will be in the game, but come release said feature is nowhere to be found.
If you don't like DRM, crappy console ports, and overhyped games then...don't buy them! If you don't like it, don't play it! Shockingly simple really. It's pathetic how you attempt to justify it, just be a man and admit you're being immoral and get on with your pirating. Since this thread loves half-baked analogies...I don't want to cheat on my wife, but she nags me all the time and makes me do my own laundry so really she made me do it. Leaving her is not an option because there are some things I like about her and would miss out on. But seriously it's all her fault.
You have not read the whole thread i guess... Some of the games that have insane DRMs and are crappy console ports and are overhyped can still be a good game (belive it or not). A good example is TES: Oblivion. I actualy enjoyd that game but would not have bought it if i had not pirated it due to all the shit it got from everyone i know.
And how you can call me immoral for not wanting to get cheated by a developer is beyond me. Are they not being immoral for not being honest about thier product?
The developer isn't cheating you. If you aren't convinced by the product, then don't buy it. DRM, porting, etc is all part of the product. I don't throw a hissy fit like a child when I order a meal at a restaurant that I don't like, and you shouldn't whine like a child when you buy a game and end up not liking it. Next time, I'll order a burger because I know it's going to be alright, and you can stick to X developer whose games you always enjoy if you're too immature to handle trying new things and not liking them.
If I'm promised +40 hours of gameplay and I finish it under 10 after doing everything, is it not cheating? If I buy a game and DRM/Securom/whatever makes it impossible to play, is it not cheating? If I'm promised X in game, but i get just /, is it not cheating? Yes it is, and that happens. Alot.. It's just the same as buying a new computer but when it arrives it has 3 year old components. And I sure as hell would start whining about it. Your an idiot if you don't.
And this is also the reason why you are able to check most of the items beforehand so you can avoid nasty surprises.
Well, if you feel like you've been cheated by false advertising, the appropriate response is to take legal action and sue, not to steal from the companies.
Do you think a Rhapsody like service could work for video games?
I subscribe to Rhapsody, and have for a few years now, and I really like it because it lets me listen to anything available through their service. TONS of music, that I would never purchase on CD or MP3 in a million years, is available to me to test out. I've found a lot of new-to-me music there. I've browsed music threads here and picked up artists that I now listed to regularly. When a new CD Comes out I can play it, and if I like it I'll either choose to continue to listen to it in rhapsody only (at my PC or on my droid) or I'll buy CD. I do not buy many CD's anymore, but I still do occassionally.
Would you subscribe to Steam if they opened their entire library up to you for 20 or 30 dollars a month? How many console users use Gamefly? Mabye there's a model that would work better that isn't in use yet. When steam first came out I vowed I would not use it because I need that physical CD. Now, It's almost silly to buy my games in stores. It's so easy to just buy and download, and they have sales often enough that I have a ton of games for a good price. So I think the model is evolving, and we've got more evolving to do.
I wish PC Games weren't made for consoles and then ported to PC anymore. I hope people don't stop making games for PC... The only to make this happen is to pay money for them.
On December 01 2011 08:15 Brutefidget wrote: Ideas like "The industry does fine without me buying games" and "If games weren't so overpriced then I would buy them" are poison to the gaming industry. If everyone started acting like this, we'd all have no games. I've made this exact same point like 4 times and I have yet to see anyone refute it. Please, piracy advocates, explain how if everyone pirates that there would still be a gaming industry.
the point is that it isn't a point, because not everyone pirates. people buy stuff if they can afford it and if what they purchase is better than what they pirate. many can afford it, and BECAUSE of piracy, game distributors have finally managed to provide an equally good service as pirates do.
this thread is full of horrible analogies, so allow me to make some more. basically, many things are illegal in society. in norway, it's illegal to urinate in public. generally, it's seen as a good thing, that not everyone urinates in public, but it is also preferable if people are occasionally able to urinate in public without being fined as opposed to pissing their pants. your idea that "if everyone pirated, we'd have to gaming industry", is akin to a statement such as "if everyone pissed in public, our cities would smell like piss", but both are just.. meaningless statements, because not everyone pirates, not everyone wants to pirate, just like not everyone urinates in public because not everyone wants to urinate in public. but sometimes, pirating is preferable to not playing a game, and urinating in public is preferable to pissing your pants. you can say "but you shouldn't have gone out drinking knowing that you might find yourself having to piss without a suitable toilet nearby", just as you can say "well maybe you should have done something else than play a game you weren't able to afford", the fact is, in neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers. meanwhile, lawbreakers have improved life quality specifically because they broke the law, and for me, as an innocent bystander, I'm both happy that mr pissypants didn't accidentially stumble into me soaking me in his piss, just as I am happy that my peg-legged friend recommended me and gave me a copy of dune 2 19 years ago which kickstarted my RTS gaming experience and ensured that I would contribute to the gaming industry for the rest of my adult life.
Many people in this topic already have admitted to not buying stuff if they can afford it. If you just download a game, you save 60 dollars towards a new car! Why ever buy a game, right guys?
You can't say it's not a point. You can say it's not reality, but that doesn't make it any less of a point. That is the exact reason why urinating in public is illegal and should be illegal, and piracy should be no different. Society would be much worse off if everyone adopted that behavior. It's very selfish to think that your actions, which are detrimental, are ok because you're only one person. To me, the person who buys games, if you don't pay for it of course I'd prefer for you to not play it. It's the same as me thinking that I'd much rather have people acting responsibly and finding a toilet rather than peeing all over my city.
"Not everyone wants to pirate" - Untrue. Everyone would prefer to have something free, but those who don't want to pirate are those who understand that it hurts the gaming industry. So while not everyone wants to "pirate," everyone wants the same thing the pirates take.
"In neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers." - I fail to see how society benefits from public urination ever, but I'm just going to abandon your analogy for that point. Maybe right now, with the current ratio of lawbreakers to paying customers, the actions are not so detrimental. However, if more people decide to become lawbreakers, it will destroy the industry. You can't honestly think it's ok to break the law just because it's only a few people doing it?
I don't want to pirate. But developers have made me do it due to thier insane DRMs, crappy console ports and close to illegal hype campaigns surrounding certain games. When i say illegal i mean it as in false advertising. Something like Ubisoft dose from time to time. Show stuff off saying it will be in the game, but come release said feature is nowhere to be found.
If you don't like DRM, crappy console ports, and overhyped games then...don't buy them! If you don't like it, don't play it! Shockingly simple really. It's pathetic how you attempt to justify it, just be a man and admit you're being immoral and get on with your pirating. Since this thread loves half-baked analogies...I don't want to cheat on my wife, but she nags me all the time and makes me do my own laundry so really she made me do it. Leaving her is not an option because there are some things I like about her and would miss out on. But seriously it's all her fault.
You have not read the whole thread i guess... Some of the games that have insane DRMs and are crappy console ports and are overhyped can still be a good game (belive it or not). A good example is TES: Oblivion. I actualy enjoyd that game but would not have bought it if i had not pirated it due to all the shit it got from everyone i know.
And how you can call me immoral for not wanting to get cheated by a developer is beyond me. Are they not being immoral for not being honest about thier product?
The developer isn't cheating you. If you aren't convinced by the product, then don't buy it. DRM, porting, etc is all part of the product. I don't throw a hissy fit like a child when I order a meal at a restaurant that I don't like, and you shouldn't whine like a child when you buy a game and end up not liking it. Next time, I'll order a burger because I know it's going to be alright, and you can stick to X developer whose games you always enjoy if you're too immature to handle trying new things and not liking them.
maybe the restaurant business would actually produce a better product if consumers could have delivered free samples of their food prior to visiting to ensure that this restaurant makes food that I am willing to pay x for.. I mean, there'd be some decline in visits because some would prefer to simply eat for free at home, but others who could afford it, would still go visit the restaurant to ensure that they make enough money to produce tasty food, for the feeling of companionship with whomever they went together with, and the waitering. meanwhile, crappy restaurants experience an even steeper decline in visits because as people could try their food prior to going, they realized it was crap and didn't have to.
The point is that if you are willing to play a game, then that developer/publisher has earned your money just as much as the chef whose food you consume. The gaming industry already provides demos for some titles, which is more than you get when you go to a restaurant, yet when people are unhappy with their food they don't walk out on the bill. Don't want to buy a game without a demo? Too bad, don't buy it. There are plenty of games with demos for you to try out and choose from. The fact that these games are still pirated (someone even posted earlier that demos aren't "the full game" so they pirate the rest of it) shows incredible immaturity and entitlement.
Piracy can only be beaten by consumers making the choice to pay for the product.
If you pirate music, movies, video games, books, etc... then you are part of the problem. Unless those books are the seventh edition of the same textbook that your *expletive deleted* professor wrote and is making you get because he/she wants more money...
On November 30 2011 22:24 Interloper wrote: Many people who pirate do so because they want to try a game out. If they enjoy the game, they will buy it too support the developer. 4,5 million downloads becomes a useless figure since you can not in any way know how many of those 4,5 million purchased the game afterwards. I feel that piracy is a good way to get rid of shitty developers how make crappy games only for the sake of making money (Well all developers want to make money ofc, but i hope you get my point). Good developers get the money they need and then some. Piracy will not be the end of gaming.
This is the most common reason that has been given to me but more than often the person is also an expert at procrastination and gives the "oh I'll buy it later excuse". In the case of single player games, what usually winds up happening is that they'll beat the game and it becomes forgotten on their computers. Either way, I'd be willing to be a huge chunk of those who pirated wouldn't have bothered buying the game if piracy wasn't an option in the first place (in which case nothing would have been lost anyway).
I would rather prefer to see game demos be more prominent to get rid of that whole "I wanted to try the game" excuse.
But demos aren't the full game! They often don't give you enough experience to decide. Also the game can look promising in the beginning but turn out shitty.
For example. I pirated Portal 2. I liked it. I went out and bought it months after I completed the game just because I wanted to support Valve.
I pirated Amnesia. I liked it. I am planning on buying it soon (tight on cash).
I pirated CoD. It sucked. I didnt buy it. Everybody's happy (except Activision trying to steal my money).
So? I don't get your point? Name one other industry where you get to enjoy the full benefit of the product and then get to CHOOSE whether or not you pay for it? If you went into a restaurant, asked for a steak, ate the entire thing then told them you won't pay them cause it wasn't good enough, they would probably tell you to keep dreaming and phone the police.
I'm not being some holy Internet warrior trying to fight pirates. I have pirated stuff before myself. But stop trying to make excuses about why what you are doing is ok. Sorry but just because you feel you are entitled to enjoy the entire content of a good before you choose whether or not it deserves your money doesn't make it right. I hate to break it to you but your opinion on whether or not a game deserves money means next to nothing.
If you are gonna pirate fine, but stop trying to justify to yourself that it is 'right'.
I know it has been done before where people pay what they think something is worth. I think it was Radiohead who released thier album for free. If you liked it you could donate how ever much money you think it was worth. Same concept with a resturant not too far away from where i live. When i still was in school they guy who owned the place came and had a lecture, and he said they neither lost nor gained a noteworthy amount of cash from this method. Some would be douchebags and pay nothing even though it was nothing wrong with the food, others would pay huge amounts for the food and service. So it's not an insane concept.
Yeah it isn't an insane concept, and I know about Radiohead doing it. The point is that the developer CHOSE to do so. They weighed up the pros and cons and concluded that in this case it was their best interest to do so. You don't just go ahead of your own accord and decide for yourself that this is the situation lol.
As I said I'm not some internet angel I have pirated myself, but people need to stop trying to justify it.
On December 01 2011 08:15 Brutefidget wrote: Ideas like "The industry does fine without me buying games" and "If games weren't so overpriced then I would buy them" are poison to the gaming industry. If everyone started acting like this, we'd all have no games. I've made this exact same point like 4 times and I have yet to see anyone refute it. Please, piracy advocates, explain how if everyone pirates that there would still be a gaming industry.
the point is that it isn't a point, because not everyone pirates. people buy stuff if they can afford it and if what they purchase is better than what they pirate. many can afford it, and BECAUSE of piracy, game distributors have finally managed to provide an equally good service as pirates do.
this thread is full of horrible analogies, so allow me to make some more. basically, many things are illegal in society. in norway, it's illegal to urinate in public. generally, it's seen as a good thing, that not everyone urinates in public, but it is also preferable if people are occasionally able to urinate in public without being fined as opposed to pissing their pants. your idea that "if everyone pirated, we'd have to gaming industry", is akin to a statement such as "if everyone pissed in public, our cities would smell like piss", but both are just.. meaningless statements, because not everyone pirates, not everyone wants to pirate, just like not everyone urinates in public because not everyone wants to urinate in public. but sometimes, pirating is preferable to not playing a game, and urinating in public is preferable to pissing your pants. you can say "but you shouldn't have gone out drinking knowing that you might find yourself having to piss without a suitable toilet nearby", just as you can say "well maybe you should have done something else than play a game you weren't able to afford", the fact is, in neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers. meanwhile, lawbreakers have improved life quality specifically because they broke the law, and for me, as an innocent bystander, I'm both happy that mr pissypants didn't accidentially stumble into me soaking me in his piss, just as I am happy that my peg-legged friend recommended me and gave me a copy of dune 2 19 years ago which kickstarted my RTS gaming experience and ensured that I would contribute to the gaming industry for the rest of my adult life.
Many people in this topic already have admitted to not buying stuff if they can afford it. If you just download a game, you save 60 dollars towards a new car! Why ever buy a game, right guys?
You can't say it's not a point. You can say it's not reality, but that doesn't make it any less of a point. That is the exact reason why urinating in public is illegal and should be illegal, and piracy should be no different. Society would be much worse off if everyone adopted that behavior. It's very selfish to think that your actions, which are detrimental, are ok because you're only one person. To me, the person who buys games, if you don't pay for it of course I'd prefer for you to not play it. It's the same as me thinking that I'd much rather have people acting responsibly and finding a toilet rather than peeing all over my city.
"Not everyone wants to pirate" - Untrue. Everyone would prefer to have something free, but those who don't want to pirate are those who understand that it hurts the gaming industry. So while not everyone wants to "pirate," everyone wants the same thing the pirates take.
"In neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers." - I fail to see how society benefits from public urination ever, but I'm just going to abandon your analogy for that point. Maybe right now, with the current ratio of lawbreakers to paying customers, the actions are not so detrimental. However, if more people decide to become lawbreakers, it will destroy the industry. You can't honestly think it's ok to break the law just because it's only a few people doing it?
I don't want to pirate. But developers have made me do it due to thier insane DRMs, crappy console ports and close to illegal hype campaigns surrounding certain games. When i say illegal i mean it as in false advertising. Something like Ubisoft dose from time to time. Show stuff off saying it will be in the game, but come release said feature is nowhere to be found.
If you don't like DRM, crappy console ports, and overhyped games then...don't buy them! If you don't like it, don't play it! Shockingly simple really. It's pathetic how you attempt to justify it, just be a man and admit you're being immoral and get on with your pirating. Since this thread loves half-baked analogies...I don't want to cheat on my wife, but she nags me all the time and makes me do my own laundry so really she made me do it. Leaving her is not an option because there are some things I like about her and would miss out on. But seriously it's all her fault.
You have not read the whole thread i guess... Some of the games that have insane DRMs and are crappy console ports and are overhyped can still be a good game (belive it or not). A good example is TES: Oblivion. I actualy enjoyd that game but would not have bought it if i had not pirated it due to all the shit it got from everyone i know.
And how you can call me immoral for not wanting to get cheated by a developer is beyond me. Are they not being immoral for not being honest about thier product?
The developer isn't cheating you. If you aren't convinced by the product, then don't buy it. DRM, porting, etc is all part of the product. I don't throw a hissy fit like a child when I order a meal at a restaurant that I don't like, and you shouldn't whine like a child when you buy a game and end up not liking it. Next time, I'll order a burger because I know it's going to be alright, and you can stick to X developer whose games you always enjoy if you're too immature to handle trying new things and not liking them.
maybe the restaurant business would actually produce a better product if consumers could have delivered free samples of their food prior to visiting to ensure that this restaurant makes food that I am willing to pay x for.. I mean, there'd be some decline in visits because some would prefer to simply eat for free at home, but others who could afford it, would still go visit the restaurant to ensure that they make enough money to produce tasty food, for the feeling of companionship with whomever they went together with, and the waitering. meanwhile, crappy restaurants experience an even steeper decline in visits because as people could try their food prior to going, they realized it was crap and didn't have to.
The point is that if you are willing to play a game, then that developer/publisher has earned your money just as much as the chef whose food you consume. The gaming industry already provides demos for some titles, which is more than you get when you go to a restaurant, yet when people are unhappy with their food they don't walk out on the bill. Don't want to buy a game without a demo? Too bad, don't buy it. There are plenty of games with demos for you to try out and choose from. The fact that these games are still pirated (someone even posted earlier that demos aren't "the full game" so they pirate the rest of it) shows incredible immaturity and entitlement.
They may not walk out on the bill but they will complain and get a new dish if the food is horrid. That can't be done with games. But since you are hell bent on allowing companys/developers/resturants get away with anything, this won't matter to you i guess.
I pre-ordered BF3 from Amazon and received it the day before release.
Note: BF3 was on torrent sites the day before I received my purchased copy. I didn't torrent it.
The day BF3 arrived, my internet was cut off due to moving home. It took three weeks for internet to be installed and activated at my new property. You can argue that I couldn't have experienced the multi-player aspect of the game whether I had bought or torrented, but really, NOT BEING ABLE TO EVEN INSTALL THE FUCKING GAME FOR THREE FUCKING WEEKS TO PLAY SINGLE-PLAYER because you need internet to even install from DVD is absolutely bullshit.
If i'd taken the "easy" option and torrented, I could have been blasting through the single-player for the mentioned three weeks. Measures like this make me not want to pay cash for games and take the DRM-free option that, rather ironically, gives me complete freedom over the restrictions of a purchased copy.
On December 01 2011 08:15 Brutefidget wrote: Ideas like "The industry does fine without me buying games" and "If games weren't so overpriced then I would buy them" are poison to the gaming industry. If everyone started acting like this, we'd all have no games. I've made this exact same point like 4 times and I have yet to see anyone refute it. Please, piracy advocates, explain how if everyone pirates that there would still be a gaming industry.
the point is that it isn't a point, because not everyone pirates. people buy stuff if they can afford it and if what they purchase is better than what they pirate. many can afford it, and BECAUSE of piracy, game distributors have finally managed to provide an equally good service as pirates do.
this thread is full of horrible analogies, so allow me to make some more. basically, many things are illegal in society. in norway, it's illegal to urinate in public. generally, it's seen as a good thing, that not everyone urinates in public, but it is also preferable if people are occasionally able to urinate in public without being fined as opposed to pissing their pants. your idea that "if everyone pirated, we'd have to gaming industry", is akin to a statement such as "if everyone pissed in public, our cities would smell like piss", but both are just.. meaningless statements, because not everyone pirates, not everyone wants to pirate, just like not everyone urinates in public because not everyone wants to urinate in public. but sometimes, pirating is preferable to not playing a game, and urinating in public is preferable to pissing your pants. you can say "but you shouldn't have gone out drinking knowing that you might find yourself having to piss without a suitable toilet nearby", just as you can say "well maybe you should have done something else than play a game you weren't able to afford", the fact is, in neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers. meanwhile, lawbreakers have improved life quality specifically because they broke the law, and for me, as an innocent bystander, I'm both happy that mr pissypants didn't accidentially stumble into me soaking me in his piss, just as I am happy that my peg-legged friend recommended me and gave me a copy of dune 2 19 years ago which kickstarted my RTS gaming experience and ensured that I would contribute to the gaming industry for the rest of my adult life.
Many people in this topic already have admitted to not buying stuff if they can afford it. If you just download a game, you save 60 dollars towards a new car! Why ever buy a game, right guys?
You can't say it's not a point. You can say it's not reality, but that doesn't make it any less of a point. That is the exact reason why urinating in public is illegal and should be illegal, and piracy should be no different. Society would be much worse off if everyone adopted that behavior. It's very selfish to think that your actions, which are detrimental, are ok because you're only one person. To me, the person who buys games, if you don't pay for it of course I'd prefer for you to not play it. It's the same as me thinking that I'd much rather have people acting responsibly and finding a toilet rather than peeing all over my city.
"Not everyone wants to pirate" - Untrue. Everyone would prefer to have something free, but those who don't want to pirate are those who understand that it hurts the gaming industry. So while not everyone wants to "pirate," everyone wants the same thing the pirates take.
"In neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers." - I fail to see how society benefits from public urination ever, but I'm just going to abandon your analogy for that point. Maybe right now, with the current ratio of lawbreakers to paying customers, the actions are not so detrimental. However, if more people decide to become lawbreakers, it will destroy the industry. You can't honestly think it's ok to break the law just because it's only a few people doing it?
I don't want to pirate. But developers have made me do it due to thier insane DRMs, crappy console ports and close to illegal hype campaigns surrounding certain games. When i say illegal i mean it as in false advertising. Something like Ubisoft dose from time to time. Show stuff off saying it will be in the game, but come release said feature is nowhere to be found.
If you don't like DRM, crappy console ports, and overhyped games then...don't buy them! If you don't like it, don't play it! Shockingly simple really. It's pathetic how you attempt to justify it, just be a man and admit you're being immoral and get on with your pirating. Since this thread loves half-baked analogies...I don't want to cheat on my wife, but she nags me all the time and makes me do my own laundry so really she made me do it. Leaving her is not an option because there are some things I like about her and would miss out on. But seriously it's all her fault.
You have not read the whole thread i guess... Some of the games that have insane DRMs and are crappy console ports and are overhyped can still be a good game (belive it or not). A good example is TES: Oblivion. I actualy enjoyd that game but would not have bought it if i had not pirated it due to all the shit it got from everyone i know.
And how you can call me immoral for not wanting to get cheated by a developer is beyond me. Are they not being immoral for not being honest about thier product?
The developer isn't cheating you. If you aren't convinced by the product, then don't buy it. DRM, porting, etc is all part of the product. I don't throw a hissy fit like a child when I order a meal at a restaurant that I don't like, and you shouldn't whine like a child when you buy a game and end up not liking it. Next time, I'll order a burger because I know it's going to be alright, and you can stick to X developer whose games you always enjoy if you're too immature to handle trying new things and not liking them.
maybe the restaurant business would actually produce a better product if consumers could have delivered free samples of their food prior to visiting to ensure that this restaurant makes food that I am willing to pay x for.. I mean, there'd be some decline in visits because some would prefer to simply eat for free at home, but others who could afford it, would still go visit the restaurant to ensure that they make enough money to produce tasty food, for the feeling of companionship with whomever they went together with, and the waitering. meanwhile, crappy restaurants experience an even steeper decline in visits because as people could try their food prior to going, they realized it was crap and didn't have to.
The point is that if you are willing to play a game, then that developer/publisher has earned your money just as much as the chef whose food you consume. The gaming industry already provides demos for some titles, which is more than you get when you go to a restaurant, yet when people are unhappy with their food they don't walk out on the bill. Don't want to buy a game without a demo? Too bad, don't buy it. There are plenty of games with demos for you to try out and choose from. The fact that these games are still pirated (someone even posted earlier that demos aren't "the full game" so they pirate the rest of it) shows incredible immaturity and entitlement.
They may not walk out on the bill but they will complain and get a new dish if the food is horrid. That can't be done with games. But since you are hell bent on allowing companys/developers/resturants get away with anything, this won't matter to you i guess.
If I get horrid food at a restaurant I will tell my waiter, pay my bill, and never come back. If the chef or manager would like to offer me another dish or a free return visit, that is his prerogative to try to win back my future patronage. You are free to leave feedback with Ubisoft, Activision, whoever you want, and if they care about your business they will address your concern. If they don't fix whatever your problem was then don't get future games from them (note that I said get, since you already aren't buying). Take your money and buy the next Bethesda, Blizzard, or Bioware title, whatever company you like.
But since you are hellbent on refusing to take any responsibility for your actions or conduct yourself as a mature, moral adult, this won't matter to you I guess.
Not sure if it's been mentioned already and I really don't feel like reading through 28 pages, so I'm just going to post this here (mostly in reply to the OP).
On November 30 2011 22:24 Interloper wrote: Many people who pirate do so because they want to try a game out. If they enjoy the game, they will buy it too support the developer. 4,5 million downloads becomes a useless figure since you can not in any way know how many of those 4,5 million purchased the game afterwards. I feel that piracy is a good way to get rid of shitty developers how make crappy games only for the sake of making money (Well all developers want to make money ofc, but i hope you get my point). Good developers get the money they need and then some. Piracy will not be the end of gaming.
This is the most common reason that has been given to me but more than often the person is also an expert at procrastination and gives the "oh I'll buy it later excuse". In the case of single player games, what usually winds up happening is that they'll beat the game and it becomes forgotten on their computers. Either way, I'd be willing to be a huge chunk of those who pirated wouldn't have bothered buying the game if piracy wasn't an option in the first place (in which case nothing would have been lost anyway).
I would rather prefer to see game demos be more prominent to get rid of that whole "I wanted to try the game" excuse.
But demos aren't the full game! They often don't give you enough experience to decide. Also the game can look promising in the beginning but turn out shitty.
For example. I pirated Portal 2. I liked it. I went out and bought it months after I completed the game just because I wanted to support Valve.
I pirated Amnesia. I liked it. I am planning on buying it soon (tight on cash).
I pirated CoD. It sucked. I didnt buy it. Everybody's happy (except Activision trying to steal my money).
So? I don't get your point? Name one other industry where you get to enjoy the full benefit of the product and then get to CHOOSE whether or not you pay for it? If you went into a restaurant, asked for a steak, ate the entire thing then told them you won't pay them cause it wasn't good enough, they would probably tell you to keep dreaming and phone the police.
I'm not being some holy Internet warrior trying to fight pirates. I have pirated stuff before myself. But stop trying to make excuses about why what you are doing is ok. Sorry but just because you feel you are entitled to enjoy the entire content of a good before you choose whether or not it deserves your money doesn't make it right. I hate to break it to you but your opinion on whether or not a game deserves money means next to nothing.
If you are gonna pirate fine, but stop trying to justify to yourself that it is 'right'.
Clothing industry and shoe sellers do this you know, try first, pay later. Or buy, but full refund if you don't like it, test time a week or something.
On December 01 2011 08:28 Liquid`Drone wrote: [quote]
the point is that it isn't a point, because not everyone pirates. people buy stuff if they can afford it and if what they purchase is better than what they pirate. many can afford it, and BECAUSE of piracy, game distributors have finally managed to provide an equally good service as pirates do.
this thread is full of horrible analogies, so allow me to make some more. basically, many things are illegal in society. in norway, it's illegal to urinate in public. generally, it's seen as a good thing, that not everyone urinates in public, but it is also preferable if people are occasionally able to urinate in public without being fined as opposed to pissing their pants. your idea that "if everyone pirated, we'd have to gaming industry", is akin to a statement such as "if everyone pissed in public, our cities would smell like piss", but both are just.. meaningless statements, because not everyone pirates, not everyone wants to pirate, just like not everyone urinates in public because not everyone wants to urinate in public. but sometimes, pirating is preferable to not playing a game, and urinating in public is preferable to pissing your pants. you can say "but you shouldn't have gone out drinking knowing that you might find yourself having to piss without a suitable toilet nearby", just as you can say "well maybe you should have done something else than play a game you weren't able to afford", the fact is, in neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers. meanwhile, lawbreakers have improved life quality specifically because they broke the law, and for me, as an innocent bystander, I'm both happy that mr pissypants didn't accidentially stumble into me soaking me in his piss, just as I am happy that my peg-legged friend recommended me and gave me a copy of dune 2 19 years ago which kickstarted my RTS gaming experience and ensured that I would contribute to the gaming industry for the rest of my adult life.
Many people in this topic already have admitted to not buying stuff if they can afford it. If you just download a game, you save 60 dollars towards a new car! Why ever buy a game, right guys?
You can't say it's not a point. You can say it's not reality, but that doesn't make it any less of a point. That is the exact reason why urinating in public is illegal and should be illegal, and piracy should be no different. Society would be much worse off if everyone adopted that behavior. It's very selfish to think that your actions, which are detrimental, are ok because you're only one person. To me, the person who buys games, if you don't pay for it of course I'd prefer for you to not play it. It's the same as me thinking that I'd much rather have people acting responsibly and finding a toilet rather than peeing all over my city.
"Not everyone wants to pirate" - Untrue. Everyone would prefer to have something free, but those who don't want to pirate are those who understand that it hurts the gaming industry. So while not everyone wants to "pirate," everyone wants the same thing the pirates take.
"In neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers." - I fail to see how society benefits from public urination ever, but I'm just going to abandon your analogy for that point. Maybe right now, with the current ratio of lawbreakers to paying customers, the actions are not so detrimental. However, if more people decide to become lawbreakers, it will destroy the industry. You can't honestly think it's ok to break the law just because it's only a few people doing it?
I don't want to pirate. But developers have made me do it due to thier insane DRMs, crappy console ports and close to illegal hype campaigns surrounding certain games. When i say illegal i mean it as in false advertising. Something like Ubisoft dose from time to time. Show stuff off saying it will be in the game, but come release said feature is nowhere to be found.
If you don't like DRM, crappy console ports, and overhyped games then...don't buy them! If you don't like it, don't play it! Shockingly simple really. It's pathetic how you attempt to justify it, just be a man and admit you're being immoral and get on with your pirating. Since this thread loves half-baked analogies...I don't want to cheat on my wife, but she nags me all the time and makes me do my own laundry so really she made me do it. Leaving her is not an option because there are some things I like about her and would miss out on. But seriously it's all her fault.
You have not read the whole thread i guess... Some of the games that have insane DRMs and are crappy console ports and are overhyped can still be a good game (belive it or not). A good example is TES: Oblivion. I actualy enjoyd that game but would not have bought it if i had not pirated it due to all the shit it got from everyone i know.
And how you can call me immoral for not wanting to get cheated by a developer is beyond me. Are they not being immoral for not being honest about thier product?
The developer isn't cheating you. If you aren't convinced by the product, then don't buy it. DRM, porting, etc is all part of the product. I don't throw a hissy fit like a child when I order a meal at a restaurant that I don't like, and you shouldn't whine like a child when you buy a game and end up not liking it. Next time, I'll order a burger because I know it's going to be alright, and you can stick to X developer whose games you always enjoy if you're too immature to handle trying new things and not liking them.
maybe the restaurant business would actually produce a better product if consumers could have delivered free samples of their food prior to visiting to ensure that this restaurant makes food that I am willing to pay x for.. I mean, there'd be some decline in visits because some would prefer to simply eat for free at home, but others who could afford it, would still go visit the restaurant to ensure that they make enough money to produce tasty food, for the feeling of companionship with whomever they went together with, and the waitering. meanwhile, crappy restaurants experience an even steeper decline in visits because as people could try their food prior to going, they realized it was crap and didn't have to.
The point is that if you are willing to play a game, then that developer/publisher has earned your money just as much as the chef whose food you consume. The gaming industry already provides demos for some titles, which is more than you get when you go to a restaurant, yet when people are unhappy with their food they don't walk out on the bill. Don't want to buy a game without a demo? Too bad, don't buy it. There are plenty of games with demos for you to try out and choose from. The fact that these games are still pirated (someone even posted earlier that demos aren't "the full game" so they pirate the rest of it) shows incredible immaturity and entitlement.
They may not walk out on the bill but they will complain and get a new dish if the food is horrid. That can't be done with games. But since you are hell bent on allowing companys/developers/resturants get away with anything, this won't matter to you i guess.
If I get horrid food at a restaurant I will tell my waiter, pay my bill, and never come back. If the chef or manager would like to offer me another dish or a free return visit, that is his prerogative to try to win back my future patronage. You are free to leave feedback with Ubisoft, Activision, whoever you want, and if they care about your business they will address your concern. If they don't fix whatever your problem was then don't get future games from them (note that I said get, since you already aren't buying). Take your money and buy the next Bethesda, Blizzard, or Bioware title, whatever company you like.
But since you are hellbent on refusing to take any responsibility for your actions or conduct yourself as a mature, moral adult, this won't matter to you I guess.
Ok, this will not lead to anything than a temp-ban for one of us if this keeps heading the same way. But i don't think if i leave 1 complaint with Ubisoft they will care. At all. Even if 1,000,000 did they won't care seeing as how huge the community out cry has been. Piracy is the only way i see companys changing anything at all with how they go about making games and handling thier customers. If you want to call me a pathetic child who throw "hissy fits" and acts immature and refuses to take responsibility for my actions, fine. You won't change your mind, neither will i.
Last post i make in this thread so it won't off topic or reduce it self to name calling, if you want, P.M.
On December 01 2011 10:30 BadgerBadger8264 wrote: Not sure if it's been mentioned already and I really don't feel like reading through 28 pages, so I'm just going to post this here (mostly in reply to the OP).
The best way to pirate is to make it easier to not pirate.
Steam and iTunes are hugely successful for exactly this reason. They offer a plethora of games/music at reasonable prices, make it extremely easy to get them (easier than torrenting by far), and as such a majority of people who will pirate if driven to it, but who otherwise are very happy to pay legally.
There will ALWAYS be a small subset of people who pirate. You prevent piracy by not overpricing your games. In Australia, we pay $90 for a new game like Skyrim. In America, you pay $60. The AU and US dollar are nearly 1:1 in terms of value. Therefore its a fucking rip-off. In my case, I managed to source Skyrim for $55 from Green Man Gaming, because they aren't retarded.
The sooner that game publishers realise that we live in a connected world where they can't charge more for a game in one area because of archaic ideas about currency exchange, the sooner that piracy will rapidly drop.
On December 01 2011 09:40 Liquid`Drone wrote: maybe the restaurant business would actually produce a better product if consumers could have delivered free samples of their food prior to visiting to ensure that this restaurant makes food that I am willing to pay x for.. I mean, there'd be some decline in visits because some would prefer to simply eat for free at home, but others who could afford it, would still go visit the restaurant to ensure that they make enough money to produce tasty food, for the feeling of companionship with whomever they went together with, and the waitering. meanwhile, crappy restaurants experience an even steeper decline in visits because as people could try their food prior to going, they realized it was crap and didn't have to.
When I first read this, I thought you were starting off in some sarcastic scenario. Then, I realized you weren't. In your world, you think a restaurant not only giving out free samples, but actually hand delivering them around the city to make sure they are up to par, is a realistic business model. Fantasy land. That's your world. Have you ever actually considered why there is NO restaurant in the world that does this ? Wow.
I come from a generation of Asian families where Asian parents have been brought to believe that games are bad for children and detrimental to their studies and success...Instances of this are the age restrictions in almost all of the Asian countries for Internet Cafes in case you're not sure what i'm talking about...
I can honestly say that I have a hard enough time trying to get games that are free, let alone games I actually have to pay for.
On December 01 2011 10:43 Dhalphir wrote: The best way to pirate is to make it easier to not pirate.
Steam and iTunes are hugely successful for exactly this reason. They offer a plethora of games/music at reasonable prices, make it extremely easy to get them (easier than torrenting by far), and as such a majority of people who will pirate if driven to it, but who otherwise are very happy to pay legally.
There will ALWAYS be a small subset of people who pirate. You prevent piracy by not overpricing your games. In Australia, we pay $90 for a new game like Skyrim. In America, you pay $60. The AU and US dollar are nearly 1:1 in terms of value. Therefore its a fucking rip-off. In my case, I managed to source Skyrim for $55 from Green Man Gaming, because they aren't retarded.
The sooner that game publishers realise that we live in a connected world where they can't charge more for a game in one area because of archaic ideas about currency exchange, the sooner that piracy will rapidly drop.
Yeah game prices are pretty fucking ridiculous in Australia. $90 is being generous; some of the bigger titles can go up to $110 at EB Games (although I never buy from them).
On November 30 2011 22:24 Interloper wrote: Many people who pirate do so because they want to try a game out. If they enjoy the game, they will buy it too support the developer. 4,5 million downloads becomes a useless figure since you can not in any way know how many of those 4,5 million purchased the game afterwards. I feel that piracy is a good way to get rid of shitty developers how make crappy games only for the sake of making money (Well all developers want to make money ofc, but i hope you get my point). Good developers get the money they need and then some. Piracy will not be the end of gaming.
This is the most common reason that has been given to me but more than often the person is also an expert at procrastination and gives the "oh I'll buy it later excuse". In the case of single player games, what usually winds up happening is that they'll beat the game and it becomes forgotten on their computers. Either way, I'd be willing to be a huge chunk of those who pirated wouldn't have bothered buying the game if piracy wasn't an option in the first place (in which case nothing would have been lost anyway).
I would rather prefer to see game demos be more prominent to get rid of that whole "I wanted to try the game" excuse.
But demos aren't the full game! They often don't give you enough experience to decide. Also the game can look promising in the beginning but turn out shitty.
For example. I pirated Portal 2. I liked it. I went out and bought it months after I completed the game just because I wanted to support Valve.
I pirated Amnesia. I liked it. I am planning on buying it soon (tight on cash).
I pirated CoD. It sucked. I didnt buy it. Everybody's happy (except Activision trying to steal my money).
So? I don't get your point? Name one other industry where you get to enjoy the full benefit of the product and then get to CHOOSE whether or not you pay for it? If you went into a restaurant, asked for a steak, ate the entire thing then told them you won't pay them cause it wasn't good enough, they would probably tell you to keep dreaming and phone the police.
I'm not being some holy Internet warrior trying to fight pirates. I have pirated stuff before myself. But stop trying to make excuses about why what you are doing is ok. Sorry but just because you feel you are entitled to enjoy the entire content of a good before you choose whether or not it deserves your money doesn't make it right. I hate to break it to you but your opinion on whether or not a game deserves money means next to nothing.
If you are gonna pirate fine, but stop trying to justify to yourself that it is 'right'.
Clothing industry and shoe sellers do this you know, try first, pay later. Or buy, but full refund if you don't like it, test time a week or something.
Hmm well I didn't know they did that in Finland. Over here at least they are happy to provide an exchange or store credit if you realize the size was wrong, however this is assuming the receipt is still there. If you bring it back 3 months later after wearing it and now asking for a refund, they will politely (and rightfully) tell you to go fuck yourself. Anyway as I kept saying it is the company that makes choices on what kind of sales structure they want; it isn't up to consumers to decide that they don't like it and will hence steal their shit. If you don't agree with them then don't buy their products.
On December 01 2011 08:55 Brutefidget wrote: [quote]
Many people in this topic already have admitted to not buying stuff if they can afford it. If you just download a game, you save 60 dollars towards a new car! Why ever buy a game, right guys?
You can't say it's not a point. You can say it's not reality, but that doesn't make it any less of a point. That is the exact reason why urinating in public is illegal and should be illegal, and piracy should be no different. Society would be much worse off if everyone adopted that behavior. It's very selfish to think that your actions, which are detrimental, are ok because you're only one person. To me, the person who buys games, if you don't pay for it of course I'd prefer for you to not play it. It's the same as me thinking that I'd much rather have people acting responsibly and finding a toilet rather than peeing all over my city.
"Not everyone wants to pirate" - Untrue. Everyone would prefer to have something free, but those who don't want to pirate are those who understand that it hurts the gaming industry. So while not everyone wants to "pirate," everyone wants the same thing the pirates take.
"In neither scenario is society hurt in a significant manner by the actions of the lawbreakers." - I fail to see how society benefits from public urination ever, but I'm just going to abandon your analogy for that point. Maybe right now, with the current ratio of lawbreakers to paying customers, the actions are not so detrimental. However, if more people decide to become lawbreakers, it will destroy the industry. You can't honestly think it's ok to break the law just because it's only a few people doing it?
I don't want to pirate. But developers have made me do it due to thier insane DRMs, crappy console ports and close to illegal hype campaigns surrounding certain games. When i say illegal i mean it as in false advertising. Something like Ubisoft dose from time to time. Show stuff off saying it will be in the game, but come release said feature is nowhere to be found.
If you don't like DRM, crappy console ports, and overhyped games then...don't buy them! If you don't like it, don't play it! Shockingly simple really. It's pathetic how you attempt to justify it, just be a man and admit you're being immoral and get on with your pirating. Since this thread loves half-baked analogies...I don't want to cheat on my wife, but she nags me all the time and makes me do my own laundry so really she made me do it. Leaving her is not an option because there are some things I like about her and would miss out on. But seriously it's all her fault.
You have not read the whole thread i guess... Some of the games that have insane DRMs and are crappy console ports and are overhyped can still be a good game (belive it or not). A good example is TES: Oblivion. I actualy enjoyd that game but would not have bought it if i had not pirated it due to all the shit it got from everyone i know.
And how you can call me immoral for not wanting to get cheated by a developer is beyond me. Are they not being immoral for not being honest about thier product?
The developer isn't cheating you. If you aren't convinced by the product, then don't buy it. DRM, porting, etc is all part of the product. I don't throw a hissy fit like a child when I order a meal at a restaurant that I don't like, and you shouldn't whine like a child when you buy a game and end up not liking it. Next time, I'll order a burger because I know it's going to be alright, and you can stick to X developer whose games you always enjoy if you're too immature to handle trying new things and not liking them.
maybe the restaurant business would actually produce a better product if consumers could have delivered free samples of their food prior to visiting to ensure that this restaurant makes food that I am willing to pay x for.. I mean, there'd be some decline in visits because some would prefer to simply eat for free at home, but others who could afford it, would still go visit the restaurant to ensure that they make enough money to produce tasty food, for the feeling of companionship with whomever they went together with, and the waitering. meanwhile, crappy restaurants experience an even steeper decline in visits because as people could try their food prior to going, they realized it was crap and didn't have to.
The point is that if you are willing to play a game, then that developer/publisher has earned your money just as much as the chef whose food you consume. The gaming industry already provides demos for some titles, which is more than you get when you go to a restaurant, yet when people are unhappy with their food they don't walk out on the bill. Don't want to buy a game without a demo? Too bad, don't buy it. There are plenty of games with demos for you to try out and choose from. The fact that these games are still pirated (someone even posted earlier that demos aren't "the full game" so they pirate the rest of it) shows incredible immaturity and entitlement.
They may not walk out on the bill but they will complain and get a new dish if the food is horrid. That can't be done with games. But since you are hell bent on allowing companys/developers/resturants get away with anything, this won't matter to you i guess.
If I get horrid food at a restaurant I will tell my waiter, pay my bill, and never come back. If the chef or manager would like to offer me another dish or a free return visit, that is his prerogative to try to win back my future patronage. You are free to leave feedback with Ubisoft, Activision, whoever you want, and if they care about your business they will address your concern. If they don't fix whatever your problem was then don't get future games from them (note that I said get, since you already aren't buying). Take your money and buy the next Bethesda, Blizzard, or Bioware title, whatever company you like.
But since you are hellbent on refusing to take any responsibility for your actions or conduct yourself as a mature, moral adult, this won't matter to you I guess.
Ok, this will not lead to anything than a temp-ban for one of us if this keeps heading the same way. But i don't think if i leave 1 complaint with Ubisoft they will care. At all. Even if 1,000,000 did they won't care seeing as how huge the community out cry has been. Piracy is the only way i see companys changing anything at all with how they go about making games and handling thier customers. If you want to call me a pathetic child who throw "hissy fits" and acts immature and refuses to take responsibility for my actions, fine. You won't change your mind, neither will i.
Last post i make in this thread so it won't off topic or reduce it self to name calling, if you want, P.M.
People need to learn to vote with their feet. I can assure you that if they receive 1,000,000 complaints and people stop buying their products, they are gonna stop pumping out the same old shit. If it is just 1 person complaining about it, well maybe it is just you with unreal expectations and inflated sense of entitlement. Why the fuck SHOULD they care if it is only 1 complaint?
If you wan't to see companies change then don't buy their product. Simple. If their product is so bad why bother downloading it anyway?
I pirate games because im too damn poor to afford to shell out 60$ for a videogame, if I had the money and it was a good game (skyrim...) then I would gladly pay to buy the game. I mean I bought starcraft and 2 copies of the original oblivion so I guess I'm not that bad haha :D
Piracy is more rampant in countries with lower average salary than the US or EU, the Witcher 2 is popular in Eastern Europe for various reasons and take a guess at how much your normal citizen earn on average in those area? In the end piracy is more rampant in places like Asia, Eastern Europe, South America, Africa and Middle East because games are just too expensive relative to average earnings and in some cases, difficult to acquire legally as well(some games are not sold in certain countries due to publishing right etc). In those countries software that cost US$60 worldwide are not going to sell well unless they offer infinite replay value(i.e SC2 multiplayer), even the it's too expensive for many people that barely earn US$1000 a month even with a college degree. That is the reality of the world, and many Western game corporations refuse to adapt their pricing strategy in that regard as well. This is why free to pay games are so popular in the regions I've mentioned, for obvious reasons.
Since not many want to attempt to justify piracy in its entirety, I guess I'll go ahead. Following is a justification of piracy from three different economic/philosophical viewpoints.
Libertarian: Intellectual property is a broken system. In it's application, it can only serve to retard the development of civilization and technology. The concept of Intellectual property states, basically, that if I come up with an idea, I own it. What's ridiculous about this is, among other things, it inherently controls what someone can do with something which they themselves own. In one example, drug copyrights mean that, if I myself own the correct chemical predecessors to a pharmeceutical, I am prevented by law from combining them in one specific combination, all because someone else did so first. In a more extreme example, if a university professor chose to identify her lecture material as her own IP, she could, within the bounds of the law, prevent her students from sharing the information with peers or companions whom were not enrolled in the class, a rather obvious violation of their free speech. In the same manner, saying that I can't pirate, if not specifically stated the contract between myself and my ISP, is illegally infringing upon my rights to use my property - in this case my bandwidth - in a manner I deem necessary. By pirating games, music, movies, and tv shows, each individual helps to tear down the ridiculous construction of Intellectual property, which I would deem to be quite necessary.
Marxist/Anarchist: All property is theft. In this instance, the corporations sieze control of the labor of the programmers, artists, designers, composers, and all the other workers whose skill and art goes into the creation of the game. By continuing to purchase games from the proper developers, you perpetuate a system by which those who actually create the content you enjoy - the working people - are exploited for profit by the capitalists and the owners of the intellectual property. Indy gamers, therefore, shouldn't be pirated. Large corporations, on the other hand, who operate with giant profit margins at the expense of the coders, customer service reps, game design people, and others, should be pirated from without mercy. This is, after all, the only way that indy game developers can become more prevalent in the scene. To grow flowers in a forest, you have to cut down the tree, especially if that tree is profiting at the expense of its workers. I think lots of people here would agree that supporting indy developers is a generally desirable outcome, perhaps not because of the same logic I used here. The best way to help indy game developers is to give them business out of proportion with their market share of games played, and to cut off the revenue stream for the more undesirable, larger, producers.
Epicurean Hedonism: I gain pleasure from playing games, listening to music, and watching movies. Being possessed of some common sense, I realize that by pirating, I harm no one (Since the pain of paying for said material would contradict Epicurean philosophy for all except the rich, by mandating budget adjustments, I would never make such a purchase), while still deriving the same level of pleasure. The rout in life, then, that maintains tranquility and the absence of moral or physical pain, is the pirating of games.
I've often wondered why bigger companies don't flood the pirated game market with red herrings of their own games. I'd think the number one reason people pirate games is convenience, as when you're given a choice of "Spend an hour going to wherever the game is sold, spend 60 bucks (if it isn't sold out) and then return home to play" or "Don't move, don't spend anything, wait about as much time as you would going to get a physical copy and only risk viruses or a slightly faulted version of the game"... well, it doesn't take much thinking to see that anyone with a comfortable computer chair and your standard sense of morality (Please, don't pretend *most* people are above this) will opt for the second choice.
If, say, Bethesda was to release 4 faulted copies of Skyrim en masse to torrenting websites, they'd become part of a process that would make pirating feel a whole lot less safe and a whole lot less convenient than it currently is/feels, which should initiate a global shift making piracy actually feel like what it is; stealing.
And I'm not saying LOL GIVE ALL THE PIRATES VIRUSES N WIPE THEIR HARD DRIVES. I'm talking about, say, a full-sized version of skyrim that, after hitting 4 hours of gameplay, pops up a message that says "We're glad you showed enough interest in Skyrim to pirate it, but pretend this was a demo, because until you buy the full game "-insert their website here-" you're not going to get any further
..And it'd be followed by the game locking itself.
I don't know if this is unreasonable for a coding front (I.E. all people would have to do is bypass the lockout and be fine) or a legal front (could a company be charged for knowingly spreading "flawed" copies that claim to be the real deal?), but I can fully see it being functional in terms of execution and follow-up. It would not take much to hire two dudes to work 8 hours a day for the first few months of release charged with the task of making these herring look tasty, uploading the "flawed" copies to popular torrent sites, and offering off-putting comments on "legit" pirated copies that suggest that the "legit" one is actually a demo / flawed.
Yeah. Far as I can see (sadly, based on personal pirating experience ) the two biggest reasons people pirate is not because they can't afford it, but because it's more convenient than the alternative, and you're more likely to get hit by a car walking to EBgames than you are to get dinged by anyone for pirating. Red Herrings would both reduce the convenience of piracy, as well as introduce some element of consequence to piracy. I know I'd shit my pants if I was playing a pirated version of the game and the game popped up a message that said
On December 01 2011 11:34 Staboteur wrote: I've often wondered why bigger companies don't flood the pirated game market with red herrings of their own games. I'd think the number one reason people pirate games is convenience, as when you're given a choice of "Spend an hour going to wherever the game is sold, spend 60 bucks (if it isn't sold out) and then return home to play" or "Don't move, don't spend anything, wait about as much time as you would going to get a physical copy and only risk viruses or a slightly faulted version of the game"... well, it doesn't take much thinking to see that anyone with a comfortable computer chair and your standard sense of morality (Please, don't pretend *most* people are above this) will opt for the second choice.
If, say, Bethesda was to release 4 faulted copies of Skyrim en masse to torrenting websites, they'd become part of a process that would make pirating feel a whole lot less safe and a whole lot less convenient than it currently is/feels, which should initiate a global shift making piracy actually feel like what it is; stealing.
And I'm not saying LOL GIVE ALL THE PIRATES VIRUSES N WIPE THEIR HARD DRIVES. I'm talking about, say, a full-sized version of skyrim that, after hitting 4 hours of gameplay, pops up a message that says "We're glad you showed enough interest in Skyrim to pirate it, but pretend this was a demo, because until you buy the full game "-insert their website here-" you're not going to get any further
..And it'd be followed by the game locking itself.
I don't know if this is unreasonable for a coding front (I.E. all people would have to do is bypass the lockout and be fine) or a legal front (could a company be charged for knowingly spreading "flawed" copies that claim to be the real deal?), but I can fully see it being functional in terms of execution and follow-up. It would not take much to hire two dudes to work 8 hours a day for the first few months of release charged with the task of making these herring look tasty, uploading the "flawed" copies to popular torrent sites, and offering off-putting comments on "legit" pirated copies that suggest that the "legit" one is actually a demo / flawed.
Yeah. Far as I can see (sadly, based on personal pirating experience ) the two biggest reasons people pirate is not because they can't afford it, but because it's more convenient than the alternative, and you're more likely to get hit by a car walking to EBgames than you are to get dinged by anyone for pirating. Red Herrings would both reduce the convenience of piracy, as well as introduce some element of consequence to piracy. I know I'd shit my pants if I was playing a pirated version of the game and the game popped up a message that said
"Nice pirate bro" "Love - Blizzard entertainment"
and then immediately deleted itself.
That wouldn't do anything than give the company a bad name. Most people only torrent from trusted members of the scene. And word would spread quickly of what ones were the bad copies. It wouldn't affect that many people, and it would do a good job of making sure that pirates will never buy one of your games.
On December 01 2011 11:32 bubblegumbo wrote: "It's the economy, stupid"- end quote
Piracy is more rampant in countries with lower average salary than the US or EU, the Witcher 2 is popular in Eastern Europe for various reasons and take a guess at how much your normal citizen earn on average in those area? In the end piracy is more rampant in places like Asia, Eastern Europe, South America, Africa and Middle East because games are just too expensive relative to average earnings and in some cases, difficult to acquire legally as well(some games are not sold in certain countries due to publishing right etc). In those countries software that cost US$60 worldwide are not going to sell well unless they offer infinite replay value(i.e SC2 multiplayer), even the it's too expensive for many people that barely earn US$1000 a month even with a college degree. That is the reality of the world, and many Western game corporations refuse to adapt their pricing strategy in that regard as well. This is why free to pay games are so popular in the regions I've mentioned, for obvious reasons.
Look up gabe newell's interview. he's talked about how no one approached the russia's market for video games because of supposed "rampant piracy". Steam invested into russia, now russia is the 2nd largest market in EU for steam.
I like the idea of adding "features" to software that become benign when a license is validated. I really have no boundaries on what features I'm ok with, since pirates assume the risk of not buying an official product.
Allow their game to be played offline. Do not put any DRM. Put the game on steam. Make the game better than the product of the pirate and even easier to access.
Does itunes even give you 1411.2 kbit/sec audio ( 16bit/44.1khz/2ch ) or better or at least bit for bit exact? Or are they like 128kbit/sec?
On December 01 2011 09:40 Liquid`Drone wrote: maybe the restaurant business would actually produce a better product if consumers could have delivered free samples of their food prior to visiting to ensure that this restaurant makes food that I am willing to pay x for.. I mean, there'd be some decline in visits because some would prefer to simply eat for free at home, but others who could afford it, would still go visit the restaurant to ensure that they make enough money to produce tasty food, for the feeling of companionship with whomever they went together with, and the waitering. meanwhile, crappy restaurants experience an even steeper decline in visits because as people could try their food prior to going, they realized it was crap and didn't have to.
When I first read this, I thought you were starting off in some sarcastic scenario. Then, I realized you weren't. In your world, you think a restaurant not only giving out free samples, but actually hand delivering them around the city to make sure they are up to par, is a realistic business model. Fantasy land. That's your world. Have you ever actually considered why there is NO restaurant in the world that does this ? Wow.
The bakery down the street does this all the fucking time lol. Set up outside the train station, give out samples, away they go. Ever go to the grocery store? They do that too. Plates of samples left out for people to try.
I used to pirate games. The price of games used to be ridiculously high for a poor student. Not anymore. With the likes of steam, gamersgate or direct2drive holding sales regularly, people from the first world dont have a lot of reason to pirate game anymore other than to try it out.
That said, piracy -could- be beneficial for the developer. I bought games that I had pirated in the past because : - I liked the game AND - I wanted to support the publishers AND - they are cheap Instead of ISOs from pirate bay, these days my harddrive is full of legally purchased games.
I like that some developers and publishers recognized piracy as a competing models. If you can get your goods quickly (digital retail model) and cheaply (hold regular sales with massive discount), many people who used to pirate will convert to buying legally.
For the purpose of letting people know they exist, as in cheaper than advertising on TV. It's targeted to people in the area who could actually walk to the bakery. Why don't you give that bakery a call and ask them to deliver a sample to you at home. Yeah, I thought so ...
On December 01 2011 15:43 Kaitlin wrote: For the purpose of letting people know they exist, as in cheaper than advertising on TV. It's targeted to people in the area who could actually walk to the bakery. Why don't you give that bakery a call and ask them to deliver a sample to you at home. Yeah, I thought so ...
firstly the restaurant analogy or whatever is obviously somewhat faulty and yes intended as a slight joke - for it to be a valid comparison to piracy they'd have to supply full meals for free in the convenience of my home, and that would indeed kill their business. but if technology allowed restaurants to somehow, without losing any ingredients of their own, magically create and teleport a small portion of food to a plate right in front of me, before I was making my decision on where to go eat my food, then that would be something all good restaurants would immediately jump onto.
anyway though, the reason why food is different from "cultural material" in this discussion is that food is something everyone has to eat at least a couple times every day, whereas culture is something that is part of "excess spending". essentially, people spend money on culture only after they've spent money for all necessities, and thus, how much money people spend on culture is limited, and for people with a budget, usually a reasonably fixed amount per month. thus, piracy does not necessarily hurt producers and distributors at all, because if I'm spending $150 per month on culture, piracy merely allows me to spend that money on the game/music/movie/tv production I feel deserves it the most, while still allowing me to enjoy a full spectrum of cultural activities, rather than having to make educated guesses with regards to what I like the most, still spend $150 per month, and probably have a less enjoyable experience. if anything, my appreciation of different cultural mediums ends up growing as my exposure to them grows, and it becomes more important for me to support the industry..
On December 01 2011 09:40 Liquid`Drone wrote: maybe the restaurant business would actually produce a better product if consumers could have delivered free samples of their food prior to visiting to ensure that this restaurant makes food that I am willing to pay x for.. I mean, there'd be some decline in visits because some would prefer to simply eat for free at home, but others who could afford it, would still go visit the restaurant to ensure that they make enough money to produce tasty food, for the feeling of companionship with whomever they went together with, and the waitering. meanwhile, crappy restaurants experience an even steeper decline in visits because as people could try their food prior to going, they realized it was crap and didn't have to.
When I first read this, I thought you were starting off in some sarcastic scenario. Then, I realized you weren't. In your world, you think a restaurant not only giving out free samples, but actually hand delivering them around the city to make sure they are up to par, is a realistic business model. Fantasy land. That's your world. Have you ever actually considered why there is NO restaurant in the world that does this ? Wow.
I found this comment hilarious in the context of Eri's sig.
Interesting to see my thread derailed within the first page...
The intention was never to discuss the morality of piracy, nor the efficacy of current methods used to combat it.
The purpose was to come up with new and interesting ways to deter piracy. From Software (developers of Dark Souls) went online and slaughtered everyone who downloaded their game illegally before it was available for purchase. This led me to believe a good way to combat piracy would be to empower the players to somehow isolate and punish known pirates. The TF2 griefing video I linked shows how a server host griefs a known aim-botter into dying from any damage and making his weapons do 0 damage.
From Software's method only work for multiplayer games. Some games, such as SC2 and From Software's own Dark Souls have hybrids content. Being online is often times not an essential component. Dark Soul is still be a great game even in in offline mode (some would even argue, offline is a better game). The pirates could have just disconnected from PSO and play in peace.
I dont think coming up with a new (DRM-like) ways to deter piracy worth the cost. Good quality games, low price and instant gratification (digital retail) is still the way to go. Look at the number of free to play games being announced this year alone.
On December 01 2011 15:43 Kaitlin wrote: For the purpose of letting people know they exist, as in cheaper than advertising on TV. It's targeted to people in the area who could actually walk to the bakery. Why don't you give that bakery a call and ask them to deliver a sample to you at home. Yeah, I thought so ...
firstly the restaurant analogy or whatever is obviously somewhat faulty and yes intended as a slight joke - for it to be a valid comparison to piracy they'd have to supply full meals for free in the convenience of my home, and that would indeed kill their business. but if technology allowed restaurants to somehow, without losing any ingredients of their own, magically create and teleport a small portion of food to a plate right in front of me, before I was making my decision on where to go eat my food, then that would be something all good restaurants would immediately jump onto.
anyway though, the reason why food is different from "cultural material" in this discussion is that food is something everyone has to eat at least a couple times every day, whereas culture is something that is part of "excess spending". essentially, people spend money on culture only after they've spent money for all necessities, and thus, how much money people spend on culture is limited, and for people with a budget, usually a reasonably fixed amount per month. thus, piracy does not necessarily hurt producers and distributors at all, because if I'm spending $150 per month on culture, piracy merely allows me to spend that money on the game/music/movie/tv production I feel deserves it the most, while still allowing me to enjoy a full spectrum of cultural activities, rather than having to make educated guesses with regards to what I like the most, still spend $150 per month, and probably have a less enjoyable experience. if anything, my appreciation of different cultural mediums ends up growing as my exposure to them grows, and it becomes more important for me to support the industry..
That's a much better analogy to a Demo, not piracy. A small sample to get the taste, but not enough to prevent someone from buying. That's the major point, as soon as you deliver the full product as a test product, you kill the biggest incentive for someone to buy it. That's why multiplayer games are much more often pirated and then bought, they don't deliver the full service. Demos used to be a lot more common before, but people still pirated heavily, so I don't think that would really be a solution.
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.
This 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'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?".
Interesting to see my thread derailed within the first page...
The intention was never to discuss the morality of piracy, nor the efficacy of current methods used to combat it.
The purpose was to come up with new and interesting ways to deter piracy. From Software (developers of Dark Souls) went online and slaughtered everyone who downloaded their game illegally before it was available for purchase. This led me to believe a good way to combat piracy would be to empower the players to somehow isolate and punish known pirates. The TF2 griefing video I linked shows how a server host griefs a known aim-botter into dying from any damage and making his weapons do 0 damage.
The problem is that you failed to see that people in this forum do pirate games and others do think that pirating games is acceptable in some cases. Therefor you cannot discuss how to fight something before discussing if it is acceptable or not.
Piracy sucks, especially for games. I've never pirated a game. That said, I also rarely buy games. Sorry game industry, I don't care how good your single player game is, I don't think it's worth playing over multiplayer games
On December 01 2011 15:43 Kaitlin wrote: For the purpose of letting people know they exist, as in cheaper than advertising on TV. It's targeted to people in the area who could actually walk to the bakery. Why don't you give that bakery a call and ask them to deliver a sample to you at home. Yeah, I thought so ...
firstly the restaurant analogy or whatever is obviously somewhat faulty and yes intended as a slight joke - for it to be a valid comparison to piracy they'd have to supply full meals for free in the convenience of my home, and that would indeed kill their business. but if technology allowed restaurants to somehow, without losing any ingredients of their own, magically create and teleport a small portion of food to a plate right in front of me, before I was making my decision on where to go eat my food, then that would be something all good restaurants would immediately jump onto.
anyway though, the reason why food is different from "cultural material" in this discussion is that food is something everyone has to eat at least a couple times every day, whereas culture is something that is part of "excess spending". essentially, people spend money on culture only after they've spent money for all necessities, and thus, how much money people spend on culture is limited, and for people with a budget, usually a reasonably fixed amount per month. thus, piracy does not necessarily hurt producers and distributors at all, because if I'm spending $150 per month on culture, piracy merely allows me to spend that money on the game/music/movie/tv production I feel deserves it the most, while still allowing me to enjoy a full spectrum of cultural activities, rather than having to make educated guesses with regards to what I like the most, still spend $150 per month, and probably have a less enjoyable experience. if anything, my appreciation of different cultural mediums ends up growing as my exposure to them grows, and it becomes more important for me to support the industry..
That's a much better analogy to a Demo, not piracy. A small sample to get the taste, but not enough to prevent someone from buying. That's the major point, as soon as you deliver the full product as a test product, you kill the biggest incentive for someone to buy it. That's why multiplayer games are much more often pirated and then bought, they don't deliver the full service. Demos used to be a lot more common before, but people still pirated heavily, so I don't think that would really be a solution.
Demo's isn't the solution but it is a solution. I'll give you that it may not be the most efficient way to make people not pirate but it's certainly a way to make people buy your game, something that goes in the same line of thought (at least if it's a good game, otherwise not. -_-)
On December 01 2011 15:43 Kaitlin wrote: For the purpose of letting people know they exist, as in cheaper than advertising on TV. It's targeted to people in the area who could actually walk to the bakery. Why don't you give that bakery a call and ask them to deliver a sample to you at home. Yeah, I thought so ...
firstly the restaurant analogy or whatever is obviously somewhat faulty and yes intended as a slight joke - for it to be a valid comparison to piracy they'd have to supply full meals for free in the convenience of my home, and that would indeed kill their business. but if technology allowed restaurants to somehow, without losing any ingredients of their own, magically create and teleport a small portion of food to a plate right in front of me, before I was making my decision on where to go eat my food, then that would be something all good restaurants would immediately jump onto.
anyway though, the reason why food is different from "cultural material" in this discussion is that food is something everyone has to eat at least a couple times every day, whereas culture is something that is part of "excess spending". essentially, people spend money on culture only after they've spent money for all necessities, and thus, how much money people spend on culture is limited, and for people with a budget, usually a reasonably fixed amount per month. thus, piracy does not necessarily hurt producers and distributors at all, because if I'm spending $150 per month on culture, piracy merely allows me to spend that money on the game/music/movie/tv production I feel deserves it the most, while still allowing me to enjoy a full spectrum of cultural activities, rather than having to make educated guesses with regards to what I like the most, still spend $150 per month, and probably have a less enjoyable experience. if anything, my appreciation of different cultural mediums ends up growing as my exposure to them grows, and it becomes more important for me to support the industry..
using the piracy to food analogy you could also say. a supermarket near where i live (this is a true story btw) does nice in shop cooked bread that actually tastes good. they sell this 800g loaf for £1.10. in a different supermarket nearer to where i live they sell shitty hovis for £1.20 for 800g. now, if i want to actually get the nicer and cheaper bread i would have to go further away every day (im feeding a family of 4 and our freezer isnt big enough for a weeks food for 4). so i need to go and buy shitty hovis every day instead, even though they are dicking me over on purpose.
so how about i pirate the hovis every day then during the weekly shop i can take the car and travel to the slightly further super market and reward them for making this nicer bread with my money. i still get to eat and annoying supermarket doesnt get rewarded for selling shit on purpose.
this story is 100% true facts ;/ fuck you tesco sometimes
On December 01 2011 06:55 Mammel wrote: [quote] Your downloading copied property for free . Did I miss something?
Oh FFS people do I HAVE to dig out news reports of people who downloaded pirated music and had to pay some insanely high fine or go to jail... Do we really have to have a debate on something that is illegal for a fact and has been documented as such?
Please do because I've never heard of anyone having to pay anything unless his been sharing them. Although I could theoretically see that happening in US.
"against computer pirates who put illegal copies of movies and television series on the Internet" "Wednesday for illegally downloading and distributing popular songs either from the Internet or from CDs on mobile phones." "They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights. " I think I said "unless his been sharing them."
And you actually want to pay to those fuckers ? No matter how much I have money, I wouldn't. But anyway, I don't know about US laws, but I do know that if you download anything here, you will get absolutely nothing for it. I don't actually even know if you could be sued for it here, and I couldn't care less. If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game. I don't know if that'll change when I'm able to afford them without any problems, but right now I want to play, and I want to eat, and as long as it's possible to do both then I'm going to do it.
Oh no, they punished her for doing something illegal? How cruel!
While it's a dumb story, and the fine is exorbitant, it very clearly states in many places how much you'll be fined for illegally downloading stuff. You take a risk, sometimes you get fucked.
Your mindset is immature. "I want I want I want gimme gimme gimme" makes you sound like a child who doesn't know the value of a dollar.
"If it's illegal, then I'm a criminal, but as long as I don't feel like it, I will never pay for a game." How petulant. If you can't afford something, you don't get it. Just because this type of theft is easy to pull off doesn't make you tough, doesn't make you right, and just makes you a punk. Get over yourself.
I just don't think it's bad to take something you aren't willing to buy as long as taking it hurts no one.
That type of mentality is fine if it wasn't thousands (millions?) of people thinking the same thing for gaming, movies, and music.
"Oh, I'll only pirate a couple games, maybe $500 worth. $500 isn't that much to a big game company."
And then another person thinks that. Then another person. Then another. How long before there are millions, billions of dollars worth of pirated material out there? $60 doesn't hurt anyone. $60 a million times does.
It's like voting in America. You don't think your one vote counts, so you don't vote. Then thousands of people think the same, and the election is completely fucked one way or the other.
and yet the highest grossing movie and game both came out after the advent of piracy
its almost as if people are willing to pay for a decent product but dont want to reward companies for monopolizing entertainment then producing shitty content :D
On December 01 2011 07:11 Filter wrote: People always seem to overlook the type of games that get crushed by this type of piracy. Single player rpg's are right at the top of the list and thus we never really see any quality ones coming out these days. TW2 is an example of a game with heart and soul draped all over it that will never succeed because of the type of game it is.
Pirates need to wake up and realize how much they're hurting their industry. If a company has a choice between two concepts, one a mediocre shooter and one an amazing single player RPG they will always take the shooter because it will sell better, mostly because of online multiplayer.
Excuses for why people pirate don't hold water here when you look at the games that are getting hit by piracy.
the game mentioned in the OP is Witcher 2. it is a single player rpg. it has not been "crushed by piracy", in fact as has been shown by this thread, it has made a nice profit. and as was just mentioned by another poster, skyrim was released 3 weeks ago. that's the biggest and most anticipated, and guess what, most bought, single player rpg ever. and the next elder scrolls game is going to be even bigger, with even more quests, more voice actors, better graphics, more sales, and more pirated copies, because despite piracy, and arguably, partially due to piracy, the game industry keeps growing and growing and growing, and it will continue doing so.
small indie developers are hurt by piracy though, and that sucks. but these blanket "piracy is always wrong" "piracy equals theft" "piracy hurts everyone but the pirate" "piracy is illegal thus it is immoral" statements.. they're just a way of simplifying reality in a stupidifying manner.
small indie developers are crushed hardest by shitty triple a production companies before their game even gets to be pirated. the same production companies turning around and crying about piracy is hypocracy at its finest
the exact same business model in the music industry. record labels crush independants at every turn, citing that captialism results in the survival of the fittest while they turn out the next boy band and crush every independant act under their massive foot. then pirates go, oh ill just take this piece of shit you pooped out for free, since thats what its worth to me (but you killed every other entertainer so i have no choice) and the record labels start whining about it too.
would i pirate if media was more fairly priced? maybe. would i support more official releases after taking my free taster? yes, i already do so. do i already go out my way to pay for a product if i have a reasonable idea that it will be a quality piece of work? yup
On December 01 2011 15:43 Kaitlin wrote: For the purpose of letting people know they exist, as in cheaper than advertising on TV. It's targeted to people in the area who could actually walk to the bakery. Why don't you give that bakery a call and ask them to deliver a sample to you at home. Yeah, I thought so ...
firstly the restaurant analogy or whatever is obviously somewhat faulty and yes intended as a slight joke - for it to be a valid comparison to piracy they'd have to supply full meals for free in the convenience of my home, and that would indeed kill their business. but if technology allowed restaurants to somehow, without losing any ingredients of their own, magically create and teleport a small portion of food to a plate right in front of me, before I was making my decision on where to go eat my food, then that would be something all good restaurants would immediately jump onto.
anyway though, the reason why food is different from "cultural material" in this discussion is that food is something everyone has to eat at least a couple times every day, whereas culture is something that is part of "excess spending". essentially, people spend money on culture only after they've spent money for all necessities, and thus, how much money people spend on culture is limited, and for people with a budget, usually a reasonably fixed amount per month. thus, piracy does not necessarily hurt producers and distributors at all, because if I'm spending $150 per month on culture, piracy merely allows me to spend that money on the game/music/movie/tv production I feel deserves it the most, while still allowing me to enjoy a full spectrum of cultural activities, rather than having to make educated guesses with regards to what I like the most, still spend $150 per month, and probably have a less enjoyable experience. if anything, my appreciation of different cultural mediums ends up growing as my exposure to them grows, and it becomes more important for me to support the industry..
That's a much better analogy to a Demo, not piracy. A small sample to get the taste, but not enough to prevent someone from buying. That's the major point, as soon as you deliver the full product as a test product, you kill the biggest incentive for someone to buy it. That's why multiplayer games are much more often pirated and then bought, they don't deliver the full service. Demos used to be a lot more common before, but people still pirated heavily, so I don't think that would really be a solution.
Demo's isn't the solution but it is a solution. I'll give you that it may not be the most efficient way to make people not pirate but it's certainly a way to make people buy your game, something that goes in the same line of thought (at least if it's a good game, otherwise not. -_-)
I think one excuse for the lack of demos has exactly been the piracy. I've heard claims that at least in some cases the demos helped people to find ways to bypass the DRM. I haven't looked far enough into the present DRM to guess whether that actually holds any truth though.
maybe you could make a game with no DRM on the multiplayer component, then have a stat / achieve whatever for registering your copy, that gave you a special stat, where you did like 50% bonus damage and took that amount less from people without that stat / achieve?
other than that, i tend to believe in stardock model of no DRM, as its money wasted in development that will always get circumvented anyways.
On December 01 2011 11:34 Staboteur wrote: I've often wondered why bigger companies don't flood the pirated game market with red herrings of their own games. I'd think the number one reason people pirate games is convenience, as when you're given a choice of "Spend an hour going to wherever the game is sold, spend 60 bucks (if it isn't sold out) and then return home to play" or "Don't move, don't spend anything, wait about as much time as you would going to get a physical copy and only risk viruses or a slightly faulted version of the game"... well, it doesn't take much thinking to see that anyone with a comfortable computer chair and your standard sense of morality (Please, don't pretend *most* people are above this) will opt for the second choice.
If, say, Bethesda was to release 4 faulted copies of Skyrim en masse to torrenting websites, they'd become part of a process that would make pirating feel a whole lot less safe and a whole lot less convenient than it currently is/feels, which should initiate a global shift making piracy actually feel like what it is; stealing.
And I'm not saying LOL GIVE ALL THE PIRATES VIRUSES N WIPE THEIR HARD DRIVES. I'm talking about, say, a full-sized version of skyrim that, after hitting 4 hours of gameplay, pops up a message that says "We're glad you showed enough interest in Skyrim to pirate it, but pretend this was a demo, because until you buy the full game "-insert their website here-" you're not going to get any further
..And it'd be followed by the game locking itself.
I don't know if this is unreasonable for a coding front (I.E. all people would have to do is bypass the lockout and be fine) or a legal front (could a company be charged for knowingly spreading "flawed" copies that claim to be the real deal?), but I can fully see it being functional in terms of execution and follow-up. It would not take much to hire two dudes to work 8 hours a day for the first few months of release charged with the task of making these herring look tasty, uploading the "flawed" copies to popular torrent sites, and offering off-putting comments on "legit" pirated copies that suggest that the "legit" one is actually a demo / flawed.
Yeah. Far as I can see (sadly, based on personal pirating experience ) the two biggest reasons people pirate is not because they can't afford it, but because it's more convenient than the alternative, and you're more likely to get hit by a car walking to EBgames than you are to get dinged by anyone for pirating. Red Herrings would both reduce the convenience of piracy, as well as introduce some element of consequence to piracy. I know I'd shit my pants if I was playing a pirated version of the game and the game popped up a message that said
"Nice pirate bro" "Love - Blizzard entertainment"
and then immediately deleted itself.
that system is all fine and dandy, except for something brilliant we invented called a rating system. it would only take a few dozen people running into that before you'd be back to the same old.
the industry is just going to have to suffer until they get it through their fucking heads that this isn't going to go away. the people who keep trying to fight against the pirates are never going to win, because it essentially comes down to attempted extortion of the consumer base.
i lol at people who are genuinely concerned by legislation going through governments to try to stop piracy. it won't happen. the internet has become an uncontrollable leviathan of a creature that no government can stop. people look at china as a worst case scenario for western internet rights, and yet the "great firewall" is still chicken shit that would take no time to circumvent. game companies think they're the most brilliant asshats on the planet coming out with these "uncrackable" anti-piracy protections, and all the while their electronic bank accounts are being raided by some russian toking it up in his basement. 90% of government online assets probably couldn't even stop the humble LOIC let alone any coordinated effort to circumvent website restrictions.
game companies need to learn what is a reasonable price for a game. they need to learn that porting off a console and calling it a PC game is lazy and fraudulent. they need to learn that DRM will only hurt paying customers, and will ultimately just fuel the fire. and they need to learn to stop being so damn antagonistic (especially music companies) towards pirates. as has held true since the dawn of time, you piss off pirates, they fuck shit up.
I support piracy, I used to be a pirate and pirated all my games.
I'm still a student but I make more money than I used to and I've been buying games just to support the devs on these great games they are making. I think most pirates are in the same boat as I was and could not pay so much for a game when they earned little. I now earn a bit more and am buying a lot more games, just because I like supporting devs (especially indie devs). DRM is not the solution, if you lose internet connection the damn game accuses you of pirating a game you paid a premium for. While pirates get a crack for it within days that lets them play offline without a hitch Paying costumers are being scared away by these anti piracy programs and tricks. Gabe Newell knows how it works and I applaud him for this. (the gist of it was that pirates offer a better service because you can download the product you want from anywhere without DRM or too much hassle and it was up to Valve to outservice the pirates)
I've frequented pirating sites for quite a few years, and from the conversations that take place on IRC and in forums I'd have to say that the vast majority of people who illegally download games fall into two categories.
1. People who pirate a game to try it before they buy it. These are people who don't trust the reviews on various sites. Events in the past have shown that some companies literally pay/blackmail these sites into giving their games good reviews, so they would much rather play an extended trial to see if a game is actually worth 40-60 dollars. These people will actually buy a legitimate copy of a game if they enjoy it; they'll generally play a game for 2-3 hours before deciding. Most of the time they will not like a game and thus not buy it. It's potentially a lost sale, but whether they would have bought the game to try it is debatable.
2. People who pirate a game who would never try/buy the game if they couldn't get it for free These are people who are either on a very limited budget and generally don't have the money to buy games, or they're people living in a location where the price for the ordering/shipping the game is unreasonably high (2x or more than retail). If they don't have the option to download a cracked game, they will just never play that game. Just a brief look at the request forum on one of these sites shows that 149 people requested a crack for a 20 dollar game TWO YEARS AGO... and people are still requesting that it gets cracked and released. These are not lost sales, these are people who will just never buy a game.
People who pirate games who would otherwise be paying customers are pretty rare.
On December 01 2011 11:34 Staboteur wrote: I've often wondered why bigger companies don't flood the pirated game market with red herrings of their own games. I'd think the number one reason people pirate games is convenience, as when you're given a choice of "Spend an hour going to wherever the game is sold, spend 60 bucks (if it isn't sold out) and then return home to play" or "Don't move, don't spend anything, wait about as much time as you would going to get a physical copy and only risk viruses or a slightly faulted version of the game"... well, it doesn't take much thinking to see that anyone with a comfortable computer chair and your standard sense of morality (Please, don't pretend *most* people are above this) will opt for the second choice.
If, say, Bethesda was to release 4 faulted copies of Skyrim en masse to torrenting websites, they'd become part of a process that would make pirating feel a whole lot less safe and a whole lot less convenient than it currently is/feels, which should initiate a global shift making piracy actually feel like what it is; stealing.
And I'm not saying LOL GIVE ALL THE PIRATES VIRUSES N WIPE THEIR HARD DRIVES. I'm talking about, say, a full-sized version of skyrim that, after hitting 4 hours of gameplay, pops up a message that says "We're glad you showed enough interest in Skyrim to pirate it, but pretend this was a demo, because until you buy the full game "-insert their website here-" you're not going to get any further
..And it'd be followed by the game locking itself.
I don't know if this is unreasonable for a coding front (I.E. all people would have to do is bypass the lockout and be fine) or a legal front (could a company be charged for knowingly spreading "flawed" copies that claim to be the real deal?), but I can fully see it being functional in terms of execution and follow-up. It would not take much to hire two dudes to work 8 hours a day for the first few months of release charged with the task of making these herring look tasty, uploading the "flawed" copies to popular torrent sites, and offering off-putting comments on "legit" pirated copies that suggest that the "legit" one is actually a demo / flawed.
Yeah. Far as I can see (sadly, based on personal pirating experience ) the two biggest reasons people pirate is not because they can't afford it, but because it's more convenient than the alternative, and you're more likely to get hit by a car walking to EBgames than you are to get dinged by anyone for pirating. Red Herrings would both reduce the convenience of piracy, as well as introduce some element of consequence to piracy. I know I'd shit my pants if I was playing a pirated version of the game and the game popped up a message that said
"Nice pirate bro" "Love - Blizzard entertainment"
and then immediately deleted itself.
that system is all fine and dandy, except for something brilliant we invented called a rating system. it would only take a few dozen people running into that before you'd be back to the same old.
the industry is just going to have to suffer until they get it through their fucking heads that this isn't going to go away. the people who keep trying to fight against the pirates are never going to win, because it essentially comes down to attempted extortion of the consumer base.
i lol at people who are genuinely concerned by legislation going through governments to try to stop piracy. it won't happen. the internet has become an uncontrollable leviathan of a creature that no government can stop. people look at china as a worst case scenario for western internet rights, and yet the "great firewall" is still chicken shit that would take no time to circumvent. game companies think they're the most brilliant asshats on the planet coming out with these "uncrackable" anti-piracy protections, and all the while their electronic bank accounts are being raided by some russian toking it up in his basement. 90% of government online assets probably couldn't even stop the humble LOIC let alone any coordinated effort to circumvent website restrictions.
game companies need to learn what is a reasonable price for a game. they need to learn that porting off a console and calling it a PC game is lazy and fraudulent. they need to learn that DRM will only hurt paying customers, and will ultimately just fuel the fire. and they need to learn to stop being so damn antagonistic (especially music companies) towards pirates. as has held true since the dawn of time, you piss off pirates, they fuck shit up.
If you think the price of a game is unreasonable then don't buy it. I don't own a Lamborghini, not because I don't want one, but because I think the price is unreasonable. Porting off a console may be lazy, but it is not fraudulent - it is simply a PC game with a poor UI. Calling it fraudulent is hilariously middle-school-girl caliber dramatic.
You're right that it's damn near impossible to stop pirating and that DRM is largely ineffective. Trying to turn the tables and blame developers for pirating is laughable though - it's time to drop the pirates as Robin Hood myth.
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.
This 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.
Maybe I'm an idealist but the whole piracy thing to me comes down to games being overpriced and most people being under paid. The industries and the pirating issues are only secondary factors in my opinion, and whilst I don't support piracy I'm not really going to worry about it while the bigger problems are the issue.
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.
This. Seriously, people, piracy is bad. It puts upward pressure on the price of games and forces developers to put all sorts of obtuse DRM into their games rather than focusing on producing an actual quality product. Not to mention that you're stealing the product of the developers. Man up and pay up.
I pirate games all the time, and I do not feel guilty at all. I did not steal anything from anyone or hurt them in any way. I ocassionally buy a game I dont have to, but not often. I bought Skyrim recently because I liked it and wanted convenient updates. However I think Portal 2 is the best game ever made and I pirated that. I never bothered to actually buy it because I'm just that lazy. I do not feel I have to make excuses because not supporting something is not the same as harming it, in my eyes but here are some anyway: I'm poor, I'm lazy and I care very little.
I'm pretty sure piracy is a bad thing, but god is it useful sometimes.
PS2 laser drives die so fast compared to an HDD storing the games. PS3 games on intern HDD have so much less loading time it becomes almost bearable compared to my 360. When you have 2-3 systems and just want to play the game on multiple platforms for when friends come (typically Marvel VS Capcom for my 360 and PS3 as I have 2 TVs), I sure don't want to pay TWICE for the same game. Old or very hard to find games. What are you supposed to do if you want to play Secret of Mana with 3 friends ? Find a US working SNES, a multi-tap, and the game, which is very rare ?
Piracy is bad, but sometimes it's just much more convenient. On PC though I don't really see why you should pirate anything as now online capabilities are usually important and it will be dematerialized anyway...
I see the word entitlement thrown out liberally. The entitled ones here are CEOs and people in senior positions in the entertainment industry, a few lucky famous artists, and stockholders. They think they are entitled to ridiculous profit margins, and are just pissed off customers have more bargaining power thanks to technology. The industry had no problem using the technological progress to concentrate wealth and build the current business model (many lesser known live artists have been hurt by this). Too bad, the technology exists, you can't put it back in the box now that it does not benefit you. Besides, not only piracy is perfectly moral, the statistics show that it does not hurt the entertainment industry.
No Demo's, putting quantity over quality, not keeping up with the times committing to steam-like platforms, and when they do they charge the same price as they do for a CD with all the tangible items that cost money to produce.
Game developers are big contributors to the rise of piracy.
Also 4 pirated for every 1 sold means first and foremost that you can't keep selling games for 60 bucks. How many of those people wouldn't bother with pirating if the game costed a more reasonable sum i.e. 30 dollars? If this isn't a prime example of free market/supply demand models working the way they supposed to i dunno what is. Publishers just use piracy as a scapegoat and an excuse for their inability to adapt and their archaic business models.
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.
This 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'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?".
No, actually what's relevant is whether or not they made sufficient profit to justify making this game in particular compared to developing another game that might have been easier to develop. Do you know why Call of Duty games are basically the same game every time without any real changes in gameplay? Because it's easy and cheap to make a new game with basic changes, and they know they'll sell copies. Piracy kills innovation.
On December 02 2011 06:05 Sfydjklm wrote: No Demo's, putting quantity over quality, not keeping up with the times committing to steam-like platforms, and when they do they charge the same price as they do for a CD with all the tangible items that cost money to produce.
Game developers are big contributors to the rise of piracy.
On December 02 2011 06:05 Sfydjklm wrote: No Demo's, putting quantity over quality, not keeping up with the times committing to steam-like platforms, and when they do they charge the same price as they do for a CD with all the tangible items that cost money to produce.
Game developers are big contributors to the rise of piracy.
What a cop out.
I buy my games. But me having my principles has nothing to do with gaming industry inability to adapt to modern market even despite such spectacular examples to follow as Riot, Blizzard or Valve.
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.
This 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'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?".
No, actually what's relevant is whether or not they made sufficient profit to justify making this game in particular compared to developing another game that might have been easier to develop. Do you know why Call of Duty games are basically the same game every time without any real changes in gameplay? Because it's easy and cheap to make a new game with basic changes, and they know they'll sell copies. Piracy kills innovation.
Must be the reason for all those CSI clones, Big Brother clones, Jersey Shore clones, and so forth. Businessmen kill innovation.
I think like max 30% of people who pirate games would by them if they couldn't pirate them. It is silly to say that 1 pirated game = 1 unsold copy.
Still, this is a huge problem and even more huge in the music industry I feel. Adding chargeable DLC will only punish the non-pirating players though, and I am disgusted by the greed that some game companies have in terms of DLC. The sad thing is it is just getting worse.
On December 02 2011 05:47 Crushinator wrote: I pirate games all the time, and I do not feel guilty at all. I did not steal anything from anyone or hurt them in any way. I ocassionally buy a game I dont have to, but not often. I bought Skyrim recently because I liked it and wanted convenient updates. However I think Portal 2 is the best game ever made and I pirated that. I never bothered to actually buy it because I'm just that lazy. I do not feel I have to make excuses because not supporting something is not the same as harming it, in my eyes but here are some anyway: I'm poor, I'm lazy and I care very little.
Sorry, but this bothers me more than a bit. I've tried to stay out of this thread too much, but I just want to say my bit.
This sense of entitlement is really irritating. There are a couple reasons I can understand pirating, like if the game isn't available anymore or you live somewhere where it will never be released, though I doubt you live in like Uzbjeziaersisdstan.
However, if you can't afford something that's available, what makes you think you should still get it? You're not entitled to everything you want. The digital age has made it easy to "steal"/pirate a multitude of things, everything from music, to games, to movies, to information, to personal data. Yet all these things you try to rationalize away because this new type of theft isn't really theft and therefore you're doing no wrong?
No. You're still taking something that's not yours, that you didn't work for, give money for, exchange goods for, and in the end you don't deserve. It's not yours just because you can take it. Is this a moral question? Sure, but avoiding it isn't going to do you any favors in the future.
People today (at least in America) have it in their mind that they should just get everything. It's a spoiled generation, who never learned the value of a dollar or a hard days work. You keep taking the easy way out and expecting to get the world for putting forward the least amount of effort? I have no pity or remorse for you when you get smacked in the face with a big case of the real world.
DRM is the dumbest thing developers have ever come up with...the only thing its done is cause headaches for legit customers. Its done absolutely nothing to curb piracy...I can still go out and dl any game I want in a few hours. Like people said developers need to focus on making their games more accessible instead of trying to stop piracy which they will never do. Steam for example...my game purchases have gone up like 200% in the past year solely because of steam. All of the deals they have + easy accessability. This is what developers need to focus on.
On November 30 2011 22:24 Interloper wrote: Many people who pirate do so because they want to try a game out. If they enjoy the game, they will buy it too support the developer. 4,5 million downloads becomes a useless figure since you can not in any way know how many of those 4,5 million purchased the game afterwards. I feel that piracy is a good way to get rid of shitty developers how make crappy games only for the sake of making money (Well all developers want to make money ofc, but i hope you get my point). Good developers get the money they need and then some. Piracy will not be the end of gaming.
(just found this thread, sorry if this has been covered a lot, just felt like sharing)
This is exactly my take on piracy. Devs don't invest time in making good demos so the next best thing is to download the game illegally and juge for myself if it's a worthy purchase after an hour or two of gaming. This is exactly what I did with Skyrim. I played Oblivion (which I had bought) and didn't like it. Thankfully it was one of the steam deals (more like steal) and didn't bother losing such a small amount. I still played through it but it was a less than good experience.
In comes skyrim. I priated it a week after release, played it until the first mega early fight (don't want to spoil just in case) and knew this was a game I'd play a lot and enjoyed. I immediately bought the game and transferred my saved games. Without piracy, I wouldn't have purchased this game because of the previous iteration of the series.
Of course, not everyone is as honest as me and most who pirate games won't buy it even if they enjoy it. But let's think for a moment; If the game isn't downloadable illegally, would they buy it or just not play it? I think the latter would be the option for many.
Piracy hurts and helps the gaming community at the same time, unfortunately, when the big companies try to fight it they end up hurting the gaming community more than preventing piracy. At this time, the popular response to piracy is to not offer the game on PC or offer parts of games through DLC which results in us getting games that are greatly watered down and of poor quality.
Hopefully the smaller game makers out there end up proving to the "big shots" that anti-piracy is not a solution, or at least, not in the form they currently fight it.
The Witcher 2 has been downloaded a ton of times, but still CDProjekt is sticking to its no-DRM policy.
This is why they are to be respected so much more than any other game developer out there, especially when we look at what the big companies have been doing more and more (I'm pointing at you despicable Ubisoft, yes I am).
This is why I have bought a copy of both The Witcher 1 and 2, CD Projekt are the only serious guys in a world where people make you suffer for having paid something while the pirate can enjoy the games in a pleasant way without enduring the stupid "always online" DRM shit etc...
I pirate console ports but not games where PC is first hand. TW2 is such a game and it's just sad it get pirated like this. There is really no good reason why piracy is good or not bad. Doesn't matter whether the game has DRM (TW2 didn't), developed for PC first (like TW2...), a demo or classic PC games stuff are used to have like free content (DLC) (TW2 had this...). Every single game gets mass pirated on the PC.
I couldn't care less for the shitty FPS that are mass produced for the consoles by the big companies that have a strong opinion of piracy and that would poop on every PC gamers face regardless of piracy. But I do care of classic PC genres that are clearly dying, like turnbased strategy games/4x sci-fi games, action RPG's heck even RTS! These are the only reason why I'm still playing on PC primarily and it looks like the market for these games will shrink to obscurity and we'll only have indie games with (usually) great ides but 1k bugs and insufficient funds to develop a quality title.
On December 02 2011 05:01 Runnin wrote: If you think the price of a game is unreasonable then don't buy it. I don't own a Lamborghini, not because I don't want one, but because I think the price is unreasonable. Porting off a console may be lazy, but it is not fraudulent - it is simply a PC game with a poor UI. Calling it fraudulent is hilariously middle-school-girl caliber dramatic.
You're right that it's damn near impossible to stop pirating and that DRM is largely ineffective. Trying to turn the tables and blame developers for pirating is laughable though - it's time to drop the pirates as Robin Hood myth.
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.
THIS
The extent people will go to in order to justify piracy is hilarious.
I find it hard to believe most of those pirating games are doing it cause they just want to try it out, or cause they're rebelling against a corrupt establishment.
They're doing it cause they can get something for free and get away with it.
Obviously it doesnt bother people as much when the crappy new Harry Potter game or one of the other 100 film-to-game cash-ins EA releases every year gets pirated.
But when its happening to companies like CD Projekt who produce a quality product and are one of the few still willing to make games like The Witcher 2, it really shows how bulls**t the attempts to justify piracy are. I wonder how many of those who pirated The Witcher 2 are amongst the people who bitch about developers not making any good role-playing games anymore.
But when its happening to companies like CD Projekt who produce a quality product and are one of the few still willing to make games like The Witcher 2, it really shows how bulls**t the attempts to justify piracy are. I wonder how many of those who pirated The Witcher 2 are amongst the people who bitch about developers not making any good role-playing games anymore.
No doubt that CD projekt got shafted(judging from the comments never played witcher myself). But the people who claim that as their motivation aren't trying to come up with excuse- how can they possibly know that Witcher is good before they have played it? And the people who can't afford the game- what's the harm in them downloading it? They wouldn't have bought it otherwise anyway.
A game being overpriced actually makes me want to pirate it even if I wasn't interested in playing it in the first place (and I don't mean overpriced as in "I don't want to pay 60 USD for it", I mean overpriced as in "Why the fuck are you charging me 100 USD when everyone else pays 60 USD and the median income in my country is only 2/3rds of your country?!?")
I do respect the honest developers such as CD Projekt that are trying to do PC gaming right, I'd never pirate from them since they make awesome games and do stuff such as the 'Fair Price Package'. No such feelings for companies such as Activision though, the only thing that stops me from pirating their games is that I feel that my usage cap is worth more than their crap.
I pirated witcher 2 and deus ex human revolution, and after playing some of those games I am hugely thankful that I didn't buy either of them, because if I had I would have raged my head off at how much they irritated me in terms of performance, controls, or mechanics.
Pirating is like free insurance for the gamer... if A) game runs on the machine - respectably B) game is also fun / not-irritating then C) buy the game...
Piracy protects the gaming consumer from bad game designers and distributors by protecting their money and allowing them to invest into the games and companies of worth! The gaming market has been crutching company names and flashy advertising to sell games, even when the quality has been slowly dropping. Piracy is an "abusable" tool that gamers should use to help them decide which game designers they want to encourage...
If you want more good games, you buy the games from good companies. Consider it natural selection to an extent.
And like i mentioned above, Piracy is an abusable tool, it SHOULD be used to inform gamers of quality... although, many people ABUSE it in order to keep unlicensed copies of software.
I rarely buy games but only when i KNOW the game is going to be good and worth while (ex. Skyrim, Uncharted 3, SC2 HoTS) will i spend my money. Most of the time i can just bug my friends who buys the game when they are on sale. sure the games are a few months old but like i said if i really wanted the game i will buy it.
Simply put, people who pirate a shit ton of video games are meh to me. They might feel cool for saving 60$ but whatever.
On December 02 2011 08:27 XerrolAvengerII wrote: I pirated witcher 2 and deus ex human revolution, and after playing some of those games I am hugely thankful that I didn't buy either of them, because if I had I would have raged my head off at how much they irritated me in terms of performance, controls, or mechanics.
Pirating is like free insurance for the gamer... if A) game runs on the machine - respectably B) game is also fun / not-irritating then C) buy the game...
Piracy protects the gaming consumer from bad game designers and distributors by protecting their money and allowing them to invest into the games and companies of worth! The gaming market has been crutching company names and flashy advertising to sell games, even when the quality has been slowly dropping. Piracy is an "abusable" tool that gamers should use to help them decide which game designers they want to encourage...
If you want more good games, you buy the games from good companies. Consider it natural selection to an extent.
And like i mentioned above, Piracy is an abusable tool, it SHOULD be used to inform gamers of quality... although, many people ABUSE it in order to keep unlicensed copies of software.
Nuff said.
Piracy isn't a tool for anything, it's illegal and people need to stop trying to justify stealing.
The internet allows us to share ideas, and piracy is just a name for the effect of this sharing of ideas on our outdated societal systems, monetary, economical, political, etc.
Unfortunately we still live with outdated systems that cannot keep up with other developments, so for now what we have to do is simple. Support those developers who deserve it.
On December 02 2011 08:27 XerrolAvengerII wrote: I pirated witcher 2 and deus ex human revolution, and after playing some of those games I am hugely thankful that I didn't buy either of them, because if I had I would have raged my head off at how much they irritated me in terms of performance, controls, or mechanics.
Pirating is like free insurance for the gamer... if A) game runs on the machine - respectably B) game is also fun / not-irritating then C) buy the game...
Piracy protects the gaming consumer from bad game designers and distributors by protecting their money and allowing them to invest into the games and companies of worth! The gaming market has been crutching company names and flashy advertising to sell games, even when the quality has been slowly dropping. Piracy is an "abusable" tool that gamers should use to help them decide which game designers they want to encourage...
If you want more good games, you buy the games from good companies. Consider it natural selection to an extent.
And like i mentioned above, Piracy is an abusable tool, it SHOULD be used to inform gamers of quality... although, many people ABUSE it in order to keep unlicensed copies of software.
Nuff said.
Piracy isn't a tool for anything, it's illegal and people need to stop trying to justify stealing.
to copy is not stealing. It's not illegal everywhere, and who cares about legality? alcohol used to be illegal. now its legal. Is it bad or is it good? who cares.
On December 02 2011 08:45 SoulWager wrote: make buying it easier than downloading a torrent, problem solved.
this. All the industries are being forced to come up with new ways of selling their crap. Good example is the movie industry, with 3D. found new cash crop, and people are enjoying 3D. Good for them, though they will have to innovate at some point in the future. it's not because of pirating and 3D that "regular" movies will not be made anymore. They will just be less mainstream, which is ok, because people mostly pirate mainstream shit anyways. Which IMO is ok, because its junk anyways. i still gladly play 5-15$ at cinemas to watch old classics and shit, even though ive seen them plenty of times etc. I've bought D2 numerous times, same with SC, same with most games i truly enjoy.
On December 02 2011 08:27 XerrolAvengerII wrote: I pirated witcher 2 and deus ex human revolution, and after playing some of those games I am hugely thankful that I didn't buy either of them, because if I had I would have raged my head off at how much they irritated me in terms of performance, controls, or mechanics.
Pirating is like free insurance for the gamer... if A) game runs on the machine - respectably B) game is also fun / not-irritating then C) buy the game...
Piracy protects the gaming consumer from bad game designers and distributors by protecting their money and allowing them to invest into the games and companies of worth! The gaming market has been crutching company names and flashy advertising to sell games, even when the quality has been slowly dropping. Piracy is an "abusable" tool that gamers should use to help them decide which game designers they want to encourage...
If you want more good games, you buy the games from good companies. Consider it natural selection to an extent.
And like i mentioned above, Piracy is an abusable tool, it SHOULD be used to inform gamers of quality... although, many people ABUSE it in order to keep unlicensed copies of software.
Nuff said.
Piracy isn't a tool for anything, it's illegal and people need to stop trying to justify stealing.
to copy is not stealing. It's not illegal everywhere, and who cares about legality? alcohol used to be illegal. now its legal. Is it bad or is it good? who cares.
It's stealing IP. You're taking something that belongs to someone else without permission of the owner, and without paying for it. That's stealing by definition.
On December 02 2011 08:43 uiCk wrote: to copy is not stealing. It's not illegal everywhere, and who cares about legality? alcohol used to be illegal. now its legal. Is it bad or is it good? who cares.
Not really the same thing though is it? Cause when you're pirating you're taking something others put work into and on which their livelihood depends and not paying them for it.
On December 02 2011 08:27 XerrolAvengerII wrote: I pirated witcher 2 and deus ex human revolution, and after playing some of those games I am hugely thankful that I didn't buy either of them, because if I had I would have raged my head off at how much they irritated me in terms of performance, controls, or mechanics.
Pirating is like free insurance for the gamer... if A) game runs on the machine - respectably B) game is also fun / not-irritating then C) buy the game...
Piracy protects the gaming consumer from bad game designers and distributors by protecting their money and allowing them to invest into the games and companies of worth! The gaming market has been crutching company names and flashy advertising to sell games, even when the quality has been slowly dropping. Piracy is an "abusable" tool that gamers should use to help them decide which game designers they want to encourage...
If you want more good games, you buy the games from good companies. Consider it natural selection to an extent.
And like i mentioned above, Piracy is an abusable tool, it SHOULD be used to inform gamers of quality... although, many people ABUSE it in order to keep unlicensed copies of software.
Nuff said.
Piracy isn't a tool for anything, it's illegal and people need to stop trying to justify stealing.
to copy is not stealing. It's not illegal everywhere, and who cares about legality? alcohol used to be illegal. now its legal. Is it bad or is it good? who cares.
It's stealing IP. You're taking something that belongs to someone else without permission of the owner, and without paying for it. That's stealing by definition.
You could hardly call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's property.
But no, it is not stealing, because the original material does not disappear. The original material and the copies of it are copied.
On December 02 2011 08:43 uiCk wrote: to copy is not stealing. It's not illegal everywhere, and who cares about legality? alcohol used to be illegal. now its legal. Is it bad or is it good? who cares.
Not really the same thing though is it? Cause when you're pirating you're taking something others put work into and on which their livelihood depends and not paying them for it.
I don't see any people being fired (edit: in the industry). I do see income for and expansion of game studios. Movies and concerts visited more than ever. What's the problem?
I've pirated old games cause I don't feel like getting the CDs from my attic. Oh well. I also pirate games that I bought on consoles but I want to play on the PC. Fuck you Bethesda, I'm not buying FO3 again. Consider the $60 I paid in DLC your damn payment.
unlike all you other folks, i will openly admit im a pirate and i was one of the downloaders for the witcher 2. (currently have batman arkham city downloading and just recently finished downloading saints row 3, i download my skyrim over a week ago.
However i'd like to say, this fact could not be more true ( 1 download does not equal a sales lost)
If i could not pirate the game i would simply do without it. There are so many titles out there that were to stressful to pirate the game and i still did not buy it, because I dont consider (especially <20hr single player experiences) to be worth 50-60$
then there are games like duke nukem forever where it should be a SIN to even charge money for it, the game is so bad its not even worth being pirated yet paying 60 bucks for it? just wow.
The only games immune to piracy are strong multiplayer ones, such as starcraft 2, call of duty etc etc.. Those games do fine because of the multiplayer being its strongest aspect.
why do i pirate games?
for 1 i know i can get away with it, because i live in a poor 3rd country, piracy is rampant over here, police shop in bootleg dvd stores for the latest movies, nothing will be done about it
and 2, big game developers never ship directly to 3rd world countrys', so anything that comes to us is threw a middle man which means even more expenses than the regular cost of a game.
On December 02 2011 08:27 XerrolAvengerII wrote: I pirated witcher 2 and deus ex human revolution, and after playing some of those games I am hugely thankful that I didn't buy either of them, because if I had I would have raged my head off at how much they irritated me in terms of performance, controls, or mechanics.
Pirating is like free insurance for the gamer... if A) game runs on the machine - respectably B) game is also fun / not-irritating then C) buy the game...
Piracy protects the gaming consumer from bad game designers and distributors by protecting their money and allowing them to invest into the games and companies of worth! The gaming market has been crutching company names and flashy advertising to sell games, even when the quality has been slowly dropping. Piracy is an "abusable" tool that gamers should use to help them decide which game designers they want to encourage...
If you want more good games, you buy the games from good companies. Consider it natural selection to an extent.
And like i mentioned above, Piracy is an abusable tool, it SHOULD be used to inform gamers of quality... although, many people ABUSE it in order to keep unlicensed copies of software.
Nuff said.
Piracy isn't a tool for anything, it's illegal and people need to stop trying to justify stealing.
to copy is not stealing. It's not illegal everywhere, and who cares about legality? alcohol used to be illegal. now its legal. Is it bad or is it good? who cares.
It's stealing IP. You're taking something that belongs to someone else without permission of the owner, and without paying for it. That's stealing by definition.
You could hardly call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's property.
But no, it is not stealing, because the original material does not disappear. The original material and the copies of it are copied.
That's why it's called piracy, but you are still taking someone's property. And do you not understand the concept of intellectual property? I can and will call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's intellectual property, it's the entire concept of programming.
I can't believe how long it took me to read this entire thread, and I consider myself a pretty fast reader. Anyway, my view is that pirating games is wrong, with very few exceptions.
As someone mentioned before, I feel like a sucker for buying what others get for free, because unlike Drone, I have never had the chance to pirate. When i was under 16, my parents bought games for me. When i got older, I could work over the summers at $8.50 an hour to afford the few games I enjoyed. I know I'm lucky to have a great minimum wage and opportunities at a young age, but it's my understanding that most 1st world countries have either a decent minimum wage or collective bargaining rights / industry standards that allow for those without a college degree to get a decent pay.
For those who live in third world countries, countries like australia where the prices for digital goods are blatant insults to the consumer, or those who live alone without a steady job (living with my parents negates cost of living), I understand why you might torrent, but I also suggest, probably ignorantly, that playing too many video games might not be the best hobby. This is because I feel like torrenting does, in fact, hurt the industry.
Elder scrolls began with two buggy, truly mediocre games. However, because people were willing to buy a game that they weren't 100 % sure they would love, the series lives on, and manifests itself in Skyrim, a great (though still buggy -_- ) game. When people say they would not buy a game without pirating it, they're forgetting that, without pirating, they wouldn't be playing it at all, and they would never truly know what they were missing. This excitement can lead to people buying games produced by smaller studios, and their success leads to more, and better, games. It's true that the video game market is doing better than ever, but I can't seem to think of a good game developer that took hold in the market in the last 5 years.
The convenience argument is bs with Steam. You can't honestly say that downloading a game off steam, or ordering it through amazon, is that much tougher than torrenting it. I also don't like the argument "developers only want our money", because, by law, they're obligated to make as much money as possible for their stockholders.
Lastly, I understand piracy can have positive effects. The free week of portal offered by valve was an ingenious way to revive interest in the game, especially with portal 2 being developed. But the idea that playing is a right and paying is optional is just something I don't think I can agree with. Still, please torrent modern warfare, because that series is a joke.
I bought Skyrim a week after it came out, went to the midnight release with my buddies, and didn't buy the game then because I didn't know how good it would be. I played all night with my friends and saved some money. It wasn't bad, and didn't require me to pirate the game.
On December 02 2011 09:08 MattBarry wrote: I've pirated old games cause I don't feel like getting the CDs from my attic. Oh well. I also pirate games that I bought on consoles but I want to play on the PC. Fuck you Bethesda, I'm not buying FO3 again. Consider the $60 I paid in DLC your damn payment.
I don't really think what you're doing is the same as pirating. Sure you may be getting the game from the same source as a pirate, but you've paid for the IP already. If I were you I wouldn't feel bad about it, and I've been one of the more stubborn/goodie-two-shoes in this thread.
On December 02 2011 08:27 XerrolAvengerII wrote: I pirated witcher 2 and deus ex human revolution, and after playing some of those games I am hugely thankful that I didn't buy either of them, because if I had I would have raged my head off at how much they irritated me in terms of performance, controls, or mechanics.
Pirating is like free insurance for the gamer... if A) game runs on the machine - respectably B) game is also fun / not-irritating then C) buy the game...
Piracy protects the gaming consumer from bad game designers and distributors by protecting their money and allowing them to invest into the games and companies of worth! The gaming market has been crutching company names and flashy advertising to sell games, even when the quality has been slowly dropping. Piracy is an "abusable" tool that gamers should use to help them decide which game designers they want to encourage...
If you want more good games, you buy the games from good companies. Consider it natural selection to an extent.
And like i mentioned above, Piracy is an abusable tool, it SHOULD be used to inform gamers of quality... although, many people ABUSE it in order to keep unlicensed copies of software.
Nuff said.
Piracy isn't a tool for anything, it's illegal and people need to stop trying to justify stealing.
to copy is not stealing. It's not illegal everywhere, and who cares about legality? alcohol used to be illegal. now its legal. Is it bad or is it good? who cares.
It's stealing IP. You're taking something that belongs to someone else without permission of the owner, and without paying for it. That's stealing by definition.
You could hardly call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's property.
But no, it is not stealing, because the original material does not disappear. The original material and the copies of it are copied.
That's why it's called piracy, but you are still taking someone's property. And do you not understand the concept of intellectual property? I can and will call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's intellectual property, it's the entire concept of programming.
I am not taking property. The property does not disappear and is not damaged in any way.
I do not understand the concept of intellectual property. I understand what you mean with it, but I do not believe in it. What good does it do? How can intellectuality be property? I simply do not believe someone can own such a thing, but then, I do not believe in our "society" of today, I do not believe in it's workings and this idea of property is one of them. I believe in an enlightened society, and not in this one.
That's all I wanted to say, I'm not going to continue the discussion because there is nothing left to say.
On December 02 2011 08:27 XerrolAvengerII wrote: I pirated witcher 2 and deus ex human revolution, and after playing some of those games I am hugely thankful that I didn't buy either of them, because if I had I would have raged my head off at how much they irritated me in terms of performance, controls, or mechanics.
Pirating is like free insurance for the gamer... if A) game runs on the machine - respectably B) game is also fun / not-irritating then C) buy the game...
Piracy protects the gaming consumer from bad game designers and distributors by protecting their money and allowing them to invest into the games and companies of worth! The gaming market has been crutching company names and flashy advertising to sell games, even when the quality has been slowly dropping. Piracy is an "abusable" tool that gamers should use to help them decide which game designers they want to encourage...
If you want more good games, you buy the games from good companies. Consider it natural selection to an extent.
And like i mentioned above, Piracy is an abusable tool, it SHOULD be used to inform gamers of quality... although, many people ABUSE it in order to keep unlicensed copies of software.
Nuff said.
Piracy isn't a tool for anything, it's illegal and people need to stop trying to justify stealing.
to copy is not stealing. It's not illegal everywhere, and who cares about legality? alcohol used to be illegal. now its legal. Is it bad or is it good? who cares.
It's stealing IP. You're taking something that belongs to someone else without permission of the owner, and without paying for it. That's stealing by definition.
You could hardly call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's property.
But no, it is not stealing, because the original material does not disappear. The original material and the copies of it are copied.
That's why it's called piracy, but you are still taking someone's property. And do you not understand the concept of intellectual property? I can and will call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's intellectual property, it's the entire concept of programming.
I am not taking property. The property does not disappear and is not damaged in any way.
I do not understand the concept of intellectual property. I understand what you mean with it, but I do not believe in it. What good does it do? How can intellectuality be property? I simply do not believe someone can own such a thing, but then, I do not believe in our "society" of today, I do not believe in it's workings and this idea of property is one of them. I believe in an enlightened society, and not in this one.
That's all I wanted to say, I'm not going to continue the discussion because there is nothing left to say.
That would make perfect sense if games didn't cost money to produce. You can't expect quality games to come from some dude who just makes games in his free time. Or even a few friends getting together to work on a game. A modern game cost A LOT to make. And companies need to be reimbursed for their efforts. It doesn't matter what you believe. What you believe doesn't fit practically into our economic system. Call our economic system stupid if you wish but that doesn't change the fact that you're damaging people who are just trying to make a living doing what they love.
On December 02 2011 09:12 jinixxx123 wrote: If i could not pirate the game i would simply do without it. There are so many titles out there that were to stressful to pirate the game and i still did not buy it, because I dont consider (especially <20hr single player experiences) to be worth 50-60$
This justification is a farce. Game companies sell their games at prices that guarantee them the largest net profits. If you don't want to pay 50+ for a game, wait a year and it'll be 30. If you don't want to pay that much then you shouldn't have the game. Making choices on how I spend my disposable income is an important part of life. Developing video games is a huge investment these days, companies that provide you with your entertainment have earned your money.
On December 02 2011 08:27 XerrolAvengerII wrote: I pirated witcher 2 and deus ex human revolution, and after playing some of those games I am hugely thankful that I didn't buy either of them, because if I had I would have raged my head off at how much they irritated me in terms of performance, controls, or mechanics.
Pirating is like free insurance for the gamer... if A) game runs on the machine - respectably B) game is also fun / not-irritating then C) buy the game...
Piracy protects the gaming consumer from bad game designers and distributors by protecting their money and allowing them to invest into the games and companies of worth! The gaming market has been crutching company names and flashy advertising to sell games, even when the quality has been slowly dropping. Piracy is an "abusable" tool that gamers should use to help them decide which game designers they want to encourage...
If you want more good games, you buy the games from good companies. Consider it natural selection to an extent.
And like i mentioned above, Piracy is an abusable tool, it SHOULD be used to inform gamers of quality... although, many people ABUSE it in order to keep unlicensed copies of software.
Nuff said.
Piracy isn't a tool for anything, it's illegal and people need to stop trying to justify stealing.
to copy is not stealing. It's not illegal everywhere, and who cares about legality? alcohol used to be illegal. now its legal. Is it bad or is it good? who cares.
It's stealing IP. You're taking something that belongs to someone else without permission of the owner, and without paying for it. That's stealing by definition.
You could hardly call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's property.
But no, it is not stealing, because the original material does not disappear. The original material and the copies of it are copied.
That's why it's called piracy, but you are still taking someone's property. And do you not understand the concept of intellectual property? I can and will call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's intellectual property, it's the entire concept of programming.
I am not taking property. The property does not disappear and is not damaged in any way.
I do not understand the concept of intellectual property. I understand what you mean with it, but I do not believe in it. What good does it do? How can intellectuality be property? I simply do not believe someone can own such a thing, but then, I do not believe in our "society" of today, I do not believe in it's workings and this idea of property is one of them. I believe in an enlightened society, and not in this one.
That's all I wanted to say, I'm not going to continue the discussion because there is nothing left to say.
Edited out my worthless post to add something constructive.
So you're saying if you wrote a book, you'd have no problem with me taking it, copying it, and selling it under my name? After all, you don't believe that you own the book that you wrote.
On December 02 2011 08:27 XerrolAvengerII wrote: I pirated witcher 2 and deus ex human revolution, and after playing some of those games I am hugely thankful that I didn't buy either of them, because if I had I would have raged my head off at how much they irritated me in terms of performance, controls, or mechanics.
Pirating is like free insurance for the gamer... if A) game runs on the machine - respectably B) game is also fun / not-irritating then C) buy the game...
Piracy protects the gaming consumer from bad game designers and distributors by protecting their money and allowing them to invest into the games and companies of worth! The gaming market has been crutching company names and flashy advertising to sell games, even when the quality has been slowly dropping. Piracy is an "abusable" tool that gamers should use to help them decide which game designers they want to encourage...
If you want more good games, you buy the games from good companies. Consider it natural selection to an extent.
And like i mentioned above, Piracy is an abusable tool, it SHOULD be used to inform gamers of quality... although, many people ABUSE it in order to keep unlicensed copies of software.
Nuff said.
Piracy isn't a tool for anything, it's illegal and people need to stop trying to justify stealing.
to copy is not stealing. It's not illegal everywhere, and who cares about legality? alcohol used to be illegal. now its legal. Is it bad or is it good? who cares.
It's stealing IP. You're taking something that belongs to someone else without permission of the owner, and without paying for it. That's stealing by definition.
You could hardly call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's property.
But no, it is not stealing, because the original material does not disappear. The original material and the copies of it are copied.
That's why it's called piracy, but you are still taking someone's property. And do you not understand the concept of intellectual property? I can and will call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's intellectual property, it's the entire concept of programming.
I am not taking property. The property does not disappear and is not damaged in any way.
I do not understand the concept of intellectual property. I understand what you mean with it, but I do not believe in it. What good does it do? How can intellectuality be property? I simply do not believe someone can own such a thing, but then, I do not believe in our "society" of today, I do not believe in it's workings and this idea of property is one of them. I believe in an enlightened society, and not in this one.
That's all I wanted to say, I'm not going to continue the discussion because there is nothing left to say.
Someone's hard work, money and effort has gone in to inventing that intellectual property. The reason they do this is to sell the use of that intellectual property for the purposes of entertainment.
Think of Intellectual Property as if it is a service.
You can pay someone to wash your car or mow your lawn. Technically they aren't giving you any physical "thing".
Does this mean you also consider that not paying someone who provided you with a service to not be stealing? Do you consider it morally correct to not pay someone who provided you with their hard work and effort?
With Intellectual Property (in this case video games) you're paying someone for the time, effort and money they have invested into creating it in return for the benefits (entertainment) of using that product.
On December 02 2011 08:27 XerrolAvengerII wrote: I pirated witcher 2 and deus ex human revolution, and after playing some of those games I am hugely thankful that I didn't buy either of them, because if I had I would have raged my head off at how much they irritated me in terms of performance, controls, or mechanics.
Pirating is like free insurance for the gamer... if A) game runs on the machine - respectably B) game is also fun / not-irritating then C) buy the game...
Piracy protects the gaming consumer from bad game designers and distributors by protecting their money and allowing them to invest into the games and companies of worth! The gaming market has been crutching company names and flashy advertising to sell games, even when the quality has been slowly dropping. Piracy is an "abusable" tool that gamers should use to help them decide which game designers they want to encourage...
If you want more good games, you buy the games from good companies. Consider it natural selection to an extent.
And like i mentioned above, Piracy is an abusable tool, it SHOULD be used to inform gamers of quality... although, many people ABUSE it in order to keep unlicensed copies of software.
Nuff said.
Piracy isn't a tool for anything, it's illegal and people need to stop trying to justify stealing.
to copy is not stealing. It's not illegal everywhere, and who cares about legality? alcohol used to be illegal. now its legal. Is it bad or is it good? who cares.
It's stealing IP. You're taking something that belongs to someone else without permission of the owner, and without paying for it. That's stealing by definition.
You could hardly call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's property.
But no, it is not stealing, because the original material does not disappear. The original material and the copies of it are copied.
That's why it's called piracy, but you are still taking someone's property. And do you not understand the concept of intellectual property? I can and will call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's intellectual property, it's the entire concept of programming.
I am not taking property. The property does not disappear and is not damaged in any way.
I do not understand the concept of intellectual property. I understand what you mean with it, but I do not believe in it. What good does it do? How can intellectuality be property? I simply do not believe someone can own such a thing, but then, I do not believe in our "society" of today, I do not believe in it's workings and this idea of property is one of them. I believe in an enlightened society, and not in this one.
That's all I wanted to say, I'm not going to continue the discussion because there is nothing left to say.
Someone's hard work, money and effort has gone in to inventing that intellectual property. The reason they do this is to sell the use of that intellectual property for the purposes of entertainment.
Think of Intellectual Property as if it is a service.
You can pay someone to wash your car or mow your lawn. Technically they aren't giving you any physical "thing".
Does this mean you also consider that not paying someone who provided you with a service to not be stealing? Do you consider it morally correct to not pay someone who provided you with their hard work and effort?
With Intellectual Property (in this case video games) you're paying someone for the time, effort and money they have invested into creating it in return for the benefits (entertainment) of using that product.
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Piracy is not stealing it is copyright infringement which is a different thing. It would be more like if I went to an art gallery and took a perfect scan of a painting and then hung that scan on my wall saving me the money from having to buy the painting. The owner in this case loses nothing except a potential sale (although I may buy it anyway).
Anyway this isn't really what people should be focusing on piracy can't be fought with traditional means. Companies just need to find innovative ways to win customers back from the pirates.
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
The potential sale is lost. That is why piracy is stealing. It isn't about a physical item, it is about revenue. That is why every time someone says "making a copy isn't stealing" I want to punch them in the face because the logic is so bad.
Piracy is not stealing it is copyright infringement which is a different thing. It would be more like if I went to an art gallery and took a perfect scan of a painting and then hung that scan on my wall saving me the money from having to buy the painting. The owner in this case loses nothing except a potential sale (although I may buy it anyway).
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
I'm very different from many of you, as I download games quite frequently. Honestly though, it doesn't hurt my conscious at all. I buy games which I enjoy with other people, and games which i would not, repeat, WOULD NOT buy in any circumstance (for example, skyrim or witcher 2), i just download. Sure, I may not deserve these games because I didn't buy it, but I don't care, and many others don't.
Having said that, once I have my own place and job, I look forward to having a physical collection of games that I enjoy, which I intend to buy.
Very few realize that a pirated product does not equal to a lost sale. Not all piraters would buy either way.
A second hand sale is considered a bigger loss than a pirate since the game developers/publishers get no money and it's a sale lost for them.
That said I've bought around 8 games last two years, pirated 6 out of those. I don't buy a game unless I know it is good because I don't care if the multimillion companies cry as if they're dying, I'm a poor student and I deserve to know if the product I am buying is any good or not.
Do I think piracy is a huge problem? For some game companies yes, for the innovative and small businesses yes. For the huge companies no, gaming has gone past movies in money for quite some while if I am not mistaken so there is no huge problem for the industry here. It's just money lobbyism most of the time. What is worse is that countries actually bend to their will and start chasing smalltime "crime" comitters and charging them for retarded sums. Thankfully it's impossible to be judged guilty of piracy unless you admit (or if you have the bad luck of living in a more police-like state, sorry americans but your law system rather condemns than frees a person [EDIT: By this I mean a law principle of where if doupt of guilt is present most western systems would rather free and let some guilty people go free rather than condemn a innocent, whereas some systems rather condemn more and some innocent to stop the guilty from going free]).
I think it should be illegal I do not think countries should waste time and money on chasing piracy when there are so much worse crimes being committed.
Corporations are the ones that need to get creative to stop piracy. Their whining and crying to governments are not gonna help because there is nothing they can do.
I personally have no idea what the corporations can do but I'm sure their 10 figure salaried bosses can come up with something more original then "Whaaaa-Whaaaa"
On December 02 2011 11:45 Orcasgt24 wrote: Corporations are the ones that need to get creative to stop piracy. Their whining and crying to governments are not gonna help because there is nothing they can do.
I personally have no idea what the corporations can do but I'm sure their 10 figure salaried bosses can come up with something more original then "Whaaaa-Whaaaa"
Civilians are the ones that need to stop getting mugged. Their pleas for mercy are annoying and they should just carry guns or something. /sarcasm. To be clear, game developers have tried everything from checksums and parity counts that test for game modification to infamous DRM protection. In the end, this results in glitches and problems for honest players, which is yet another way pirates affect the average game consumer. I agree that game developers haven't explored all their options yet but don't act like corporations deserve to be stolen from unless they can completely prevent it.
On December 02 2011 11:28 noobcakes wrote: I'm very different from many of you, as I download games quite frequently. Honestly though, it doesn't hurt my conscious at all. I buy games which I enjoy with other people, and games which i would not, repeat, WOULD NOT buy in any circumstance (for example, skyrim or witcher 2), i just download. Sure, I may not deserve these games because I didn't buy it, but I don't care, and many others don't.
Having said that, once I have my own place and job, I look forward to having a physical collection of games that I enjoy, which I intend to buy.
You guys might not believe me, but im f0r3@l.
First of all, t@lk1ng l1k3 di5 makes you look stupid. Stop it.
Second of all. Your logic is stupid. If you plan to play a game, it is worth your money. If you plan to pirate it, it was good enough for you to play, and therefore good enough for you to buy. If it's really worth the time investment to play, go spend money on it. It's not a hard concept.
On December 02 2011 08:41 H0i wrote: The internet allows us to share ideas, and piracy is just a name for the effect of this sharing of ideas on our outdated societal systems, monetary, economical, political, etc.
Unfortunately we still live with outdated systems that cannot keep up with other developments, so for now what we have to do is simple. Support those developers who deserve it.
Babby's first political post.
If you want to make a statement, don't play the games at all. The fact that you're going to play a game means that the developers know it's being played, even if you don't pay for it. As the OP shows, there is way to track those things.
If you're really worried about making a statement about what games you like and don't like, buy the games you like and don't pirate or buy the games you don't like.
Again, as I posted above, if a game is worth you playing it, it's worth supporting. Don't pirate it, play it all the way through, and call it shit. That type of action is the cancer that's killing gaming.
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
A potential sale is worth nothing, it's just speculation about a sale.
If I "pirate" a game only to find out that I don't like it, am I bad? Games I downloaded and deleted: Fallout 3, Fallout:New Vegas, From Dust, FEAR 3, Duke Nukem Forever, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Island, Borderlands.
Most people will say that's reasonable, somewhat fair at least. However, did they lose sales from me? Well sadly yes they did. I would have bought at least some of these games if I hadn't had the opportunity to acquire the game "illegally" to test them. For instance, I was going to buy Fallout 3 because everyone likes it and plenty of my friends were telling me it's awesome. I "stole" it, played 3-4 hours and deleted it. But I think it's a good thing that they lost that sale - it really is. At least it keeps a few people from suckering into games they don't like... and try to get a refund for a PC game, lol, not happening.
Now my question is, not necessarily to you Manifesto but I would like to know what you think, how wrong is it of me to do that, provided that if I really do like a game, I will buy it like I did with Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and such. On the other hand, sometimes I'll play 5-10 hours of a game I don't like so much only to end up quitting after I decide it's not worth my time. That's kind of a long time to play "for free".
Am I a thief, a bad person altogether or am I at least somewhat fair in my usage of "illegal" material?
On December 02 2011 08:27 XerrolAvengerII wrote: I pirated witcher 2 and deus ex human revolution, and after playing some of those games I am hugely thankful that I didn't buy either of them, because if I had I would have raged my head off at how much they irritated me in terms of performance, controls, or mechanics.
Pirating is like free insurance for the gamer... if A) game runs on the machine - respectably B) game is also fun / not-irritating then C) buy the game...
Piracy protects the gaming consumer from bad game designers and distributors by protecting their money and allowing them to invest into the games and companies of worth! The gaming market has been crutching company names and flashy advertising to sell games, even when the quality has been slowly dropping. Piracy is an "abusable" tool that gamers should use to help them decide which game designers they want to encourage...
If you want more good games, you buy the games from good companies. Consider it natural selection to an extent.
And like i mentioned above, Piracy is an abusable tool, it SHOULD be used to inform gamers of quality... although, many people ABUSE it in order to keep unlicensed copies of software.
Nuff said.
Piracy isn't a tool for anything, it's illegal and people need to stop trying to justify stealing.
to copy is not stealing. It's not illegal everywhere, and who cares about legality? alcohol used to be illegal. now its legal. Is it bad or is it good? who cares.
It's stealing IP. You're taking something that belongs to someone else without permission of the owner, and without paying for it. That's stealing by definition.
You could hardly call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's property.
But no, it is not stealing, because the original material does not disappear. The original material and the copies of it are copied.
That's why it's called piracy, but you are still taking someone's property. And do you not understand the concept of intellectual property? I can and will call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's intellectual property, it's the entire concept of programming.
I am not taking property. The property does not disappear and is not damaged in any way.
I do not understand the concept of intellectual property. I understand what you mean with it, but I do not believe in it. What good does it do? How can intellectuality be property? I simply do not believe someone can own such a thing, but then, I do not believe in our "society" of today, I do not believe in it's workings and this idea of property is one of them. I believe in an enlightened society, and not in this one.
That's all I wanted to say, I'm not going to continue the discussion because there is nothing left to say.
Someone's hard work, money and effort has gone in to inventing that intellectual property. The reason they do this is to sell the use of that intellectual property for the purposes of entertainment.
Think of Intellectual Property as if it is a service.
You can pay someone to wash your car or mow your lawn. Technically they aren't giving you any physical "thing".
Does this mean you also consider that not paying someone who provided you with a service to not be stealing? Do you consider it morally correct to not pay someone who provided you with their hard work and effort?
With Intellectual Property (in this case video games) you're paying someone for the time, effort and money they have invested into creating it in return for the benefits (entertainment) of using that product.
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Piracy is not stealing it is copyright infringement which is a different thing. It would be more like if I went to an art gallery and took a perfect scan of a painting and then hung that scan on my wall saving me the money from having to buy the painting. The owner in this case loses nothing except a potential sale (although I may buy it anyway).
Anyway this isn't really what people should be focusing on piracy can't be fought with traditional means. Companies just need to find innovative ways to win customers back from the pirates.
What? The developers spent more time building the game than the car washer did, so that's a load of crap. They put time into making the idea, developing the system, making the game, and marketing it. You are stealing that time and energy by not paying.
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
A potential sale is worth nothing, it's just speculation about a sale.
If I "pirate" a game only to find out that I don't like it, am I bad? Games I downloaded and deleted: Fallout 3, Fallout:New Vegas, From Dust, FEAR 3, Duke Nukem Forever, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Island, Borderlands.
Most people will say that's reasonable, somewhat fair at least. However, did they lose sales from me? Well sadly yes they did. I would have bought at least some of these games if I hadn't had the opportunity to acquire the game "illegally" to test them. For instance, I was going to buy Fallout 3 because everyone likes it and plenty of my friends were telling me it's awesome. I "stole" it, played 3-4 hours and deleted it. But I think it's a good thing that they lost that sale - it really is. At least it keeps a few people from suckering into games they don't like... and try to get a refund for a PC game, lol, not happening.
Now my question is, not necessarily to you Manifesto but I would like to know what you think, how wrong is it of me to do that, provided that if I really do like a game, I will buy it like I did with Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and such. On the other hand, sometimes I'll play 5-10 hours of a game I don't like so much only to end up quitting after I decide it's not worth my time. That's kind of a long time to play "for free".
Am I a thief, a bad person altogether or am I at least somewhat fair in my usage of "illegal" material?
How many times does this thread have to say it? There are many other ways to try out games without pirating them. Rent from multiple places, buy and return/trade, borrow from a friend, play demos. If you're too lazy to do any of that, you don't get a say in the discussion, you're just taking the easy road because you don't want to put time and energy into it like anyone else.
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
A potential sale is worth nothing, it's just speculation about a sale.
If I "pirate" a game only to find out that I don't like it, am I bad? Games I downloaded and deleted: Fallout 3, Fallout:New Vegas, From Dust, FEAR 3, Duke Nukem Forever, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Island, Borderlands.
Most people will say that's reasonable, somewhat fair at least. However, did they lose sales from me? Well sadly yes they did. I would have bought at least some of these games if I hadn't had the opportunity to acquire the game "illegally" to test them. For instance, I was going to buy Fallout 3 because everyone likes it and plenty of my friends were telling me it's awesome. I "stole" it, played 3-4 hours and deleted it. But I think it's a good thing that they lost that sale - it really is. At least it keeps a few people from suckering into games they don't like... and try to get a refund for a PC game, lol, not happening.
Now my question is, not necessarily to you Manifesto but I would like to know what you think, how wrong is it of me to do that, provided that if I really do like a game, I will buy it like I did with Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and such. On the other hand, sometimes I'll play 5-10 hours of a game I don't like so much only to end up quitting after I decide it's not worth my time. That's kind of a long time to play "for free".
Am I a thief, a bad person altogether or am I at least somewhat fair in my usage of "illegal" material?
Liking or disliking something you've acquired and used illegally has no bearing whatsoever. That's what demos are for.
On December 02 2011 11:45 Orcasgt24 wrote: Corporations are the ones that need to get creative to stop piracy. Their whining and crying to governments are not gonna help because there is nothing they can do.
I personally have no idea what the corporations can do but I'm sure their 10 figure salaried bosses can come up with something more original then "Whaaaa-Whaaaa"
It's not the bosses, but the employees that you need to be worried about. Programmers, developers, and artists get waaaay less salary working in the gaming industry than they would in any other job in their field. They take pay cuts to provide a fun game for you to play, and stealing it is just going to make them want to leave or force them to leave.
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
A potential sale is worth nothing, it's just speculation about a sale.
If I "pirate" a game only to find out that I don't like it, am I bad? Games I downloaded and deleted: Fallout 3, Fallout:New Vegas, From Dust, FEAR 3, Duke Nukem Forever, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Island, Borderlands.
Most people will say that's reasonable, somewhat fair at least. However, did they lose sales from me? Well sadly yes they did. I would have bought at least some of these games if I hadn't had the opportunity to acquire the game "illegally" to test them. For instance, I was going to buy Fallout 3 because everyone likes it and plenty of my friends were telling me it's awesome. I "stole" it, played 3-4 hours and deleted it. But I think it's a good thing that they lost that sale - it really is. At least it keeps a few people from suckering into games they don't like... and try to get a refund for a PC game, lol, not happening.
Now my question is, not necessarily to you Manifesto but I would like to know what you think, how wrong is it of me to do that, provided that if I really do like a game, I will buy it like I did with Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and such. On the other hand, sometimes I'll play 5-10 hours of a game I don't like so much only to end up quitting after I decide it's not worth my time. That's kind of a long time to play "for free".
Am I a thief, a bad person altogether or am I at least somewhat fair in my usage of "illegal" material?
I don't know if you are a bad person, but yes, you are a thief. It is not up to you to determine how a company should release their product. While I agree with you that "try before you buy" models are far superior, that is the choice of the company. Some believe that releasing a demo encourages people to buy a full game, while others might think it will hurt sales. You are taking that choice out of their hands via illegal distribution.
And as for the whole "Ill buy it if I like it" argument, well, I don't have any numbers but my life experience tells me that that situation is microscopic compared to people who just keep the game.
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
A potential sale is worth nothing, it's just speculation about a sale.
If I "pirate" a game only to find out that I don't like it, am I bad? Games I downloaded and deleted: Fallout 3, Fallout:New Vegas, From Dust, FEAR 3, Duke Nukem Forever, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Island, Borderlands.
Most people will say that's reasonable, somewhat fair at least. However, did they lose sales from me? Well sadly yes they did. I would have bought at least some of these games if I hadn't had the opportunity to acquire the game "illegally" to test them. For instance, I was going to buy Fallout 3 because everyone likes it and plenty of my friends were telling me it's awesome. I "stole" it, played 3-4 hours and deleted it. But I think it's a good thing that they lost that sale - it really is. At least it keeps a few people from suckering into games they don't like... and try to get a refund for a PC game, lol, not happening.
Now my question is, not necessarily to you Manifesto but I would like to know what you think, how wrong is it of me to do that, provided that if I really do like a game, I will buy it like I did with Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and such. On the other hand, sometimes I'll play 5-10 hours of a game I don't like so much only to end up quitting after I decide it's not worth my time. That's kind of a long time to play "for free".
Am I a thief, a bad person altogether or am I at least somewhat fair in my usage of "illegal" material?
How many times does this thread have to say it? There are many other ways to try out games without pirating them. Rent from multiple places, buy and return/trade, borrow from a friend, play demos. If you're too lazy to do any of that, you don't get a say in the discussion, you're just taking the easy road because you don't want to put time and energy into it like anyone else.
So if I borrow a game from my friend, play through the whole thing, and return it without ever having bought it, am I doing something illegal?
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
A potential sale is worth nothing, it's just speculation about a sale.
If I "pirate" a game only to find out that I don't like it, am I bad? Games I downloaded and deleted: Fallout 3, Fallout:New Vegas, From Dust, FEAR 3, Duke Nukem Forever, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Island, Borderlands.
Most people will say that's reasonable, somewhat fair at least. However, did they lose sales from me? Well sadly yes they did. I would have bought at least some of these games if I hadn't had the opportunity to acquire the game "illegally" to test them. For instance, I was going to buy Fallout 3 because everyone likes it and plenty of my friends were telling me it's awesome. I "stole" it, played 3-4 hours and deleted it. But I think it's a good thing that they lost that sale - it really is. At least it keeps a few people from suckering into games they don't like... and try to get a refund for a PC game, lol, not happening.
Now my question is, not necessarily to you Manifesto but I would like to know what you think, how wrong is it of me to do that, provided that if I really do like a game, I will buy it like I did with Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and such. On the other hand, sometimes I'll play 5-10 hours of a game I don't like so much only to end up quitting after I decide it's not worth my time. That's kind of a long time to play "for free".
Am I a thief, a bad person altogether or am I at least somewhat fair in my usage of "illegal" material?
How many times does this thread have to say it? There are many other ways to try out games without pirating them. Rent from multiple places, buy and return/trade, borrow from a friend, play demos. If you're too lazy to do any of that, you don't get a say in the discussion, you're just taking the easy road because you don't want to put time and energy into it like anyone else.
Don't be ridiculous... your idea might work for consoles and nothing else.
-Not a single place will rent BF3 or any PC game for that matter -Buy and return is just shitty for the retailer and is dishonest, plus they won't accept a PC game return -Buy and trade is impossible for PC games and would cut the price you paid in a half if not more -My friends don't have every game, and some games are linked to steam accounts -Not all games have demos
I fail to see the difference between borrowing from a friend and borrowing from a dude in the internet anyway, since I'm using it fairly, the end result is the same. I try the game and I buy it if I like it.
So yes I take the easy way. Why the fuck would I not if the only difference is that in the end I won't make the mistake of purchasing a game I won't like?
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
A potential sale is worth nothing, it's just speculation about a sale.
If I "pirate" a game only to find out that I don't like it, am I bad? Games I downloaded and deleted: Fallout 3, Fallout:New Vegas, From Dust, FEAR 3, Duke Nukem Forever, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Island, Borderlands.
Most people will say that's reasonable, somewhat fair at least. However, did they lose sales from me? Well sadly yes they did. I would have bought at least some of these games if I hadn't had the opportunity to acquire the game "illegally" to test them. For instance, I was going to buy Fallout 3 because everyone likes it and plenty of my friends were telling me it's awesome. I "stole" it, played 3-4 hours and deleted it. But I think it's a good thing that they lost that sale - it really is. At least it keeps a few people from suckering into games they don't like... and try to get a refund for a PC game, lol, not happening.
Now my question is, not necessarily to you Manifesto but I would like to know what you think, how wrong is it of me to do that, provided that if I really do like a game, I will buy it like I did with Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and such. On the other hand, sometimes I'll play 5-10 hours of a game I don't like so much only to end up quitting after I decide it's not worth my time. That's kind of a long time to play "for free".
Am I a thief, a bad person altogether or am I at least somewhat fair in my usage of "illegal" material?
How many times does this thread have to say it? There are many other ways to try out games without pirating them. Rent from multiple places, buy and return/trade, borrow from a friend, play demos. If you're too lazy to do any of that, you don't get a say in the discussion, you're just taking the easy road because you don't want to put time and energy into it like anyone else.
So if I borrow a game from my friend, play through the whole thing, and return it without ever having bought it, am I doing something illegal?
There is still only one physical copy. By you having it, he can't play it. If there was only one pirated version of a game out there and when one person was playing it, no one else in the world could, it would be a different thing. But it's not. That disc is now your friend's property to do what he will with. The data isn't. If he (or you) takes it off and gives it away, it's illegal. Only having one copy of it is perfectly legal.
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
The potential sale is lost. That is why piracy is stealing. It isn't about a physical item, it is about revenue. That is why every time someone says "making a copy isn't stealing" I want to punch them in the face because the logic is so bad.
Piracy is not stealing it is copyright infringement which is a different thing. It would be more like if I went to an art gallery and took a perfect scan of a painting and then hung that scan on my wall saving me the money from having to buy the painting. The owner in this case loses nothing except a potential sale (although I may buy it anyway).
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
Who says someone wont buy something because they pirated it? That logic is no better than what you're upset about. Piracy isn't defined as stealing because it isn't. You can try to word it as if it is all you want, but it never has been and never will be.
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
A potential sale is worth nothing, it's just speculation about a sale.
If I "pirate" a game only to find out that I don't like it, am I bad? Games I downloaded and deleted: Fallout 3, Fallout:New Vegas, From Dust, FEAR 3, Duke Nukem Forever, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Island, Borderlands.
Most people will say that's reasonable, somewhat fair at least. However, did they lose sales from me? Well sadly yes they did. I would have bought at least some of these games if I hadn't had the opportunity to acquire the game "illegally" to test them. For instance, I was going to buy Fallout 3 because everyone likes it and plenty of my friends were telling me it's awesome. I "stole" it, played 3-4 hours and deleted it. But I think it's a good thing that they lost that sale - it really is. At least it keeps a few people from suckering into games they don't like... and try to get a refund for a PC game, lol, not happening.
Now my question is, not necessarily to you Manifesto but I would like to know what you think, how wrong is it of me to do that, provided that if I really do like a game, I will buy it like I did with Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and such. On the other hand, sometimes I'll play 5-10 hours of a game I don't like so much only to end up quitting after I decide it's not worth my time. That's kind of a long time to play "for free".
Am I a thief, a bad person altogether or am I at least somewhat fair in my usage of "illegal" material?
How many times does this thread have to say it? There are many other ways to try out games without pirating them. Rent from multiple places, buy and return/trade, borrow from a friend, play demos. If you're too lazy to do any of that, you don't get a say in the discussion, you're just taking the easy road because you don't want to put time and energy into it like anyone else.
Don't be ridiculous... your idea might work for consoles and nothing else.
-Not a single place will rent BF3 or any PC game for that matter -Buy and return is just shitty for the retailer and is dishonest, plus they won't accept a PC game return -Buy and trade is impossible for PC games and would cut the price you paid in a half if not more -My friends don't have every game, and some games are linked to steam accounts -Not all games have demos
I fail to see the difference between borrowing from a friend and borrowing from a dude in the internet anyway, since I'm using it fairly, the end result is the same. I try the game and I buy it if I like it.
So yes I take the easy way. Why the fuck would I not if the only difference is that in the end I won't make the mistake of purchasing a game I won't like?
Read:
There is still only one physical copy. By you having it, he can't play it. If there was only one pirated version of a game out there and when one person was playing it, no one else in the world could, it would be a different thing. But it's not. That disc is now your friend's property to do what he will with. The data isn't. If he (or you) takes it off and gives it away, it's illegal. Only having one copy of it is perfectly legal.
No. Borrowing and pirating are not the same, don't pretend they are.
As for PC games, well tough, you can't rent/return it, but that doesn't justify pirating. I can't rent or buy a classic Camaro, but that doesn't justify stealing one.
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
A potential sale is worth nothing, it's just speculation about a sale.
If I "pirate" a game only to find out that I don't like it, am I bad? Games I downloaded and deleted: Fallout 3, Fallout:New Vegas, From Dust, FEAR 3, Duke Nukem Forever, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Island, Borderlands.
Most people will say that's reasonable, somewhat fair at least. However, did they lose sales from me? Well sadly yes they did. I would have bought at least some of these games if I hadn't had the opportunity to acquire the game "illegally" to test them. For instance, I was going to buy Fallout 3 because everyone likes it and plenty of my friends were telling me it's awesome. I "stole" it, played 3-4 hours and deleted it. But I think it's a good thing that they lost that sale - it really is. At least it keeps a few people from suckering into games they don't like... and try to get a refund for a PC game, lol, not happening.
Now my question is, not necessarily to you Manifesto but I would like to know what you think, how wrong is it of me to do that, provided that if I really do like a game, I will buy it like I did with Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and such. On the other hand, sometimes I'll play 5-10 hours of a game I don't like so much only to end up quitting after I decide it's not worth my time. That's kind of a long time to play "for free".
Am I a thief, a bad person altogether or am I at least somewhat fair in my usage of "illegal" material?
How many times does this thread have to say it? There are many other ways to try out games without pirating them. Rent from multiple places, buy and return/trade, borrow from a friend, play demos. If you're too lazy to do any of that, you don't get a say in the discussion, you're just taking the easy road because you don't want to put time and energy into it like anyone else.
So if I borrow a game from my friend, play through the whole thing, and return it without ever having bought it, am I doing something illegal?
There is still only one physical copy. By you having it, he can't play it. If there was only one pirated version of a game out there and when one person was playing it, no one else in the world could, it would be a different thing. But it's not. That disc is now your friend's property to do what he will with. The data isn't. If he (or you) takes it off and gives it away, it's illegal. Only having one copy of it is perfectly legal.
See, I'm glad you brought this up. My internet service, my computer, my electrons, and all of the electricity that I pay for, are my property, to do with what I will. Now what I might do, for a variety of reasons, is acquire a copy of some new song. If you try to stop me, you're limiting what I can do with MY property, and saying that my physical property rights are inferior to the intellectual property rights of the music industry. Is that right?
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
The potential sale is lost. That is why piracy is stealing. It isn't about a physical item, it is about revenue. That is why every time someone says "making a copy isn't stealing" I want to punch them in the face because the logic is so bad.
Piracy is not stealing it is copyright infringement which is a different thing. It would be more like if I went to an art gallery and took a perfect scan of a painting and then hung that scan on my wall saving me the money from having to buy the painting. The owner in this case loses nothing except a potential sale (although I may buy it anyway).
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
Who says someone wont buy something because they pirated it? That logic is no better than what you're upset about. Piracy isn't defined as stealing because it isn't. You can try to word it as if it is all you want, but it never has been and never will be.
Who says they will? Every pirate tries to make themselves out as the "white knight" that never plays a pirated version for more than a few hours and then deletes/buys it, but that's maybe only 1% of pirates out there.
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
The potential sale is lost. That is why piracy is stealing. It isn't about a physical item, it is about revenue. That is why every time someone says "making a copy isn't stealing" I want to punch them in the face because the logic is so bad.
Piracy is not stealing it is copyright infringement which is a different thing. It would be more like if I went to an art gallery and took a perfect scan of a painting and then hung that scan on my wall saving me the money from having to buy the painting. The owner in this case loses nothing except a potential sale (although I may buy it anyway).
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
Who says someone wont buy something because they pirated it? That logic is no better than what you're upset about. Piracy isn't defined as stealing because it isn't. You can try to word it as if it is all you want, but it never has been and never will be.
Who says they will? Every pirate tries to make themselves out as the "white knight" that never plays a pirated version for more than a few hours and then deletes/buys it, but that's maybe only 1% of pirates out there.
That's the entire point, you can't say they will or won't and act like a sale was lost. No pirates are trying to make themselves out to be white knights, in fact I'd say most dont defend themselves nearly as vehemently as you attack them.
On December 02 2011 12:43 HereAndNow wrote: Who says they will? Every pirate tries to make themselves out as the "white knight" that never plays a pirated version for more than a few hours and then deletes/buys it, but that's maybe only 1% of pirates out there.
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
A potential sale is worth nothing, it's just speculation about a sale.
If I "pirate" a game only to find out that I don't like it, am I bad? Games I downloaded and deleted: Fallout 3, Fallout:New Vegas, From Dust, FEAR 3, Duke Nukem Forever, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Island, Borderlands.
Most people will say that's reasonable, somewhat fair at least. However, did they lose sales from me? Well sadly yes they did. I would have bought at least some of these games if I hadn't had the opportunity to acquire the game "illegally" to test them. For instance, I was going to buy Fallout 3 because everyone likes it and plenty of my friends were telling me it's awesome. I "stole" it, played 3-4 hours and deleted it. But I think it's a good thing that they lost that sale - it really is. At least it keeps a few people from suckering into games they don't like... and try to get a refund for a PC game, lol, not happening.
Now my question is, not necessarily to you Manifesto but I would like to know what you think, how wrong is it of me to do that, provided that if I really do like a game, I will buy it like I did with Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and such. On the other hand, sometimes I'll play 5-10 hours of a game I don't like so much only to end up quitting after I decide it's not worth my time. That's kind of a long time to play "for free".
Am I a thief, a bad person altogether or am I at least somewhat fair in my usage of "illegal" material?
How many times does this thread have to say it? There are many other ways to try out games without pirating them. Rent from multiple places, buy and return/trade, borrow from a friend, play demos. If you're too lazy to do any of that, you don't get a say in the discussion, you're just taking the easy road because you don't want to put time and energy into it like anyone else.
So if I borrow a game from my friend, play through the whole thing, and return it without ever having bought it, am I doing something illegal?
There is still only one physical copy. By you having it, he can't play it. If there was only one pirated version of a game out there and when one person was playing it, no one else in the world could, it would be a different thing. But it's not. That disc is now your friend's property to do what he will with. The data isn't. If he (or you) takes it off and gives it away, it's illegal. Only having one copy of it is perfectly legal.
See, I'm glad you brought this up. My internet service, my computer, my electrons, and all of the electricity that I pay for, are my property, to do with what I will. Now what I might do, for a variety of reasons, is acquire a copy of some new song. If you try to stop me, you're limiting what I can do with MY property, and saying that my physical property rights are inferior to the intellectual property rights of the music industry. Is that right?
The data, the information of the game/song/etc, is copyright enforced. MAKING COPIES OF THAT DATA IS ILLEGAL. Passing around a single disc is not. The data is not your property, only the object that lets you enjoy it. The data is not yours, nor will it ever be, unless you take over the company. That's now this stuff works.
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
A potential sale is worth nothing, it's just speculation about a sale.
If I "pirate" a game only to find out that I don't like it, am I bad? Games I downloaded and deleted: Fallout 3, Fallout:New Vegas, From Dust, FEAR 3, Duke Nukem Forever, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Island, Borderlands.
Most people will say that's reasonable, somewhat fair at least. However, did they lose sales from me? Well sadly yes they did. I would have bought at least some of these games if I hadn't had the opportunity to acquire the game "illegally" to test them. For instance, I was going to buy Fallout 3 because everyone likes it and plenty of my friends were telling me it's awesome. I "stole" it, played 3-4 hours and deleted it. But I think it's a good thing that they lost that sale - it really is. At least it keeps a few people from suckering into games they don't like... and try to get a refund for a PC game, lol, not happening.
Now my question is, not necessarily to you Manifesto but I would like to know what you think, how wrong is it of me to do that, provided that if I really do like a game, I will buy it like I did with Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and such. On the other hand, sometimes I'll play 5-10 hours of a game I don't like so much only to end up quitting after I decide it's not worth my time. That's kind of a long time to play "for free".
Am I a thief, a bad person altogether or am I at least somewhat fair in my usage of "illegal" material?
How many times does this thread have to say it? There are many other ways to try out games without pirating them. Rent from multiple places, buy and return/trade, borrow from a friend, play demos. If you're too lazy to do any of that, you don't get a say in the discussion, you're just taking the easy road because you don't want to put time and energy into it like anyone else.
So if I borrow a game from my friend, play through the whole thing, and return it without ever having bought it, am I doing something illegal?
There is still only one physical copy. By you having it, he can't play it. If there was only one pirated version of a game out there and when one person was playing it, no one else in the world could, it would be a different thing. But it's not. That disc is now your friend's property to do what he will with. The data isn't. If he (or you) takes it off and gives it away, it's illegal. Only having one copy of it is perfectly legal.
See, I'm glad you brought this up. My internet service, my computer, my electrons, and all of the electricity that I pay for, are my property, to do with what I will. Now what I might do, for a variety of reasons, is acquire a copy of some new song. If you try to stop me, you're limiting what I can do with MY property, and saying that my physical property rights are inferior to the intellectual property rights of the music industry. Is that right?
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
The potential sale is lost. That is why piracy is stealing. It isn't about a physical item, it is about revenue. That is why every time someone says "making a copy isn't stealing" I want to punch them in the face because the logic is so bad.
Piracy is not stealing it is copyright infringement which is a different thing. It would be more like if I went to an art gallery and took a perfect scan of a painting and then hung that scan on my wall saving me the money from having to buy the painting. The owner in this case loses nothing except a potential sale (although I may buy it anyway).
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
Who says someone wont buy something because they pirated it? That logic is no better than what you're upset about. Piracy isn't defined as stealing because it isn't. You can try to word it as if it is all you want, but it never has been and never will be.
Who says they will? Every pirate tries to make themselves out as the "white knight" that never plays a pirated version for more than a few hours and then deletes/buys it, but that's maybe only 1% of pirates out there.
That's the entire point, you can't say they will or won't and act like a sale was lost. No pirates are trying to make themselves out to be white knights, in fact I'd say most dont defend themselves nearly as vehemently as you attack them.
No, the sale is lost, and can be made up afterward. It's not in a neutral state, it's negative until they actually buy it.
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
A potential sale is worth nothing, it's just speculation about a sale.
If I "pirate" a game only to find out that I don't like it, am I bad? Games I downloaded and deleted: Fallout 3, Fallout:New Vegas, From Dust, FEAR 3, Duke Nukem Forever, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Island, Borderlands.
Most people will say that's reasonable, somewhat fair at least. However, did they lose sales from me? Well sadly yes they did. I would have bought at least some of these games if I hadn't had the opportunity to acquire the game "illegally" to test them. For instance, I was going to buy Fallout 3 because everyone likes it and plenty of my friends were telling me it's awesome. I "stole" it, played 3-4 hours and deleted it. But I think it's a good thing that they lost that sale - it really is. At least it keeps a few people from suckering into games they don't like... and try to get a refund for a PC game, lol, not happening.
Now my question is, not necessarily to you Manifesto but I would like to know what you think, how wrong is it of me to do that, provided that if I really do like a game, I will buy it like I did with Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and such. On the other hand, sometimes I'll play 5-10 hours of a game I don't like so much only to end up quitting after I decide it's not worth my time. That's kind of a long time to play "for free".
Am I a thief, a bad person altogether or am I at least somewhat fair in my usage of "illegal" material?
How many times does this thread have to say it? There are many other ways to try out games without pirating them. Rent from multiple places, buy and return/trade, borrow from a friend, play demos. If you're too lazy to do any of that, you don't get a say in the discussion, you're just taking the easy road because you don't want to put time and energy into it like anyone else.
So if I borrow a game from my friend, play through the whole thing, and return it without ever having bought it, am I doing something illegal?
There is still only one physical copy. By you having it, he can't play it. If there was only one pirated version of a game out there and when one person was playing it, no one else in the world could, it would be a different thing. But it's not. That disc is now your friend's property to do what he will with. The data isn't. If he (or you) takes it off and gives it away, it's illegal. Only having one copy of it is perfectly legal.
See, I'm glad you brought this up. My internet service, my computer, my electrons, and all of the electricity that I pay for, are my property, to do with what I will. Now what I might do, for a variety of reasons, is acquire a copy of some new song. If you try to stop me, you're limiting what I can do with MY property, and saying that my physical property rights are inferior to the intellectual property rights of the music industry. Is that right?
The data, the information of the game/song/etc, is copyright enforced. MAKING COPIES OF THAT DATA IS ILLEGAL. Passing around a single disc is not. The data is not your property, only the object that lets you enjoy it. The data is not yours, nor will it ever be, unless you take over the company. That's now this stuff works.
I'm not saying it's not against the law, just that the law ought to be changed. The problem is, as soon as that download completes, the data IS my property. At least the manifestation of it that resides on my hard drive. What you're telling me, is that the moment I burn a game onto a CD that I payed for, then that becomes owned by the corporation who produced the game? Don't be ridiculous. Let's compare this to a very real life example. I, Caveman Bob, create fire. I, Caveman Bob, place copyright on fire. You, Caveman Joe, are no longer allowed to light YOUR possessions on fire. How crazy is that?
The entire concept of Intellectual Property is a gigantic farce, and should be abolished.
On December 02 2011 12:46 GumThief wrote: You better not try and limit the use of MY hands and feet when I walk into your house and pirate the fuck out of your fridge..
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
A potential sale is worth nothing, it's just speculation about a sale.
If I "pirate" a game only to find out that I don't like it, am I bad? Games I downloaded and deleted: Fallout 3, Fallout:New Vegas, From Dust, FEAR 3, Duke Nukem Forever, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Island, Borderlands.
Most people will say that's reasonable, somewhat fair at least. However, did they lose sales from me? Well sadly yes they did. I would have bought at least some of these games if I hadn't had the opportunity to acquire the game "illegally" to test them. For instance, I was going to buy Fallout 3 because everyone likes it and plenty of my friends were telling me it's awesome. I "stole" it, played 3-4 hours and deleted it. But I think it's a good thing that they lost that sale - it really is. At least it keeps a few people from suckering into games they don't like... and try to get a refund for a PC game, lol, not happening.
Now my question is, not necessarily to you Manifesto but I would like to know what you think, how wrong is it of me to do that, provided that if I really do like a game, I will buy it like I did with Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and such. On the other hand, sometimes I'll play 5-10 hours of a game I don't like so much only to end up quitting after I decide it's not worth my time. That's kind of a long time to play "for free".
Am I a thief, a bad person altogether or am I at least somewhat fair in my usage of "illegal" material?
How many times does this thread have to say it? There are many other ways to try out games without pirating them. Rent from multiple places, buy and return/trade, borrow from a friend, play demos. If you're too lazy to do any of that, you don't get a say in the discussion, you're just taking the easy road because you don't want to put time and energy into it like anyone else.
So if I borrow a game from my friend, play through the whole thing, and return it without ever having bought it, am I doing something illegal?
There is still only one physical copy. By you having it, he can't play it. If there was only one pirated version of a game out there and when one person was playing it, no one else in the world could, it would be a different thing. But it's not. That disc is now your friend's property to do what he will with. The data isn't. If he (or you) takes it off and gives it away, it's illegal. Only having one copy of it is perfectly legal.
See, I'm glad you brought this up. My internet service, my computer, my electrons, and all of the electricity that I pay for, are my property, to do with what I will. Now what I might do, for a variety of reasons, is acquire a copy of some new song. If you try to stop me, you're limiting what I can do with MY property, and saying that my physical property rights are inferior to the intellectual property rights of the music industry. Is that right?
Hell, as long as my fridge, and all its contents, stays where they are, you can go right ahead
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
A potential sale is worth nothing, it's just speculation about a sale.
If I "pirate" a game only to find out that I don't like it, am I bad? Games I downloaded and deleted: Fallout 3, Fallout:New Vegas, From Dust, FEAR 3, Duke Nukem Forever, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Island, Borderlands.
Most people will say that's reasonable, somewhat fair at least. However, did they lose sales from me? Well sadly yes they did. I would have bought at least some of these games if I hadn't had the opportunity to acquire the game "illegally" to test them. For instance, I was going to buy Fallout 3 because everyone likes it and plenty of my friends were telling me it's awesome. I "stole" it, played 3-4 hours and deleted it. But I think it's a good thing that they lost that sale - it really is. At least it keeps a few people from suckering into games they don't like... and try to get a refund for a PC game, lol, not happening.
Now my question is, not necessarily to you Manifesto but I would like to know what you think, how wrong is it of me to do that, provided that if I really do like a game, I will buy it like I did with Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and such. On the other hand, sometimes I'll play 5-10 hours of a game I don't like so much only to end up quitting after I decide it's not worth my time. That's kind of a long time to play "for free".
Am I a thief, a bad person altogether or am I at least somewhat fair in my usage of "illegal" material?
I don't know if you are a bad person, but yes, you are a thief. It is not up to you to determine how a company should release their product. While I agree with you that "try before you buy" models are far superior, that is the choice of the company. Some believe that releasing a demo encourages people to buy a full game, while others might think it will hurt sales. You are taking that choice out of their hands via illegal distribution.
And as for the whole "Ill buy it if I like it" argument, well, I don't have any numbers but my life experience tells me that that situation is microscopic compared to people who just keep the game.
I consider that companies without "try before you buy" models sometimes "steal" our money by hyping games and tricking people into buying said games. Sometimes they shove a lot of money in nice trailers, sometimes the previous games of the same franchise make it a safe hit. But those games can be unfinished or flat out bad. As PC gamers, we have very little recourse as retailers will not take it back and it's extremely rare for Steam to do refunds. As such, it's really hard to be protected against garbage whereas if you buy anything else, you can bring it back to the store when it breaks in your hands.
I bought Skyrim on release day, I woke up early to go pick up my copy. Thank god the game is awesome because it crashes every 30 minutes, enough to make me give up on almost anything. If I had decided that this game was broken (and it kind of is), I would've had to suck it up. I would have, in effect, lost $68. Like I said, very little customer protection.
Now, Skyrim sales were really good, but let's say Bethesda released a demo of Skyrim and it crashed a lot, maybe it would have hurt their sales. Maybe the game's demo would've outright sucked, which would've hurt their sales also. Maybe it would've been great, which would have actually helped their sales by generating hype. Confident companies that make good games release demos and have open betas. Companies which want to sell bad games, they don't want people to play the POS, that would generate bad press.
I'm not saying it's always like that, but it certainly does happen.
You say it's not up to us to decide how a company decides to release their products, and that type of mentality is exactly why you're kind of right. The "demand" part is the "supply"'s little bitch, and that's why we really should appreciate Blizzard for not yanking our chain like so many companies do. (At least not in that way)
Sounds like I'm saying "companies are unethical so I can be unethical too". Well I kind of am.
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
A potential sale is worth nothing, it's just speculation about a sale.
If I "pirate" a game only to find out that I don't like it, am I bad? Games I downloaded and deleted: Fallout 3, Fallout:New Vegas, From Dust, FEAR 3, Duke Nukem Forever, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Island, Borderlands.
Most people will say that's reasonable, somewhat fair at least. However, did they lose sales from me? Well sadly yes they did. I would have bought at least some of these games if I hadn't had the opportunity to acquire the game "illegally" to test them. For instance, I was going to buy Fallout 3 because everyone likes it and plenty of my friends were telling me it's awesome. I "stole" it, played 3-4 hours and deleted it. But I think it's a good thing that they lost that sale - it really is. At least it keeps a few people from suckering into games they don't like... and try to get a refund for a PC game, lol, not happening.
Now my question is, not necessarily to you Manifesto but I would like to know what you think, how wrong is it of me to do that, provided that if I really do like a game, I will buy it like I did with Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and such. On the other hand, sometimes I'll play 5-10 hours of a game I don't like so much only to end up quitting after I decide it's not worth my time. That's kind of a long time to play "for free".
Am I a thief, a bad person altogether or am I at least somewhat fair in my usage of "illegal" material?
How many times does this thread have to say it? There are many other ways to try out games without pirating them. Rent from multiple places, buy and return/trade, borrow from a friend, play demos. If you're too lazy to do any of that, you don't get a say in the discussion, you're just taking the easy road because you don't want to put time and energy into it like anyone else.
Don't be ridiculous... your idea might work for consoles and nothing else.
-Not a single place will rent BF3 or any PC game for that matter -Buy and return is just shitty for the retailer and is dishonest, plus they won't accept a PC game return -Buy and trade is impossible for PC games and would cut the price you paid in a half if not more -My friends don't have every game, and some games are linked to steam accounts -Not all games have demos
I fail to see the difference between borrowing from a friend and borrowing from a dude in the internet anyway, since I'm using it fairly, the end result is the same. I try the game and I buy it if I like it.
So yes I take the easy way. Why the fuck would I not if the only difference is that in the end I won't make the mistake of purchasing a game I won't like?
No. Borrowing and pirating are not the same, don't pretend they are.
As for PC games, well tough, you can't rent/return it, but that doesn't justify pirating. I can't rent or buy a classic Camaro, but that doesn't justify stealing one.
Given the way I make use of the "pirated" software, in which way is it any different from borrowing? The only difference is the lack of a "friend" as a middleman.
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
The potential sale is lost. That is why piracy is stealing. It isn't about a physical item, it is about revenue. That is why every time someone says "making a copy isn't stealing" I want to punch them in the face because the logic is so bad.
Piracy is not stealing it is copyright infringement which is a different thing. It would be more like if I went to an art gallery and took a perfect scan of a painting and then hung that scan on my wall saving me the money from having to buy the painting. The owner in this case loses nothing except a potential sale (although I may buy it anyway).
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
Who says someone wont buy something because they pirated it? That logic is no better than what you're upset about. Piracy isn't defined as stealing because it isn't. You can try to word it as if it is all you want, but it never has been and never will be.
Who says they will? Every pirate tries to make themselves out as the "white knight" that never plays a pirated version for more than a few hours and then deletes/buys it, but that's maybe only 1% of pirates out there.
That's the entire point, you can't say they will or won't and act like a sale was lost. No pirates are trying to make themselves out to be white knights, in fact I'd say most dont defend themselves nearly as vehemently as you attack them.
No, the sale is lost, and can be made up afterward. It's not in a neutral state, it's negative until they actually buy it.
Their accountant is probably freaking out. More seriously, consider that people who pirate games weren't necessarily going to buy it.
Are you posting seriously refmac, or is this some sad attempt at satire?
You not being able to use the intellectual property of others however you please is infringing upon your personal rights? Give me a break. Your personal rights don't include being able to manipulate those of others. I'm sorry you misunderstand things so badly.
On December 02 2011 12:55 SoLaR[i.C] wrote: Are you posting seriously refmac, or is this some sad attempt at satire?
You not being able to use the intellectual property of others however you please is infringing upon your personal rights? Give me a break. Your personal rights don't include being able to manipulate those of others. I'm sorry you misunderstand things so badly.
I'm being completely serious. Intellectual property does not exist. It is a made up thing. Especially with more simple concepts (not so much games), the idea that you can claim ownership to an idea is ridiculous. The idea of internet piracy, when distilled to an intellectual property debate, is the same as a student sharing notes with a friend who's not in his class. Something like this should always be legal. I'm not saying that my personal rights include being able to manipulate the rights of others, I'm saying that others are claiming non-existant rights which infringe on mine.
On December 02 2011 12:55 SoLaR[i.C] wrote: Are you posting seriously refmac, or is this some sad attempt at satire?
You not being able to use the intellectual property of others however you please is infringing upon your personal rights? Give me a break. Your personal rights don't include being able to manipulate those of others. I'm sorry you misunderstand things so badly.
I'm being completely serious. Intellectual property does not exist. It is a made up thing. Especially with more simple concepts (not so much games), the idea that you can claim ownership to an idea is ridiculous. The idea of internet piracy, when distilled to an intellectual property debate, is the same as a student sharing notes with a friend who's not in his class. Something like this should always be legal. I'm not saying that my personal rights include being able to manipulate the rights of others, I'm saying that others are claiming non-existant rights which infringe on mine.
You are an insane person or just horribly misguided. The world as you would like it would completely stifle innovation in nearly every field of...well everything.
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
A potential sale is worth nothing, it's just speculation about a sale.
If I "pirate" a game only to find out that I don't like it, am I bad? Games I downloaded and deleted: Fallout 3, Fallout:New Vegas, From Dust, FEAR 3, Duke Nukem Forever, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Island, Borderlands.
Most people will say that's reasonable, somewhat fair at least. However, did they lose sales from me? Well sadly yes they did. I would have bought at least some of these games if I hadn't had the opportunity to acquire the game "illegally" to test them. For instance, I was going to buy Fallout 3 because everyone likes it and plenty of my friends were telling me it's awesome. I "stole" it, played 3-4 hours and deleted it. But I think it's a good thing that they lost that sale - it really is. At least it keeps a few people from suckering into games they don't like... and try to get a refund for a PC game, lol, not happening.
Now my question is, not necessarily to you Manifesto but I would like to know what you think, how wrong is it of me to do that, provided that if I really do like a game, I will buy it like I did with Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and such. On the other hand, sometimes I'll play 5-10 hours of a game I don't like so much only to end up quitting after I decide it's not worth my time. That's kind of a long time to play "for free".
Am I a thief, a bad person altogether or am I at least somewhat fair in my usage of "illegal" material?
I don't know if you are a bad person, but yes, you are a thief. It is not up to you to determine how a company should release their product. While I agree with you that "try before you buy" models are far superior, that is the choice of the company. Some believe that releasing a demo encourages people to buy a full game, while others might think it will hurt sales. You are taking that choice out of their hands via illegal distribution.
And as for the whole "Ill buy it if I like it" argument, well, I don't have any numbers but my life experience tells me that that situation is microscopic compared to people who just keep the game.
I consider that companies without "try before you buy" models sometimes "steal" our money by hyping games and tricking people into buying said games. Sometimes they shove a lot of money in nice trailers, sometimes the previous games of the same franchise make it a safe hit. But those games can be unfinished or flat out bad. As a PC gamer, we have very little recourse as retailers will not take it back and it's extremely rare for Steam to do refunds. As such, it's really hard to be protected against garbage whereas if you buy anything else, you can bring it back to the store when it breaks in your hands.
Congratulations, you just described the goal of advertising in every industry. Make it look as good as possible. That is not stealing your money.
Look, you feel like you want greater protection as the consumer, and I can totally understand that. I have been burned by bad games too. But I don't agree with you that the way to go about it is downloading entire games / movies / songs so you can try it out. I don't think you have that right, even if you think it is fair.
On December 02 2011 12:55 SoLaR[i.C] wrote: Are you posting seriously refmac, or is this some sad attempt at satire?
You not being able to use the intellectual property of others however you please is infringing upon your personal rights? Give me a break. Your personal rights don't include being able to manipulate those of others. I'm sorry you misunderstand things so badly.
I'm being completely serious. Intellectual property does not exist. It is a made up thing. Especially with more simple concepts (not so much games), the idea that you can claim ownership to an idea is ridiculous. The idea of internet piracy, when distilled to an intellectual property debate, is the same as a student sharing notes with a friend who's not in his class. Something like this should always be legal. I'm not saying that my personal rights include being able to manipulate the rights of others, I'm saying that others are claiming non-existant rights which infringe on mine.
Out of curiosity, do you realize that without any claims of ownership to IP, every single type of software would cease to exist, because there would be no benefit to making it. There would be no point to developing operating systems, so we would all be forced to use open source OS developed by some random guys with free time.
I'm not trying to be overly insulting, but the assumption that ideas do not have owners is ridiculous. Also, I forgot to quote the guy who torrented skyrim (hoping it's you), but apparently they thought the game was too expansive to be detailed in a demo. http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/07/14/there-won-39-t-be-a-skyrim-demo.aspx Considering the appeal of their game is the hugeness of their world and the replay value, it seems like a demo wouldn't be that impressive anyway.
On December 02 2011 12:55 SoLaR[i.C] wrote: Are you posting seriously refmac, or is this some sad attempt at satire?
You not being able to use the intellectual property of others however you please is infringing upon your personal rights? Give me a break. Your personal rights don't include being able to manipulate those of others. I'm sorry you misunderstand things so badly.
I'm being completely serious. Intellectual property does not exist. It is a made up thing. Especially with more simple concepts (not so much games), the idea that you can claim ownership to an idea is ridiculous. The idea of internet piracy, when distilled to an intellectual property debate, is the same as a student sharing notes with a friend who's not in his class. Something like this should always be legal. I'm not saying that my personal rights include being able to manipulate the rights of others, I'm saying that others are claiming non-existant rights which infringe on mine.
Okay, so you're just delusional.
Your notes example is not only misguided, it's downright wrong. The scholastic equivalent would be you saying that you feel that there's no problem with you copying someone's homework and submitting it as your own.
On December 02 2011 12:55 SoLaR[i.C] wrote: Are you posting seriously refmac, or is this some sad attempt at satire?
You not being able to use the intellectual property of others however you please is infringing upon your personal rights? Give me a break. Your personal rights don't include being able to manipulate those of others. I'm sorry you misunderstand things so badly.
I'm being completely serious. Intellectual property does not exist. It is a made up thing. Especially with more simple concepts (not so much games), the idea that you can claim ownership to an idea is ridiculous. The idea of internet piracy, when distilled to an intellectual property debate, is the same as a student sharing notes with a friend who's not in his class. Something like this should always be legal. I'm not saying that my personal rights include being able to manipulate the rights of others, I'm saying that others are claiming non-existant rights which infringe on mine.
I assume through your student references and your general stance on things in this thread that you are a student. You have never created anything of worth in your life that needs protection for those very people you protect, i.e. thieves. Your intellectual dishonesty astounds me and tells me you have very little experience of the world we ACTUALLY live in and human behaviour in general.
It's great to be an armchair philosopher when you don't have to deal with the world head on.
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
A potential sale is worth nothing, it's just speculation about a sale.
If I "pirate" a game only to find out that I don't like it, am I bad? Games I downloaded and deleted: Fallout 3, Fallout:New Vegas, From Dust, FEAR 3, Duke Nukem Forever, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Island, Borderlands.
Most people will say that's reasonable, somewhat fair at least. However, did they lose sales from me? Well sadly yes they did. I would have bought at least some of these games if I hadn't had the opportunity to acquire the game "illegally" to test them. For instance, I was going to buy Fallout 3 because everyone likes it and plenty of my friends were telling me it's awesome. I "stole" it, played 3-4 hours and deleted it. But I think it's a good thing that they lost that sale - it really is. At least it keeps a few people from suckering into games they don't like... and try to get a refund for a PC game, lol, not happening.
Now my question is, not necessarily to you Manifesto but I would like to know what you think, how wrong is it of me to do that, provided that if I really do like a game, I will buy it like I did with Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and such. On the other hand, sometimes I'll play 5-10 hours of a game I don't like so much only to end up quitting after I decide it's not worth my time. That's kind of a long time to play "for free".
Am I a thief, a bad person altogether or am I at least somewhat fair in my usage of "illegal" material?
I don't know if you are a bad person, but yes, you are a thief. It is not up to you to determine how a company should release their product. While I agree with you that "try before you buy" models are far superior, that is the choice of the company. Some believe that releasing a demo encourages people to buy a full game, while others might think it will hurt sales. You are taking that choice out of their hands via illegal distribution.
And as for the whole "Ill buy it if I like it" argument, well, I don't have any numbers but my life experience tells me that that situation is microscopic compared to people who just keep the game.
I consider that companies without "try before you buy" models sometimes "steal" our money by hyping games and tricking people into buying said games. Sometimes they shove a lot of money in nice trailers, sometimes the previous games of the same franchise make it a safe hit. But those games can be unfinished or flat out bad. As a PC gamer, we have very little recourse as retailers will not take it back and it's extremely rare for Steam to do refunds. As such, it's really hard to be protected against garbage whereas if you buy anything else, you can bring it back to the store when it breaks in your hands.
Congratulations, you just described the goal of advertising in every industry. Make it look as good as possible. That is not stealing your money.
Look, you feel like you want greater protection as the consumer, and I can totally understand that. I have been burned by bad games too. But I don't agree with you that the way to go about it is downloading entire games / movies / songs so you can try it out. I don't think you have that right, even if you think it is fair.
Well I don't really download entire movies and if I play entire games I paid for them 100% of the time. I plead guilty for music but let's not talk about it, I don't have arguments for that except good ole' argumentum ad populum, so nothing good.
1- Advertising is OK as long as it represents a product fairly, and sometimes it doesn't. There are laws against false representation of a product, but obviously those laws are and have to be defined pretty loosely, which allows for instance EA to make their latest POS Hockey game look amazing - but even if it sucks, the customers are screwed. However, they couldn't sell $60 blank DVDs. So there's a whole area between "shitty game" and "blank DVD" - how do we decide what constitutes false advertising/fraud? In this case, customer protection is not just a little important given how easy it is to shag us.
2- You said you don't think I have "that right", which is objectively true, but that's a law. You think that my actions are morally reprehensible, which I can't argue with... But what my "rights" are is of little concern to me. I could fly my ass off to some country and suddenly it would be my "right" to download anything I want. Who the hell cares about what bullshit congress comes up with, it's not a real standard of living!
On December 02 2011 12:55 SoLaR[i.C] wrote: Are you posting seriously refmac, or is this some sad attempt at satire?
You not being able to use the intellectual property of others however you please is infringing upon your personal rights? Give me a break. Your personal rights don't include being able to manipulate those of others. I'm sorry you misunderstand things so badly.
I'm being completely serious. Intellectual property does not exist. It is a made up thing. Especially with more simple concepts (not so much games), the idea that you can claim ownership to an idea is ridiculous. The idea of internet piracy, when distilled to an intellectual property debate, is the same as a student sharing notes with a friend who's not in his class. Something like this should always be legal. I'm not saying that my personal rights include being able to manipulate the rights of others, I'm saying that others are claiming non-existant rights which infringe on mine.
I assume through your student references and your general stance on things in this thread that you are a student. You have never created anything of worth in your life that needs protection for those very people you protect, i.e. thieves. Your intellectual dishonesty astounds me and tells me you have very little experience of the world we ACTUALLY live in and human behaviour in general.
It's great to be an armchair philosopher when you don't have to deal with the world head on.
Just want to say don't assume something like that, its very easy to create "intellectual property". I am a freshman in college but have made songs and put them on the internet.
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
A potential sale is worth nothing, it's just speculation about a sale.
If I "pirate" a game only to find out that I don't like it, am I bad? Games I downloaded and deleted: Fallout 3, Fallout:New Vegas, From Dust, FEAR 3, Duke Nukem Forever, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Island, Borderlands.
Most people will say that's reasonable, somewhat fair at least. However, did they lose sales from me? Well sadly yes they did. I would have bought at least some of these games if I hadn't had the opportunity to acquire the game "illegally" to test them. For instance, I was going to buy Fallout 3 because everyone likes it and plenty of my friends were telling me it's awesome. I "stole" it, played 3-4 hours and deleted it. But I think it's a good thing that they lost that sale - it really is. At least it keeps a few people from suckering into games they don't like... and try to get a refund for a PC game, lol, not happening.
Now my question is, not necessarily to you Manifesto but I would like to know what you think, how wrong is it of me to do that, provided that if I really do like a game, I will buy it like I did with Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and such. On the other hand, sometimes I'll play 5-10 hours of a game I don't like so much only to end up quitting after I decide it's not worth my time. That's kind of a long time to play "for free".
Am I a thief, a bad person altogether or am I at least somewhat fair in my usage of "illegal" material?
I don't know if you are a bad person, but yes, you are a thief. It is not up to you to determine how a company should release their product. While I agree with you that "try before you buy" models are far superior, that is the choice of the company. Some believe that releasing a demo encourages people to buy a full game, while others might think it will hurt sales. You are taking that choice out of their hands via illegal distribution.
And as for the whole "Ill buy it if I like it" argument, well, I don't have any numbers but my life experience tells me that that situation is microscopic compared to people who just keep the game.
I consider that companies without "try before you buy" models sometimes "steal" our money by hyping games and tricking people into buying said games. Sometimes they shove a lot of money in nice trailers, sometimes the previous games of the same franchise make it a safe hit. But those games can be unfinished or flat out bad. As a PC gamer, we have very little recourse as retailers will not take it back and it's extremely rare for Steam to do refunds. As such, it's really hard to be protected against garbage whereas if you buy anything else, you can bring it back to the store when it breaks in your hands.
Congratulations, you just described the goal of advertising in every industry. Make it look as good as possible. That is not stealing your money.
Look, you feel like you want greater protection as the consumer, and I can totally understand that. I have been burned by bad games too. But I don't agree with you that the way to go about it is downloading entire games / movies / songs so you can try it out. I don't think you have that right, even if you think it is fair.
Well I don't really download entire movies and if I play entire games I paid for them 100% of the time. I plead guilty for music but let's not talk about it, I don't have arguments for that except good ole' argumentum ad populum, so nothing good.
1- Advertising is OK as long as it represents a product fairly, and sometimes it doesn't. There are laws against false representation of a product, but obviously those laws are and have to be defined pretty loosely, which allows for instance EA to make their latest POS Hockey game look amazing - but even if it sucks, the customers are screwed. However, they couldn't sell $60 blank DVDs. So there's a whole area between "shitty game" and "blank DVD" - how do we decide what constitutes false advertising/fraud? In this case, customer protection is not just a little important given how easily it is to shag us.
2- You said you don't think I have "that right", which is objectively true, but that's a law. You think that my actions are morally reprehensible, which I understand... But what my "rights" are is of little concern to me. I could fly my ass off to some country and suddenly it would be my "right". Who the hell cares about what bullshit congress comes up with, it's not a real standard of living!
You must be really pissed when you look into your bag of Carl's Jr, only to discover the six dollar burger doesn't look like it did in the commercials.
On December 02 2011 12:55 SoLaR[i.C] wrote: Are you posting seriously refmac, or is this some sad attempt at satire?
You not being able to use the intellectual property of others however you please is infringing upon your personal rights? Give me a break. Your personal rights don't include being able to manipulate those of others. I'm sorry you misunderstand things so badly.
I'm being completely serious. Intellectual property does not exist. It is a made up thing. Especially with more simple concepts (not so much games), the idea that you can claim ownership to an idea is ridiculous. The idea of internet piracy, when distilled to an intellectual property debate, is the same as a student sharing notes with a friend who's not in his class. Something like this should always be legal. I'm not saying that my personal rights include being able to manipulate the rights of others, I'm saying that others are claiming non-existant rights which infringe on mine.
I assume through your student references and your general stance on things in this thread that you are a student. You have never created anything of worth in your life that needs protection for those very people you protect, i.e. thieves. Your intellectual dishonesty astounds me and tells me you have very little experience of the world we ACTUALLY live in and human behaviour in general.
It's great to be an armchair philosopher when you don't have to deal with the world head on.
Just want to say don't assume something like that, its very easy to create "intellectual property". I am a freshman in college but have made songs and put them on the internet.
I may have been overly harsh. But that sort of stance leads me to think the poster hasnt really dealt with the issues he theorizes on.
On December 02 2011 12:55 SoLaR[i.C] wrote: Are you posting seriously refmac, or is this some sad attempt at satire?
You not being able to use the intellectual property of others however you please is infringing upon your personal rights? Give me a break. Your personal rights don't include being able to manipulate those of others. I'm sorry you misunderstand things so badly.
I'm being completely serious. Intellectual property does not exist. It is a made up thing. Especially with more simple concepts (not so much games), the idea that you can claim ownership to an idea is ridiculous. The idea of internet piracy, when distilled to an intellectual property debate, is the same as a student sharing notes with a friend who's not in his class. Something like this should always be legal. I'm not saying that my personal rights include being able to manipulate the rights of others, I'm saying that others are claiming non-existant rights which infringe on mine.
You are an insane person or just horribly misguided. The world as you would like it would completely stifle innovation in nearly every field of...well everything.
Completely unsubstantiated. There was no IP right on the invention of powder. Didn't stop the innovation on guns. In the case of games, that may happen if the vast majority of potential customers would instead pirate a game. It is clearly not the case, and the majority of potential customers buy the games. Don't make it a moral issue, it is irrelevant. So the problem is a simple problem of demand curve. Companies have to make better games, have better distribution models or lower prices, otherwise their profit will be lower. Maybe the video game market is just not very profitable and fewer companies can enter it. Maybe less games should be produced. What kills innovation here is not piracy, but greed, look at the blizzard/activision evolution.
Also regarding the IP rights. Rights are man made, they change over time and depending on countries. In the universal declaration of human rights you can read: "Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment." Well it seems to be quite laughable now. Workers can put time and effort and training, does not matter if the management decides it's cheaper to send the factory in China.
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
A potential sale is worth nothing, it's just speculation about a sale.
If I "pirate" a game only to find out that I don't like it, am I bad? Games I downloaded and deleted: Fallout 3, Fallout:New Vegas, From Dust, FEAR 3, Duke Nukem Forever, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Island, Borderlands.
Most people will say that's reasonable, somewhat fair at least. However, did they lose sales from me? Well sadly yes they did. I would have bought at least some of these games if I hadn't had the opportunity to acquire the game "illegally" to test them. For instance, I was going to buy Fallout 3 because everyone likes it and plenty of my friends were telling me it's awesome. I "stole" it, played 3-4 hours and deleted it. But I think it's a good thing that they lost that sale - it really is. At least it keeps a few people from suckering into games they don't like... and try to get a refund for a PC game, lol, not happening.
Now my question is, not necessarily to you Manifesto but I would like to know what you think, how wrong is it of me to do that, provided that if I really do like a game, I will buy it like I did with Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and such. On the other hand, sometimes I'll play 5-10 hours of a game I don't like so much only to end up quitting after I decide it's not worth my time. That's kind of a long time to play "for free".
Am I a thief, a bad person altogether or am I at least somewhat fair in my usage of "illegal" material?
I don't know if you are a bad person, but yes, you are a thief. It is not up to you to determine how a company should release their product. While I agree with you that "try before you buy" models are far superior, that is the choice of the company. Some believe that releasing a demo encourages people to buy a full game, while others might think it will hurt sales. You are taking that choice out of their hands via illegal distribution.
And as for the whole "Ill buy it if I like it" argument, well, I don't have any numbers but my life experience tells me that that situation is microscopic compared to people who just keep the game.
I consider that companies without "try before you buy" models sometimes "steal" our money by hyping games and tricking people into buying said games. Sometimes they shove a lot of money in nice trailers, sometimes the previous games of the same franchise make it a safe hit. But those games can be unfinished or flat out bad. As a PC gamer, we have very little recourse as retailers will not take it back and it's extremely rare for Steam to do refunds. As such, it's really hard to be protected against garbage whereas if you buy anything else, you can bring it back to the store when it breaks in your hands.
Congratulations, you just described the goal of advertising in every industry. Make it look as good as possible. That is not stealing your money.
Look, you feel like you want greater protection as the consumer, and I can totally understand that. I have been burned by bad games too. But I don't agree with you that the way to go about it is downloading entire games / movies / songs so you can try it out. I don't think you have that right, even if you think it is fair.
Well I don't really download entire movies and if I play entire games I paid for them 100% of the time. I plead guilty for music but let's not talk about it, I don't have arguments for that except good ole' argumentum ad populum, so nothing good.
1- Advertising is OK as long as it represents a product fairly, and sometimes it doesn't. There are laws against false representation of a product, but obviously those laws are and have to be defined pretty loosely, which allows for instance EA to make their latest POS Hockey game look amazing - but even if it sucks, the customers are screwed. However, they couldn't sell $60 blank DVDs. So there's a whole area between "shitty game" and "blank DVD" - how do we decide what constitutes false advertising/fraud? In this case, customer protection is not just a little important given how easily it is to shag us.
2- You said you don't think I have "that right", which is objectively true, but that's a law. You think that my actions are morally reprehensible, which I understand... But what my "rights" are is of little concern to me. I could fly my ass off to some country and suddenly it would be my "right". Who the hell cares about what bullshit congress comes up with, it's not a real standard of living!
You must be really pissed when you look into your bag of Carl's Jr, only to discover the six dollar burger doesn't look like it did in the commercials.
Slippery slope-ish. I only ate there once and it was during Blizzcon 2009. It was delicious. That's what mattered, really. If it had been bad, I would have whined at them until they gave me a new one or my cash back. An opportunity I wouldn't have with a PC game.
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
A potential sale is worth nothing, it's just speculation about a sale.
If I "pirate" a game only to find out that I don't like it, am I bad? Games I downloaded and deleted: Fallout 3, Fallout:New Vegas, From Dust, FEAR 3, Duke Nukem Forever, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Island, Borderlands.
Most people will say that's reasonable, somewhat fair at least. However, did they lose sales from me? Well sadly yes they did. I would have bought at least some of these games if I hadn't had the opportunity to acquire the game "illegally" to test them. For instance, I was going to buy Fallout 3 because everyone likes it and plenty of my friends were telling me it's awesome. I "stole" it, played 3-4 hours and deleted it. But I think it's a good thing that they lost that sale - it really is. At least it keeps a few people from suckering into games they don't like... and try to get a refund for a PC game, lol, not happening.
Now my question is, not necessarily to you Manifesto but I would like to know what you think, how wrong is it of me to do that, provided that if I really do like a game, I will buy it like I did with Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and such. On the other hand, sometimes I'll play 5-10 hours of a game I don't like so much only to end up quitting after I decide it's not worth my time. That's kind of a long time to play "for free".
Am I a thief, a bad person altogether or am I at least somewhat fair in my usage of "illegal" material?
I don't know if you are a bad person, but yes, you are a thief. It is not up to you to determine how a company should release their product. While I agree with you that "try before you buy" models are far superior, that is the choice of the company. Some believe that releasing a demo encourages people to buy a full game, while others might think it will hurt sales. You are taking that choice out of their hands via illegal distribution.
And as for the whole "Ill buy it if I like it" argument, well, I don't have any numbers but my life experience tells me that that situation is microscopic compared to people who just keep the game.
I consider that companies without "try before you buy" models sometimes "steal" our money by hyping games and tricking people into buying said games. Sometimes they shove a lot of money in nice trailers, sometimes the previous games of the same franchise make it a safe hit. But those games can be unfinished or flat out bad. As a PC gamer, we have very little recourse as retailers will not take it back and it's extremely rare for Steam to do refunds. As such, it's really hard to be protected against garbage whereas if you buy anything else, you can bring it back to the store when it breaks in your hands.
Congratulations, you just described the goal of advertising in every industry. Make it look as good as possible. That is not stealing your money.
Look, you feel like you want greater protection as the consumer, and I can totally understand that. I have been burned by bad games too. But I don't agree with you that the way to go about it is downloading entire games / movies / songs so you can try it out. I don't think you have that right, even if you think it is fair.
Well I don't really download entire movies and if I play entire games I paid for them 100% of the time. I plead guilty for music but let's not talk about it, I don't have arguments for that except good ole' argumentum ad populum, so nothing good.
1- Advertising is OK as long as it represents a product fairly, and sometimes it doesn't. There are laws against false representation of a product, but obviously those laws are and have to be defined pretty loosely, which allows for instance EA to make their latest POS Hockey game look amazing - but even if it sucks, the customers are screwed. However, they couldn't sell $60 blank DVDs. So there's a whole area between "shitty game" and "blank DVD" - how do we decide what constitutes false advertising/fraud? In this case, customer protection is not just a little important given how easily it is to shag us.
2- You said you don't think I have "that right", which is objectively true, but that's a law. You think that my actions are morally reprehensible, which I understand... But what my "rights" are is of little concern to me. I could fly my ass off to some country and suddenly it would be my "right". Who the hell cares about what bullshit congress comes up with, it's not a real standard of living!
You must be really pissed when you look into your bag of Carl's Jr, only to discover the six dollar burger doesn't look like it did in the commercials.
Slippery slope-ish. I only ate their once and it was during Blizzcon 2009, it was delicious. That's what mattered, or I would have whined at them until they gave me a new one or my cash back. A luxury I wouldn't have with a PC game.
Fair enough, as long as I got you to admit that you're the type of person that would demand a refund at a fast food chain for not living up to your "standards", then I can live with that.
If we look at the pure mechanics of profit and gain with piracy, there isn't a big problem at all. Despite the recession, video game companies are actually making more money then before, even with them upping the prices of games. Piracy levels are higher as well. If anything, you could correlate higher piracy to higher profits (although this probably isn't the case).
Piracy in some cases is not a loss of profit at all. I pirated minecraft because I didn't want to pay 20-30 dollars for it. I would not have bought it anyways. No loss of profit. Potential profit by sharing if the game is good to other people and/or posting reviews. This happened to me, I recommended minecraft to a guy down the hall, who happens to have a lot of money, and he bought the game full price.
Piracy in other cases is i cannot afford it/i don't have the money. There is no loss because they can't buy the game anyways. There is potential like above by sharing the game with others. Also some people decide to buy the game later or buy other games by the company when they have the money.
There are also those who wish to test their computer schematics. I bought spore because the specifications on the back said that it would work on my computer. The game lagged like hell on my brand new computer, even on the lowest graphics settings. I just wasted 50 dollars. Either the company makes no money because of indecision, or they make money but have an unhappy customer who complains to other potential buyers.
There are those who are unsure if they game is good and want to try it out, even if it got good reviews. Final fantasy X-2 got good reviews so I decided to buy it. Worst decision of my life, played for probably 3-4 hours on the day I got it and never played again. The scenario is similar to those who wish to test their schematics.
Then there are those who can buy the game, know they like it, support the company, etc. But pirate it due to sheer laziness or greed. They are known as douchebags and are directly causing profit loss to the company.
I will not go into morals as morals are subjective and a completely different matter.
How can companies cause less pirating? Make good games with clear recommended schematics, free available demos, services to loyal customers, and by find ways to lessen prices. I liked blizzard, knew they patched the game, knew that I would like the game from the beta, so the only thought on my mind when the game came out is where I could buy it. It never even crossed my mind that I could download it illegally. If games/companies are established as good, then they will not have a huge problem with piracy and will never lose a notable amount of money.
On December 02 2011 12:55 SoLaR[i.C] wrote: Are you posting seriously refmac, or is this some sad attempt at satire?
You not being able to use the intellectual property of others however you please is infringing upon your personal rights? Give me a break. Your personal rights don't include being able to manipulate those of others. I'm sorry you misunderstand things so badly.
I'm being completely serious. Intellectual property does not exist. It is a made up thing. Especially with more simple concepts (not so much games), the idea that you can claim ownership to an idea is ridiculous. The idea of internet piracy, when distilled to an intellectual property debate, is the same as a student sharing notes with a friend who's not in his class. Something like this should always be legal. I'm not saying that my personal rights include being able to manipulate the rights of others, I'm saying that others are claiming non-existant rights which infringe on mine.
You are an insane person or just horribly misguided. The world as you would like it would completely stifle innovation in nearly every field of...well everything.
Completely unsubstantiated. There was no IP right on the invention of powder. Didn't stop the innovation on guns. In the case of games, that may happen if the vast majority of potential customers would instead pirate a game. It is clearly not the case, and the majority of potential customers buy the games. Don't make it a moral issue, it is irrelevant. So the problem is a simple problem of demand curve. Companies have to make better games, have better distribution models or lower prices, otherwise their profit will be lower. Maybe the video game market is just not very profitable and fewer companies can enter it. Maybe less games should be produced. What kills innovation here is not piracy, but greed, look at the blizzard/activision evolution.
Also regarding the IP rights. Rights are man made, they change over time and depending on countries. In the universal declaration of human rights you can read: "Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment." Well it seems to be quite laughable now. Workers can put time and effort and training, does not matter if the management decides it's cheaper to send the factory in China.
...except the vast majority of potential customers DO pirate the game. Do not underestimate human greed and selfishness. Sure there are responsible people who would download a game, then when they find it good purchase the game. But they are in a minority. PC game sales have plummeted ever since the advent of broadband. Why else do you think in the past 10 years development have shifted from PC to consoles? These days most developers treat console releases as their main project and the PC has been relegated to a port. Only a few like Blizzard and Valve still focus heavily on PC
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
A potential sale is worth nothing, it's just speculation about a sale.
If I "pirate" a game only to find out that I don't like it, am I bad? Games I downloaded and deleted: Fallout 3, Fallout:New Vegas, From Dust, FEAR 3, Duke Nukem Forever, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Island, Borderlands.
Most people will say that's reasonable, somewhat fair at least. However, did they lose sales from me? Well sadly yes they did. I would have bought at least some of these games if I hadn't had the opportunity to acquire the game "illegally" to test them. For instance, I was going to buy Fallout 3 because everyone likes it and plenty of my friends were telling me it's awesome. I "stole" it, played 3-4 hours and deleted it. But I think it's a good thing that they lost that sale - it really is. At least it keeps a few people from suckering into games they don't like... and try to get a refund for a PC game, lol, not happening.
Now my question is, not necessarily to you Manifesto but I would like to know what you think, how wrong is it of me to do that, provided that if I really do like a game, I will buy it like I did with Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and such. On the other hand, sometimes I'll play 5-10 hours of a game I don't like so much only to end up quitting after I decide it's not worth my time. That's kind of a long time to play "for free".
Am I a thief, a bad person altogether or am I at least somewhat fair in my usage of "illegal" material?
I don't know if you are a bad person, but yes, you are a thief. It is not up to you to determine how a company should release their product. While I agree with you that "try before you buy" models are far superior, that is the choice of the company. Some believe that releasing a demo encourages people to buy a full game, while others might think it will hurt sales. You are taking that choice out of their hands via illegal distribution.
And as for the whole "Ill buy it if I like it" argument, well, I don't have any numbers but my life experience tells me that that situation is microscopic compared to people who just keep the game.
I consider that companies without "try before you buy" models sometimes "steal" our money by hyping games and tricking people into buying said games. Sometimes they shove a lot of money in nice trailers, sometimes the previous games of the same franchise make it a safe hit. But those games can be unfinished or flat out bad. As a PC gamer, we have very little recourse as retailers will not take it back and it's extremely rare for Steam to do refunds. As such, it's really hard to be protected against garbage whereas if you buy anything else, you can bring it back to the store when it breaks in your hands.
Congratulations, you just described the goal of advertising in every industry. Make it look as good as possible. That is not stealing your money.
Look, you feel like you want greater protection as the consumer, and I can totally understand that. I have been burned by bad games too. But I don't agree with you that the way to go about it is downloading entire games / movies / songs so you can try it out. I don't think you have that right, even if you think it is fair.
Well I don't really download entire movies and if I play entire games I paid for them 100% of the time. I plead guilty for music but let's not talk about it, I don't have arguments for that except good ole' argumentum ad populum, so nothing good.
1- Advertising is OK as long as it represents a product fairly, and sometimes it doesn't. There are laws against false representation of a product, but obviously those laws are and have to be defined pretty loosely, which allows for instance EA to make their latest POS Hockey game look amazing - but even if it sucks, the customers are screwed. However, they couldn't sell $60 blank DVDs. So there's a whole area between "shitty game" and "blank DVD" - how do we decide what constitutes false advertising/fraud? In this case, customer protection is not just a little important given how easily it is to shag us.
2- You said you don't think I have "that right", which is objectively true, but that's a law. You think that my actions are morally reprehensible, which I understand... But what my "rights" are is of little concern to me. I could fly my ass off to some country and suddenly it would be my "right". Who the hell cares about what bullshit congress comes up with, it's not a real standard of living!
You must be really pissed when you look into your bag of Carl's Jr, only to discover the six dollar burger doesn't look like it did in the commercials.
Slippery slope-ish. I only ate their once and it was during Blizzcon 2009, it was delicious. That's what mattered, or I would have whined at them until they gave me a new one or my cash back. A luxury I wouldn't have with a PC game.
Fair enough, as long as I got you to admit that you're the type of person that would demand a refund at a fast food chain for not living up to your "standards", then I can live with that.
Well I admitted that I would not eat something that tasted bad, and I think everyone should do the same. I do generally put up with mediocre out of laziness, but if you pay good money for a hamburger that tastes like the meat might be rotting, they'll happily give you a new one.
I don't know why you say I'm some "type of person" as if you were disgusted by me. I'm not the kind of person to make a scene. I would respectfully go up to them and tell them it's bad.
You are an insane person or just horribly misguided. The world as you would like it would completely stifle innovation in nearly every field of...well everything.
Ad Hominem attacks? really? As to your other point, the world as I would like it wouldn't stifle innovation at all in anything. I too can throw out unjustified absolute statements! Or I could support them - lots of people do things for reasons other than profit, including many of the worlds greatest scientists and artists. By abolishing IP, you also remove boundaries for ordinary people and workers to innovate for themselves, in order to make their jobs easier, and encourage them to freely distribute their innovations with others.
Out of curiosity, do you realize that without any claims of ownership to IP, every single type of software would cease to exist, because there would be no benefit to making it. There would be no point to developing operating systems, so we would all be forced to use open source OS developed by some random guys with free time.
I'm not trying to be overly insulting, but the assumption that ideas do not have owners is ridiculous. Also, I forgot to quote the guy who torrented skyrim (hoping it's you), but apparently they thought the game was too expansive to be detailed in a demo. http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/07/14/there-won-39-t-be-a-skyrim-demo.aspx Considering the appeal of their game is the hugeness of their world and the replay value, it seems like a demo wouldn't be that impressive anyway.
Of course not. Even better, I, random no lifer, could take the time to improve an already issued operating system and release it. And there will still be incentives for innovation. If i'm a researcher looking for a new tool to use, I might create one, or if I'm a business, wanting my employees to work more efficiently.
Okay, so you're just delusional.
Your notes example is not only misguided, it's downright wrong. The scholastic equivalent would be you saying that you feel that there's no problem with you copying someone's homework and submitting it as your own.
Again with the Ad Hominem... You people really need to tone it down =). My notes example is exactly correct. I'm not taking credit for the music I'm distributing, nor am I taking credit for my Prof's views on the Spanis Civil War. I'm merely distributing them to a wider audience. What you're describing is academic dishonesty, which I would never endorse, for numerous reasons. I'm not being dishonest here - I'm just sharing. Think of it like the people who upload songs to YouTube, and clearly outline the creator of the song.
I assume through your student references and your general stance on things in this thread that you are a student. You have never created anything of worth in your life that needs protection for those very people you protect, i.e. thieves. Your intellectual dishonesty astounds me and tells me you have very little experience of the world we ACTUALLY live in and human behaviour in general.
A logical conclusion, among the many illogical arguments that fill this thread. It has no impact on the soundness of my logic, however. I'd like to think that I've created much of worth in my life. Several solid logical discourses, critiques of capitalism, communism, and modern politics, along with one or two unpublished scientific papers, recordings in music, etc. And here's the thing - I wouldn't give a single everliving fuck if another person decided to start sharing my ideas. It would be fantastic! The very knowledge that other people care enough about what I think to share with their friends? Phenomenal! Now, you should know that I'm exhibiting ABSOLUTELY NO academic dishonesty in this argument, and I resent the remark greatly. If you wish to claim such as that, at least bring some proof to the table. I have enough experience of the world we live in to know that IP is all bunk, and the growth of 'piracy' should send the same signal to everyone.
"There are no stats available, but let's make a quick calculation. I was checking regularly the number of concurrent downloads on torrent aggregating sites, and for the first 6-8 weeks there was around 20-30k ppl downloading it at the same time. Let's take 20k as the average and let's take 6 weeks. The game is 14GB, so let's assume that on an average not-too-fast connection it will be 6 hours of download. 6 weeks is 56 days, which equals to 1344 hours; and with 6h of average download time to get the game it would give us 224 downloads, then let's multiply it by 20k simultaneous downloaders.
"The result is roughly 4.5 million illegal downloads. This is only an estimation, and I would say that's rather on the optimistic side of things; as of today we have sold over 1M legal copies, so having only 4.5-5 illegal copies for each legal one would be not a bad ratio. The reality is probably way worse."
So the whole piracy rate is just a quick estimation with nothing backing it up and people keep mentioning the number all the time, I wonder if anyone even read the article.
Part of the pirated copies might be lost sales, simply downloaded due too high price, some may be just for collection (seriously some of the guys I've met pirate stuff just for the sake of having it, bunch never even touching it), there's tons and tons of reasons why a software might be pirated, while technically wrong, you can't really stop the whole thing.
The biggest issue the market faces is the convinience of just downloading the thing off somewhere, things like steam sales net a lot due more reasonable prices and ease of us, maximizing profit is not a easy thing to achieve while trying to keep the costs from getting too high.
Lack of benchmarks, unbiased information and so on are also pretty big things, some areas also have way different income so you'd have to try localize the prices, which however has the problem of people ordering from cheaper places/using different vpn and so on.
There's no easy way out, that's the current software market. In the end it's all about weighing the options, marketing and support that will effect the final outcome. Instead of focusing on the estimations of pirated copies, the rates and actual sales are much more important.
On December 02 2011 12:55 SoLaR[i.C] wrote: Are you posting seriously refmac, or is this some sad attempt at satire?
You not being able to use the intellectual property of others however you please is infringing upon your personal rights? Give me a break. Your personal rights don't include being able to manipulate those of others. I'm sorry you misunderstand things so badly.
I'm being completely serious. Intellectual property does not exist. It is a made up thing. Especially with more simple concepts (not so much games), the idea that you can claim ownership to an idea is ridiculous. The idea of internet piracy, when distilled to an intellectual property debate, is the same as a student sharing notes with a friend who's not in his class. Something like this should always be legal. I'm not saying that my personal rights include being able to manipulate the rights of others, I'm saying that others are claiming non-existant rights which infringe on mine.
You are an insane person or just horribly misguided. The world as you would like it would completely stifle innovation in nearly every field of...well everything.
Completely unsubstantiated. There was no IP right on the invention of powder. Didn't stop the innovation on guns. In the case of games, that may happen if the vast majority of potential customers would instead pirate a game. It is clearly not the case, and the majority of potential customers buy the games. Don't make it a moral issue, it is irrelevant. So the problem is a simple problem of demand curve. Companies have to make better games, have better distribution models or lower prices, otherwise their profit will be lower. Maybe the video game market is just not very profitable and fewer companies can enter it. Maybe less games should be produced. What kills innovation here is not piracy, but greed, look at the blizzard/activision evolution.
Also regarding the IP rights. Rights are man made, they change over time and depending on countries. In the universal declaration of human rights you can read: "Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment." Well it seems to be quite laughable now. Workers can put time and effort and training, does not matter if the management decides it's cheaper to send the factory in China.
What kills innovation is a lack of competition - and we probably have a situation in the gaming industry where too many of the dominant players churn out too much crap that's the same. So in part I agree with what you are saying.
As for your China reference. Businesses work for profit in general. If it's cheaper elsewhere to get the work done the work will go elsewhere. So the West has to step up competition with emerging economies where it has strengths. No use trying to beat China in the "butts in seats in a factory" competition. The West will lose every time.
In the end, no use whining either. You can't stop the tide of change. Just like the industrial revolution brought sweeping social and technological change; just like the information revolution is changing and challenging the notion of how we work now.
A logical conclusion, among the many illogical arguments that fill this thread. It has no impact on the soundness of my logic, however. I'd like to think that I've created much of worth in my life. Several solid logical discourses, critiques of capitalism, communism, and modern politics, along with one or two unpublished scientific papers, recordings in music, etc. And here's the thing - I wouldn't give a single everliving fuck if another person decided to star sharing my ideas. It would be fantastic! The very knowledge that other people care enough about what I think to share with their friends? Phenomenal! Now, you should know that I'm exhibiting ABSOLUTELY NO academic dishonesty in this argument, and I resent the remark greatly. If you wish to claim such as that, at least bring some proof to the table. I have enough experience of the world we live in to know that IP is all bunk, and the growth of 'piracy' should send the same signal to everyone.[/QUOTE]
You have it mixed up. You don't differentiate what is of commercial value vs. what is musings of an aspiring political commentator. You want your thoughts shared because, well, you like the sound of your own voice. Game companies don't want their products shared because, well, it's for profit.
You ideas have huge logical disconnects and don't factor human behaviour into your utopian world. Hence, dishonesty. I know you resent the remark but there it is.
Your notes example is not only misguided, it's downright wrong. The scholastic equivalent would be you saying that you feel that there's no problem with you copying someone's homework and submitting it as your own.
Again with the Ad Hominem... You people really need to tone it down =). My notes example is exactly correct. I'm not taking credit for the music I'm distributing, nor am I taking credit for my Prof's views on the Spanis Civil War. I'm merely distributing them to a wider audience. What you're describing is academic dishonesty, which I would never endorse, for numerous reasons. I'm not being dishonest here - I'm just sharing. Think of it like the people who upload songs to YouTube, and clearly outline the creator of the song.
Nope, your notes example is incorrect. Your logic directly supports cheating, academic dishonesty, and the general disregard for others. You don't get to decide who things get distributed to. Again, I'm sorry you misunderstand so badly.
Your notes example is not only misguided, it's downright wrong. The scholastic equivalent would be you saying that you feel that there's no problem with you copying someone's homework and submitting it as your own.
Again with the Ad Hominem... You people really need to tone it down =). My notes example is exactly correct. I'm not taking credit for the music I'm distributing, nor am I taking credit for my Prof's views on the Spanis Civil War. I'm merely distributing them to a wider audience. What you're describing is academic dishonesty, which I would never endorse, for numerous reasons. I'm not being dishonest here - I'm just sharing. Think of it like the people who upload songs to YouTube, and clearly outline the creator of the song.
Nope, your notes example is incorrect. Your logic directly supports cheating, academic dishonesty, and the general disregard for others. You don't get to decide who things get distributed to. Again, I'm sorry you misunderstand so badly.
Oh please. Now you're just being stubborn. There is a clear distinction between taking credit for the work of another, and distributing another's work for others to read/consume. Cheating clearly falls into the former category, while piracy falls into the latter, along with the sharing of notes, teaching or tutoring for free, and basically the entirety of modern science. Edit: And should I mention your complete failure to support your claims with anything other than personal attacks and absolute claims. If you would provide ONE logical argument, ONE example of evidence, even an appeal to some authority, your contribution to this argument might be useful, or even work towards defending your point.
You are an insane person or just horribly misguided. The world as you would like it would completely stifle innovation in nearly every field of...well everything.
Ad Hominem attacks? really? As to your other point, the world as I would like it wouldn't stifle innovation at all in anything. I too can throw out unjustified absolute statements! Or I could support them - lots of people do things for reasons other than profit, including many of the worlds greatest scientists and artists. By abolishing IP, you also remove boundaries for ordinary people and workers to innovate for themselves, in order to make their jobs easier, and encourage them to freely distribute their innovations with others.
Out of curiosity, do you realize that without any claims of ownership to IP, every single type of software would cease to exist, because there would be no benefit to making it. There would be no point to developing operating systems, so we would all be forced to use open source OS developed by some random guys with free time.
I'm not trying to be overly insulting, but the assumption that ideas do not have owners is ridiculous. Also, I forgot to quote the guy who torrented skyrim (hoping it's you), but apparently they thought the game was too expansive to be detailed in a demo. http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/07/14/there-won-39-t-be-a-skyrim-demo.aspx Considering the appeal of their game is the hugeness of their world and the replay value, it seems like a demo wouldn't be that impressive anyway.
Of course not. Even better, I, random no lifer, could take the time to improve an already issued operating system and release it. And there will still be incentives for innovation. If i'm a researcher looking for a new tool to use, I might create one, or if I'm a business, wanting my employees to work more efficiently.
Your notes example is not only misguided, it's downright wrong. The scholastic equivalent would be you saying that you feel that there's no problem with you copying someone's homework and submitting it as your own.
Again with the Ad Hominem... You people really need to tone it down =). My notes example is exactly correct. I'm not taking credit for the music I'm distributing, nor am I taking credit for my Prof's views on the Spanis Civil War. I'm merely distributing them to a wider audience. What you're describing is academic dishonesty, which I would never endorse, for numerous reasons. I'm not being dishonest here - I'm just sharing. Think of it like the people who upload songs to YouTube, and clearly outline the creator of the song.
I assume through your student references and your general stance on things in this thread that you are a student. You have never created anything of worth in your life that needs protection for those very people you protect, i.e. thieves. Your intellectual dishonesty astounds me and tells me you have very little experience of the world we ACTUALLY live in and human behaviour in general.
A logical conclusion, among the many illogical arguments that fill this thread. It has no impact on the soundness of my logic, however. I'd like to think that I've created much of worth in my life. Several solid logical discourses, critiques of capitalism, communism, and modern politics, along with one or two unpublished scientific papers, recordings in music, etc. And here's the thing - I wouldn't give a single everliving fuck if another person decided to start sharing my ideas. It would be fantastic! The very knowledge that other people care enough about what I think to share with their friends? Phenomenal! Now, you should know that I'm exhibiting ABSOLUTELY NO academic dishonesty in this argument, and I resent the remark greatly. If you wish to claim such as that, at least bring some proof to the table. I have enough experience of the world we live in to know that IP is all bunk, and the growth of 'piracy' should send the same signal to everyone.
Spelling
Oh look, a student who thinks they have all the answers. Quaint.
Look kid. I don't have all the answers. No one does. But you sure as shit don't. If your idea is "remove intellectual property and don't give a shit when people steal ideas and data", then you have no real world experience.
Don't go crying to anyone when you come up with an idea, and it gets stolen. There should be no repercussion, right? Doesn't matter if you do all the legwork with to come up with it and build it.
That's childish logic, from an immature child. If that is really your argument, then you have no idea of anything outside of your sheltered walls.
You say you wouldn't care if someone shared your ideas? Then they're not worth shit in the first place. Once you come up with a good paper with worthwhile ideas, and suddenly people start hocking it as their own with not so much as a nod to you, you'll understand a bit more.
Your notes example is not only misguided, it's downright wrong. The scholastic equivalent would be you saying that you feel that there's no problem with you copying someone's homework and submitting it as your own.
Again with the Ad Hominem... You people really need to tone it down =). My notes example is exactly correct. I'm not taking credit for the music I'm distributing, nor am I taking credit for my Prof's views on the Spanis Civil War. I'm merely distributing them to a wider audience. What you're describing is academic dishonesty, which I would never endorse, for numerous reasons. I'm not being dishonest here - I'm just sharing. Think of it like the people who upload songs to YouTube, and clearly outline the creator of the song.
Nope, your notes example is incorrect. Your logic directly supports cheating, academic dishonesty, and the general disregard for others. You don't get to decide who things get distributed to. Again, I'm sorry you misunderstand so badly.
Oh please. Now you're just being stubborn. There is a clear distinction between taking credit for the work of another, and distributing another's work for others to read/consume. Cheating clearly falls into the former category, while piracy falls into the latter, along with the sharing of notes, teaching or tutoring for free, and basically the entirety of modern science.
So in your world, voluntarily educating others for free is the same as a person taking concepts derived by another and distributing them despite the originator not wanting them to be? Sorry, but no. We've already established that you don't believe in intellectual property, but the fact is you're wrong.
On December 02 2011 13:33 refmac_cys.cys wrote: Many responses, all at once!
You are an insane person or just horribly misguided. The world as you would like it would completely stifle innovation in nearly every field of...well everything.
Ad Hominem attacks? really? As to your other point, the world as I would like it wouldn't stifle innovation at all in anything. I too can throw out unjustified absolute statements! Or I could support them - lots of people do things for reasons other than profit, including many of the worlds greatest scientists and artists. By abolishing IP, you also remove boundaries for ordinary people and workers to innovate for themselves, in order to make their jobs easier, and encourage them to freely distribute their innovations with others.
Out of curiosity, do you realize that without any claims of ownership to IP, every single type of software would cease to exist, because there would be no benefit to making it. There would be no point to developing operating systems, so we would all be forced to use open source OS developed by some random guys with free time.
I'm not trying to be overly insulting, but the assumption that ideas do not have owners is ridiculous. Also, I forgot to quote the guy who torrented skyrim (hoping it's you), but apparently they thought the game was too expansive to be detailed in a demo. http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/07/14/there-won-39-t-be-a-skyrim-demo.aspx Considering the appeal of their game is the hugeness of their world and the replay value, it seems like a demo wouldn't be that impressive anyway.
Of course not. Even better, I, random no lifer, could take the time to improve an already issued operating system and release it. And there will still be incentives for innovation. If i'm a researcher looking for a new tool to use, I might create one, or if I'm a business, wanting my employees to work more efficiently.
Okay, so you're just delusional.
Your notes example is not only misguided, it's downright wrong. The scholastic equivalent would be you saying that you feel that there's no problem with you copying someone's homework and submitting it as your own.
Again with the Ad Hominem... You people really need to tone it down =). My notes example is exactly correct. I'm not taking credit for the music I'm distributing, nor am I taking credit for my Prof's views on the Spanis Civil War. I'm merely distributing them to a wider audience. What you're describing is academic dishonesty, which I would never endorse, for numerous reasons. I'm not being dishonest here - I'm just sharing. Think of it like the people who upload songs to YouTube, and clearly outline the creator of the song.
I assume through your student references and your general stance on things in this thread that you are a student. You have never created anything of worth in your life that needs protection for those very people you protect, i.e. thieves. Your intellectual dishonesty astounds me and tells me you have very little experience of the world we ACTUALLY live in and human behaviour in general.
A logical conclusion, among the many illogical arguments that fill this thread. It has no impact on the soundness of my logic, however. I'd like to think that I've created much of worth in my life. Several solid logical discourses, critiques of capitalism, communism, and modern politics, along with one or two unpublished scientific papers, recordings in music, etc. And here's the thing - I wouldn't give a single everliving fuck if another person decided to start sharing my ideas. It would be fantastic! The very knowledge that other people care enough about what I think to share with their friends? Phenomenal! Now, you should know that I'm exhibiting ABSOLUTELY NO academic dishonesty in this argument, and I resent the remark greatly. If you wish to claim such as that, at least bring some proof to the table. I have enough experience of the world we live in to know that IP is all bunk, and the growth of 'piracy' should send the same signal to everyone.
Spelling
Oh look, a student who thinks they have all the answers. Quaint.
Look kid. I don't have all the answers. No one does. But you sure as shit don't. If your idea is "remove intellectual property and don't give a shit when people steal ideas and data", then you have no real world experience.
Don't go crying to anyone when you come up with an idea, and it gets stolen. There should be no repercussion, right? Doesn't matter if you do all the legwork with to come up with it and build it.
That's childish logic, from an immature child. If that is really your argument, then you have no idea of anything outside of your sheltered walls.
You say you wouldn't care if someone shared your ideas? Then they're not worth shit in the first place. Once you come up with a good paper with worthwhile ideas, and suddenly people start hocking it as their own with not so much as a nod to you, you'll understand a bit more.
Once again ignoring the personal ridicule. There's a very distinct difference between hawking someone else's ideas as your own, and sharing and developing those same ideas. What you're attacking, with your crusade against piracy, is the latter. The first idea MANDATES the existence of IP. If intellectual property doesn't exist, how can someone else sell it? The second acknowledges the effort put into the thought by the creator, and shares that creation with the wide world. In a way, it's a final glorification of their effort. No one wants their ideas used without credit, but that doesn't mean that they alone can hold proprietary ownership of them.
Your notes example is not only misguided, it's downright wrong. The scholastic equivalent would be you saying that you feel that there's no problem with you copying someone's homework and submitting it as your own.
Again with the Ad Hominem... You people really need to tone it down =). My notes example is exactly correct. I'm not taking credit for the music I'm distributing, nor am I taking credit for my Prof's views on the Spanis Civil War. I'm merely distributing them to a wider audience. What you're describing is academic dishonesty, which I would never endorse, for numerous reasons. I'm not being dishonest here - I'm just sharing. Think of it like the people who upload songs to YouTube, and clearly outline the creator of the song.
Nope, your notes example is incorrect. Your logic directly supports cheating, academic dishonesty, and the general disregard for others. You don't get to decide who things get distributed to. Again, I'm sorry you misunderstand so badly.
Oh please. Now you're just being stubborn. There is a clear distinction between taking credit for the work of another, and distributing another's work for others to read/consume. Cheating clearly falls into the former category, while piracy falls into the latter, along with the sharing of notes, teaching or tutoring for free, and basically the entirety of modern science.
So in your world, voluntarily educating others for free is the same as a person taking concepts derived by another and distributing them despite the originator not wanting them to be? Sorry, but no. We've already established that you don't believe in intellectual property, but the fact is you're wrong.
If the originator didn't want his ideas distributed, he shouldn't have put them on the market. Edit: Point being, the originator in this case (most cases) clearly wants his ideas shared. If I may quote Pete Townshend: "a creative person would prefer their music to be stolen and enjoyed than ignored" (BBC NEWS). I think, for the majority of artists out there, whether they be game designers, musicians, what have you, there's an innate desire for their creations to be enjoyed by others, which is the driving force in their decision to create in the first place. To be quite frank, IP, as it exists, serves to strangle most people, and it is only by removing that restriction that they can come to be known.
I glanced through and didn't see anyone mention this:
The Witcher's 2 DRM slowed the game down to a crawl. It took like a full minute to load the menus on my computer, and it ran at maybe 30 fps, sometimes lower. People realized pretty quickly without DRM, the game ran much, much better. When they patched out the DRM, the menus loaded nearly instantly, and I was getting 60+ fps. I wouldn't be surprised if a substantial chunk of those who pirated the game were just doing it so they didn't have a subpar experience.
Note: You could get it DRMless if you bought it from their store on Day 1, but I got it via Steam (as did a lot of other people).
Your notes example is not only misguided, it's downright wrong. The scholastic equivalent would be you saying that you feel that there's no problem with you copying someone's homework and submitting it as your own.
Again with the Ad Hominem... You people really need to tone it down =). My notes example is exactly correct. I'm not taking credit for the music I'm distributing, nor am I taking credit for my Prof's views on the Spanis Civil War. I'm merely distributing them to a wider audience. What you're describing is academic dishonesty, which I would never endorse, for numerous reasons. I'm not being dishonest here - I'm just sharing. Think of it like the people who upload songs to YouTube, and clearly outline the creator of the song.
Nope, your notes example is incorrect. Your logic directly supports cheating, academic dishonesty, and the general disregard for others. You don't get to decide who things get distributed to. Again, I'm sorry you misunderstand so badly.
Oh please. Now you're just being stubborn. There is a clear distinction between taking credit for the work of another, and distributing another's work for others to read/consume. Cheating clearly falls into the former category, while piracy falls into the latter, along with the sharing of notes, teaching or tutoring for free, and basically the entirety of modern science.
So in your world, voluntarily educating others for free is the same as a person taking concepts derived by another and distributing them despite the originator not wanting them to be? Sorry, but no. We've already established that you don't believe in intellectual property, but the fact is you're wrong.
If the originator didn't want his ideas distributed, he shouldn't have put them on the market. Edit: Point being, the originator in this case (most cases) clearly wants his ideas shared. If I may quote Pete Townshend: "a creative person would prefer their music to be stolen and enjoyed than ignored" (BBC NEWS). I think, for the majority of artists out there, whether they be game designers, musicians, what have you, there's an innate desire for their creations to be enjoyed by others, which is the driving force in their decision to create in the first place. To be quite frank, IP, as it exists, serves to strangle most people, and it is only by removing that restriction that they can come to be known.
What the fuck? The market is intended for goods and services to be exchanged for money and profit. Neither party is to be coerced into either distributing or consuming that product. Putting something up for sale doesn't mean that you get to do what you please with it. Again, your "intellectual property doesn't exist" claim isn't a viewpoint, it's wrong.
Also, let me give you a scenario: I just finished my petroleum engineering dissertation in which I created a groundbreaking algorithm for the stochastic estimation of oil reserves. I put 5 years of incredibly hard work into this particular program and the results were published in a highly respected journal. They were published so that I receive personal recognition and for a general display of "what is possible." I absolutely don't want anybody using this algorithm, period. It is to be used by me solely, or the rights to it will be sold at my discretion. Fortunately, my hard work was noticed because oil companies are now making handsome offers in hopes that I will bring my method for their economic advantage.
Now, in your mind, you are okay with taking my published results, and using my method despite me not wanting it to be?
Your notes example is not only misguided, it's downright wrong. The scholastic equivalent would be you saying that you feel that there's no problem with you copying someone's homework and submitting it as your own.
Again with the Ad Hominem... You people really need to tone it down =). My notes example is exactly correct. I'm not taking credit for the music I'm distributing, nor am I taking credit for my Prof's views on the Spanis Civil War. I'm merely distributing them to a wider audience. What you're describing is academic dishonesty, which I would never endorse, for numerous reasons. I'm not being dishonest here - I'm just sharing. Think of it like the people who upload songs to YouTube, and clearly outline the creator of the song.
Nope, your notes example is incorrect. Your logic directly supports cheating, academic dishonesty, and the general disregard for others. You don't get to decide who things get distributed to. Again, I'm sorry you misunderstand so badly.
Oh please. Now you're just being stubborn. There is a clear distinction between taking credit for the work of another, and distributing another's work for others to read/consume. Cheating clearly falls into the former category, while piracy falls into the latter, along with the sharing of notes, teaching or tutoring for free, and basically the entirety of modern science.
So in your world, voluntarily educating others for free is the same as a person taking concepts derived by another and distributing them despite the originator not wanting them to be? Sorry, but no. We've already established that you don't believe in intellectual property, but the fact is you're wrong.
If the originator didn't want his ideas distributed, he shouldn't have put them on the market. Edit: Point being, the originator in this case (most cases) clearly wants his ideas shared. If I may quote Pete Townshend: "a creative person would prefer their music to be stolen and enjoyed than ignored" (BBC NEWS). I think, for the majority of artists out there, whether they be game designers, musicians, what have you, there's an innate desire for their creations to be enjoyed by others, which is the driving force in their decision to create in the first place. To be quite frank, IP, as it exists, serves to strangle most people, and it is only by removing that restriction that they can come to be known.
Again, that's a very narrow view. It's not that we're attacking you as a person, but your ideas are small-minded and frankly, wrong.
Your logic here is that "if it exists on the market, I should be able to have it free of charge". That's ridiculous. Humanity would never get anywhere with that model. It's selfish, egotistical, and honestly immature.
Yes, if designers had their way, every person would be able to enjoy their game free of charge. But the issue is that economy doesn't allow for that. If they're going to put time and energy into making something, they need to get paid. The workers need to pay for food, housing, etc. The company needs to make break even not to go under, and they need to make a profit to be able to make games in the future.
The idea of IP has it's downsides, true. But in a without it, no one would ever create and share anything worthwhile. You can't honestly think that just giving away everything for free or taking what you want without asking or recompense is a way to live life and support a global economy. You're either trolling or uninformed.
On December 02 2011 14:09 zer0das wrote: I glanced through and didn't see anyone mention this:
The Witcher's 2 DRM slowed the game down to a crawl. It took like a full minute to load the menus on my computer, and it ran at maybe 30 fps, sometimes lower. People realized pretty quickly without DRM, the game ran much, much better. When they patched out the DRM, the menus loaded nearly instantly, and I was getting 60+ fps. I wouldn't be surprised if a substantial chunk of those who pirated the game were just doing it so they didn't have a subpar experience.
Note: You could get it DRMless if you bought it form their store on Day 1, but I got it via Steam (as did a lot of other people).
We've already talked about how much DRM sucks. It does, it really does. But right now, it's one of the only solutions to try and cut back on piracy. Until something new comes around, it's all we've got.
Your notes example is not only misguided, it's downright wrong. The scholastic equivalent would be you saying that you feel that there's no problem with you copying someone's homework and submitting it as your own.
Again with the Ad Hominem... You people really need to tone it down =). My notes example is exactly correct. I'm not taking credit for the music I'm distributing, nor am I taking credit for my Prof's views on the Spanis Civil War. I'm merely distributing them to a wider audience. What you're describing is academic dishonesty, which I would never endorse, for numerous reasons. I'm not being dishonest here - I'm just sharing. Think of it like the people who upload songs to YouTube, and clearly outline the creator of the song.
Nope, your notes example is incorrect. Your logic directly supports cheating, academic dishonesty, and the general disregard for others. You don't get to decide who things get distributed to. Again, I'm sorry you misunderstand so badly.
Oh please. Now you're just being stubborn. There is a clear distinction between taking credit for the work of another, and distributing another's work for others to read/consume. Cheating clearly falls into the former category, while piracy falls into the latter, along with the sharing of notes, teaching or tutoring for free, and basically the entirety of modern science.
So in your world, voluntarily educating others for free is the same as a person taking concepts derived by another and distributing them despite the originator not wanting them to be? Sorry, but no. We've already established that you don't believe in intellectual property, but the fact is you're wrong.
If the originator didn't want his ideas distributed, he shouldn't have put them on the market. Edit: Point being, the originator in this case (most cases) clearly wants his ideas shared. If I may quote Pete Townshend: "a creative person would prefer their music to be stolen and enjoyed than ignored" (BBC NEWS). I think, for the majority of artists out there, whether they be game designers, musicians, what have you, there's an innate desire for their creations to be enjoyed by others, which is the driving force in their decision to create in the first place. To be quite frank, IP, as it exists, serves to strangle most people, and it is only by removing that restriction that they can come to be known.
Your logic here is that "if it exists on the market, I should be able to have it free of charge". That's ridiculous. Humanity would never get anywhere with that model. It's selfish, egotistical, and honestly immature.
Without getting into the whole thing, I will say there is a very well thought out economical model referred to as "infinite goods / scarce goods" that you might want to read about.
Your notes example is not only misguided, it's downright wrong. The scholastic equivalent would be you saying that you feel that there's no problem with you copying someone's homework and submitting it as your own.
Again with the Ad Hominem... You people really need to tone it down =). My notes example is exactly correct. I'm not taking credit for the music I'm distributing, nor am I taking credit for my Prof's views on the Spanis Civil War. I'm merely distributing them to a wider audience. What you're describing is academic dishonesty, which I would never endorse, for numerous reasons. I'm not being dishonest here - I'm just sharing. Think of it like the people who upload songs to YouTube, and clearly outline the creator of the song.
Nope, your notes example is incorrect. Your logic directly supports cheating, academic dishonesty, and the general disregard for others. You don't get to decide who things get distributed to. Again, I'm sorry you misunderstand so badly.
Oh please. Now you're just being stubborn. There is a clear distinction between taking credit for the work of another, and distributing another's work for others to read/consume. Cheating clearly falls into the former category, while piracy falls into the latter, along with the sharing of notes, teaching or tutoring for free, and basically the entirety of modern science.
So in your world, voluntarily educating others for free is the same as a person taking concepts derived by another and distributing them despite the originator not wanting them to be? Sorry, but no. We've already established that you don't believe in intellectual property, but the fact is you're wrong.
If the originator didn't want his ideas distributed, he shouldn't have put them on the market. Edit: Point being, the originator in this case (most cases) clearly wants his ideas shared. If I may quote Pete Townshend: "a creative person would prefer their music to be stolen and enjoyed than ignored" (BBC NEWS). I think, for the majority of artists out there, whether they be game designers, musicians, what have you, there's an innate desire for their creations to be enjoyed by others, which is the driving force in their decision to create in the first place. To be quite frank, IP, as it exists, serves to strangle most people, and it is only by removing that restriction that they can come to be known.
Your logic here is that "if it exists on the market, I should be able to have it free of charge". That's ridiculous. Humanity would never get anywhere with that model. It's selfish, egotistical, and honestly immature.
Without getting into the whole thing, I will say there is a very well thought out economical model referred to as "infinite goods / scarce goods" that you might want to read about.
This is assuming games are infinite and free. They aren't. You don't get 3 people together with an idea on a weekend and pop out Halo. Games, especially games worth buying, are a scarce resource in this model, so it's even worse to consider pirating them.
Let me go more into that: the example was with music, and it kind of holds with games, but I disagree. The idea is to charge more for things like concerts and live sessions but make digital music free. How does that work for games? A company isn't going to make enough profit on tech demos, expos, or donations. A triple-A title game is a multi-million dollar expenditure.
Also to contrast games and music in this scenario is how they're made. Yes, you need expensive music equipment, mixing software, instruments, and stuff like that. But that's a one-time buy and making the music itself is just having a space and time. Games require more people involved, more storage for data, servers for online games, the latest software and hardware for developing, and HAVE to be put onto a disc if it's a console title. PC games and music can be completely digital, console games need a physical copy, except the little indie games.
Interesting read though.
Edit: actually come to think of it, you could never use the described model for games. Music is all about profit, which is why you see musicians with mansions and a dozen cars. The average game developer makes a very modest wage, a free model would kill the industry. And like I said, there is no concert or live rendition allegory for gaming, they need to make their profits directly from the game sales itself and nothing more.
Your notes example is not only misguided, it's downright wrong. The scholastic equivalent would be you saying that you feel that there's no problem with you copying someone's homework and submitting it as your own.
Again with the Ad Hominem... You people really need to tone it down =). My notes example is exactly correct. I'm not taking credit for the music I'm distributing, nor am I taking credit for my Prof's views on the Spanis Civil War. I'm merely distributing them to a wider audience. What you're describing is academic dishonesty, which I would never endorse, for numerous reasons. I'm not being dishonest here - I'm just sharing. Think of it like the people who upload songs to YouTube, and clearly outline the creator of the song.
Nope, your notes example is incorrect. Your logic directly supports cheating, academic dishonesty, and the general disregard for others. You don't get to decide who things get distributed to. Again, I'm sorry you misunderstand so badly.
Oh please. Now you're just being stubborn. There is a clear distinction between taking credit for the work of another, and distributing another's work for others to read/consume. Cheating clearly falls into the former category, while piracy falls into the latter, along with the sharing of notes, teaching or tutoring for free, and basically the entirety of modern science.
So in your world, voluntarily educating others for free is the same as a person taking concepts derived by another and distributing them despite the originator not wanting them to be? Sorry, but no. We've already established that you don't believe in intellectual property, but the fact is you're wrong.
If the originator didn't want his ideas distributed, he shouldn't have put them on the market. Edit: Point being, the originator in this case (most cases) clearly wants his ideas shared. If I may quote Pete Townshend: "a creative person would prefer their music to be stolen and enjoyed than ignored" (BBC NEWS). I think, for the majority of artists out there, whether they be game designers, musicians, what have you, there's an innate desire for their creations to be enjoyed by others, which is the driving force in their decision to create in the first place. To be quite frank, IP, as it exists, serves to strangle most people, and it is only by removing that restriction that they can come to be known.
Your logic here is that "if it exists on the market, I should be able to have it free of charge". That's ridiculous. Humanity would never get anywhere with that model. It's selfish, egotistical, and honestly immature.
Without getting into the whole thing, I will say there is a very well thought out economical model referred to as "infinite goods / scarce goods" that you might want to read about.
This is assuming games are infinite and free. They aren't. You don't get 3 people together with an idea on a weekend and pop out Halo. Games, especially games worth buying, are a scarce resource in this model, so it's even worse to consider pirating them.
Let me go more into that: the example was with music, and it kind of holds with games, but I disagree. The idea is to charge more for things like concerts and live sessions but make digital music free. How does that work for games? A company isn't going to make enough profit on tech demos, expos, or donations. A triple-A title game is a multi-million dollar expenditure.
Also to contrast games and music in this scenario is how they're made. Yes, you need expensive music equipment, mixing software, instruments, and stuff like that. But that's a one-time buy and making the music itself is just having a space and time. Games require more people involved, more storage for data, servers for online games, the latest software and hardware for developing, and HAVE to be put onto a disc if it's a console title. PC games and music can be completely digital, console games need a physical copy, except the little indie games.
Interesting read though.
Edit: actually come to think of it, you could never use the described model for games. Music is all about profit, which is why you see musicians with mansions and a dozen cars. The average game developer makes a very modest wage, a free model would kill the industry. And like I said, there is no concert or live rendition allegory for gaming, they need to make their profits directly from the game sales itself and nothing more.
First off, Games are an infinite resource *once created*. That is exactly how piracy works. The marginal cost of reproducing a copy of a game is near zero (bandwidth / electricity costs is essentially it). Making the new game is a scarce good. Therefore, a company could sell the scarce good (in this tiny example, the creation of a new game) and use the infinite good (the completed product, with *completed* being the key word) as an advertising vessel.
And in your own post, you explained how it could work for games. - servers for online games. That is inherently a scarce good. Take WoW as an example. Using this business model, they could give the game away for free, and charge a subscription for *access to the server*. That access is scarce, the future patches (that are not yet created) are scarce. The created game content is infinite.
Of course, these are only small examples with very obvious real-world applications. There are a lot of scenarios this doesn't cover, but I think I will leave it to a business expert (rather than a mere code jockey like myself) to work out the full details. And those full details, once made, are infinite. But whatever genius figures them out in the first place should command a high salary for his time solving more problems.
Edit: I don't want to sound like I'm bowing out while the fight is going, but this will be my last post in this thread. Piracy is far too heated of a subject for me to get into. Everyone is so... angry.
I would purchase games if they weren't so damn expensive. I don't really play multiplayer games very often. I'm limited pretty much just SC2 and WoW. I don't really pirate games very often, but when I do, I tend to target recently released blockbuster ones. I'm sorry. $60 is just too fucking much. Lately I've been looking out for Steam Sales and have been scooping up games for dirt cheap. I play games people were talking about three years ago, but I still have my fun (having a blast going through Mass Effect atm).
What the fuck? The market is intended for goods and services in exchange for money and profit. Neither party is to be coerced into either distributing or consuming that product. Putting something up for sale doesn't mean that you get to do what you please with it. Again, your "intellectual property doesn't exist" isn't a viewpoint, it's wrong.
Also, let me give you a scenario: I just finished my petroleum engineering dissertation in which I created a groundbreaking algorithm for the stochastic estimation of oil reserves. I put 5 years of incredibly hard work into this particular program and the results were published in a highly respected journal. They were published so that I receive personal recognition and for a general display of "what is possible." I absolutely don't want anybody using this algorithm, period. It is to be used by me solely, or the rights to it will be sold at my discretion. Fortunately, my hard work was noticed because oil companies are now making handsome offers in hopes that I will bring my method for their economic advantage.
Now, in your mind, you are okay with taking my published results, and using my method despite me not wanting them to be?
But that's the point - the market isn't right for ideas, because of the reasons I gave earlier. But what you're signaling, by putting the ideas on the market (where they shouldn't be), is that you're ok with their distribution. As to your example - absolutely. Because that idea can't be property, because the minute that idea is property, it means I can't do what I want with my oil reserves. Even better than that, I would feel free (if I had a background in Petroleum Engineering) to make improvements to your idea, to develop it, and to publish it, crediting you. If physicist me discovers some new natural phenomenon, and I publish a paper, why shouldn't someone take advantage of it? It's not like I created this phenomenon. All we can do is reshape, rearrange, and discover what's already present. Now, what you could do, which I would be perfectly ok with, is set up your own corporation, without having published this idea. Go around, and say "I will estimate shit for you." If it works, you can sell your service. The idea, though? That's either nobodies, or Gods (whichever you prefer).
Again, that's a very narrow view. It's not that we're attacking you as a person, but your ideas are small-minded and frankly, wrong.
Your logic here is that "if it exists on the market, I should be able to have it free of charge". That's ridiculous. Humanity would never get anywhere with that model. It's selfish, egotistical, and honestly immature.
Yes, if designers had their way, every person would be able to enjoy their game free of charge. But the issue is that economy doesn't allow for that. If they're going to put time and energy into making something, they need to get paid. The workers need to pay for food, housing, etc. The company needs to make break even not to go under, and they need to make a profit to be able to make games in the future.
The idea of IP has it's downsides, true. But in a without it, no one would ever create and share anything worthwhile. You can't honestly think that just giving away everything for free or taking what you want without asking or recompense is a way to live life and support a global economy. You're either trolling or uninformed.
Small-minded? Potentially. They stem from one uniform critique of the concept of Intellectual property. I could have gone with a Marxist critique, or with the more measured arguments that are so prevalent.
That wasn't my argument, and you know it. My argument was that ideas shouldn't be on the market at all, and what was brought up there was to show that individual A did, in fact, want there ideas shared.
That problem I leave to the companies. One problem is that current patterns of distribution are out of phase with current technology, which many people have pointed out. Until the companies can make it so that they're providing a service, rather than selling an idea, piracy will continue, and I will continue to support it.
But they do, and have done, and will continue to do so without the motivation of intellectual property. What intellectual property does is allow someone else to take credit for that idea, restrict further the development of technology, and restrict what I can do with my very very real physical property. As I've stated before, I'm being very, very serious. Under ordinary circumstances, would I have chosen a different line of argument? Probably. But this serves for now. I think that ideas need to be utilized for them to have any value, and by placing limits on that utilization, you restrict growth and development. I'm not taking everything for free. Just ideas.
Your notes example is not only misguided, it's downright wrong. The scholastic equivalent would be you saying that you feel that there's no problem with you copying someone's homework and submitting it as your own.
Again with the Ad Hominem... You people really need to tone it down =). My notes example is exactly correct. I'm not taking credit for the music I'm distributing, nor am I taking credit for my Prof's views on the Spanis Civil War. I'm merely distributing them to a wider audience. What you're describing is academic dishonesty, which I would never endorse, for numerous reasons. I'm not being dishonest here - I'm just sharing. Think of it like the people who upload songs to YouTube, and clearly outline the creator of the song.
Nope, your notes example is incorrect. Your logic directly supports cheating, academic dishonesty, and the general disregard for others. You don't get to decide who things get distributed to. Again, I'm sorry you misunderstand so badly.
Oh please. Now you're just being stubborn. There is a clear distinction between taking credit for the work of another, and distributing another's work for others to read/consume. Cheating clearly falls into the former category, while piracy falls into the latter, along with the sharing of notes, teaching or tutoring for free, and basically the entirety of modern science.
So in your world, voluntarily educating others for free is the same as a person taking concepts derived by another and distributing them despite the originator not wanting them to be? Sorry, but no. We've already established that you don't believe in intellectual property, but the fact is you're wrong.
If the originator didn't want his ideas distributed, he shouldn't have put them on the market. Edit: Point being, the originator in this case (most cases) clearly wants his ideas shared. If I may quote Pete Townshend: "a creative person would prefer their music to be stolen and enjoyed than ignored" (BBC NEWS). I think, for the majority of artists out there, whether they be game designers, musicians, what have you, there's an innate desire for their creations to be enjoyed by others, which is the driving force in their decision to create in the first place. To be quite frank, IP, as it exists, serves to strangle most people, and it is only by removing that restriction that they can come to be known.
Your logic here is that "if it exists on the market, I should be able to have it free of charge". That's ridiculous. Humanity would never get anywhere with that model. It's selfish, egotistical, and honestly immature.
Without getting into the whole thing, I will say there is a very well thought out economical model referred to as "infinite goods / scarce goods" that you might want to read about.
This is assuming games are infinite and free. They aren't. You don't get 3 people together with an idea on a weekend and pop out Halo. Games, especially games worth buying, are a scarce resource in this model, so it's even worse to consider pirating them.
Let me go more into that: the example was with music, and it kind of holds with games, but I disagree. The idea is to charge more for things like concerts and live sessions but make digital music free. How does that work for games? A company isn't going to make enough profit on tech demos, expos, or donations. A triple-A title game is a multi-million dollar expenditure.
Also to contrast games and music in this scenario is how they're made. Yes, you need expensive music equipment, mixing software, instruments, and stuff like that. But that's a one-time buy and making the music itself is just having a space and time. Games require more people involved, more storage for data, servers for online games, the latest software and hardware for developing, and HAVE to be put onto a disc if it's a console title. PC games and music can be completely digital, console games need a physical copy, except the little indie games.
Interesting read though.
Edit: actually come to think of it, you could never use the described model for games. Music is all about profit, which is why you see musicians with mansions and a dozen cars. The average game developer makes a very modest wage, a free model would kill the industry. And like I said, there is no concert or live rendition allegory for gaming, they need to make their profits directly from the game sales itself and nothing more.
First off, Games are an infinite resource *once created*. That is exactly how piracy works. The marginal cost of reproducing a copy of a game is near zero (bandwidth / electricity costs is essentially it). Making the new game is a scarce good. Therefore, a company could sell the scarce good (in this tiny example, the creation of a new game) and use the infinite good (the completed product, with *completed* being the key word) as an advertising vessel.
And in your own post, you explained how it could work for games. - servers for online games. That is inherently a scarce good. Take WoW as an example. Using this business model, they could give the game away for free, and charge a subscription for *access to the server*. That access is scarce, the future patches (that are not yet created) are scarce. The created game content is infinite.
Of course, these are only small examples with very obvious real-world applications. There are a lot of scenarios this doesn't cover, but I think I will leave it to a business expert (rather than a mere code jockey like myself) to work out the full details. And those full details, once made, are infinite. But whatever genius figures them out in the first place should command a high salary for his time solving more problems.
Edit: I don't want to sound like I'm bowing out while the fight is going, but this will be my last post in this thread. Piracy is far too heated of a subject for me to get into. Everyone is so... angry.
Bolded is the point of contention. How do you sell a new game and then give it away for free? It's impossible, no one would buy it new and would just wait. Unless every game ever came with a pre-order bonus (physical or in-game), you can not both sell the game and give it away for free. Income has to come from somewhere, if not from game sales, then where?
The WoW example is more or less how it works. If they made it free to download with a monthly fee, it'd work pretty much exactly the same. Except MMOs (and MOBAs, I guess) are the only games that can run this model.
I don't consider it a fight, your example was one of the more well thought out ones on here. It hasn't changed my mind, I still dislike pirating, but it's a good discussion for future business models.
[quote] Again with the Ad Hominem... You people really need to tone it down =). My notes example is exactly correct. I'm not taking credit for the music I'm distributing, nor am I taking credit for my Prof's views on the Spanis Civil War. I'm merely distributing them to a wider audience. What you're describing is academic dishonesty, which I would never endorse, for numerous reasons. I'm not being dishonest here - I'm just sharing. Think of it like the people who upload songs to YouTube, and clearly outline the creator of the song.
Nope, your notes example is incorrect. Your logic directly supports cheating, academic dishonesty, and the general disregard for others. You don't get to decide who things get distributed to. Again, I'm sorry you misunderstand so badly.
Oh please. Now you're just being stubborn. There is a clear distinction between taking credit for the work of another, and distributing another's work for others to read/consume. Cheating clearly falls into the former category, while piracy falls into the latter, along with the sharing of notes, teaching or tutoring for free, and basically the entirety of modern science.
So in your world, voluntarily educating others for free is the same as a person taking concepts derived by another and distributing them despite the originator not wanting them to be? Sorry, but no. We've already established that you don't believe in intellectual property, but the fact is you're wrong.
If the originator didn't want his ideas distributed, he shouldn't have put them on the market. Edit: Point being, the originator in this case (most cases) clearly wants his ideas shared. If I may quote Pete Townshend: "a creative person would prefer their music to be stolen and enjoyed than ignored" (BBC NEWS). I think, for the majority of artists out there, whether they be game designers, musicians, what have you, there's an innate desire for their creations to be enjoyed by others, which is the driving force in their decision to create in the first place. To be quite frank, IP, as it exists, serves to strangle most people, and it is only by removing that restriction that they can come to be known.
Your logic here is that "if it exists on the market, I should be able to have it free of charge". That's ridiculous. Humanity would never get anywhere with that model. It's selfish, egotistical, and honestly immature.
Without getting into the whole thing, I will say there is a very well thought out economical model referred to as "infinite goods / scarce goods" that you might want to read about.
This is assuming games are infinite and free. They aren't. You don't get 3 people together with an idea on a weekend and pop out Halo. Games, especially games worth buying, are a scarce resource in this model, so it's even worse to consider pirating them.
Let me go more into that: the example was with music, and it kind of holds with games, but I disagree. The idea is to charge more for things like concerts and live sessions but make digital music free. How does that work for games? A company isn't going to make enough profit on tech demos, expos, or donations. A triple-A title game is a multi-million dollar expenditure.
Also to contrast games and music in this scenario is how they're made. Yes, you need expensive music equipment, mixing software, instruments, and stuff like that. But that's a one-time buy and making the music itself is just having a space and time. Games require more people involved, more storage for data, servers for online games, the latest software and hardware for developing, and HAVE to be put onto a disc if it's a console title. PC games and music can be completely digital, console games need a physical copy, except the little indie games.
Interesting read though.
Edit: actually come to think of it, you could never use the described model for games. Music is all about profit, which is why you see musicians with mansions and a dozen cars. The average game developer makes a very modest wage, a free model would kill the industry. And like I said, there is no concert or live rendition allegory for gaming, they need to make their profits directly from the game sales itself and nothing more.
First off, Games are an infinite resource *once created*. That is exactly how piracy works. The marginal cost of reproducing a copy of a game is near zero (bandwidth / electricity costs is essentially it). Making the new game is a scarce good. Therefore, a company could sell the scarce good (in this tiny example, the creation of a new game) and use the infinite good (the completed product, with *completed* being the key word) as an advertising vessel.
And in your own post, you explained how it could work for games. - servers for online games. That is inherently a scarce good. Take WoW as an example. Using this business model, they could give the game away for free, and charge a subscription for *access to the server*. That access is scarce, the future patches (that are not yet created) are scarce. The created game content is infinite.
Of course, these are only small examples with very obvious real-world applications. There are a lot of scenarios this doesn't cover, but I think I will leave it to a business expert (rather than a mere code jockey like myself) to work out the full details. And those full details, once made, are infinite. But whatever genius figures them out in the first place should command a high salary for his time solving more problems.
Edit: I don't want to sound like I'm bowing out while the fight is going, but this will be my last post in this thread. Piracy is far too heated of a subject for me to get into. Everyone is so... angry.
Bolded is the point of contention. How do you sell a new game and then give it away for free? It's impossible, no one would buy it new and would just wait. Unless every game ever came with a pre-order bonus (physical or in-game), you can not both sell the game and give it away for free. Income has to come from somewhere, if not from game sales, then where?
The WoW example is more or less how it works. If they made it free to download with a monthly fee, it'd work pretty much exactly the same. Except MMOs (and MOBAs, I guess) are the only games that can run this model.
I don't consider it a fight, your example was one of the more well thought out ones on here. It hasn't changed my mind, I still dislike pirating, but it's a good discussion for future business models.
I lied. I can't ever leave these discussions.
But I think you misunderstood what is being sold in my example. I'm not saying "sell the game", I'm saying "sell the creation of the game". How do you do that? By offering ridiculous pre-order bonuses before the product is even made. You can ask "who would pre-order something not yet made and pay out the ass to fund it, knowing that most of the end consumers are getting it for free?"...
Not a good analogy since in that case the car washer is directly losing something from you not paying (in this case their time). Piracy is different since the owner loses nothing since it is a copy that is lost.
Copyright infringement is taking someone else's material and using it for your own gain. Piracy is nothing like that. And there you go, the owner loses a potential sale. They lose money. You are stealing.
A potential sale is worth nothing, it's just speculation about a sale.
If I "pirate" a game only to find out that I don't like it, am I bad? Games I downloaded and deleted: Fallout 3, Fallout:New Vegas, From Dust, FEAR 3, Duke Nukem Forever, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Island, Borderlands.
Most people will say that's reasonable, somewhat fair at least. However, did they lose sales from me? Well sadly yes they did. I would have bought at least some of these games if I hadn't had the opportunity to acquire the game "illegally" to test them. For instance, I was going to buy Fallout 3 because everyone likes it and plenty of my friends were telling me it's awesome. I "stole" it, played 3-4 hours and deleted it. But I think it's a good thing that they lost that sale - it really is. At least it keeps a few people from suckering into games they don't like... and try to get a refund for a PC game, lol, not happening.
Now my question is, not necessarily to you Manifesto but I would like to know what you think, how wrong is it of me to do that, provided that if I really do like a game, I will buy it like I did with Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and such. On the other hand, sometimes I'll play 5-10 hours of a game I don't like so much only to end up quitting after I decide it's not worth my time. That's kind of a long time to play "for free".
Am I a thief, a bad person altogether or am I at least somewhat fair in my usage of "illegal" material?
How many times does this thread have to say it? There are many other ways to try out games without pirating them. Rent from multiple places, buy and return/trade, borrow from a friend, play demos. If you're too lazy to do any of that, you don't get a say in the discussion, you're just taking the easy road because you don't want to put time and energy into it like anyone else.
So if I borrow a game from my friend, play through the whole thing, and return it without ever having bought it, am I doing something illegal?
There is still only one physical copy. By you having it, he can't play it. If there was only one pirated version of a game out there and when one person was playing it, no one else in the world could, it would be a different thing. But it's not. That disc is now your friend's property to do what he will with. The data isn't. If he (or you) takes it off and gives it away, it's illegal. Only having one copy of it is perfectly legal.
See, I'm glad you brought this up. My internet service, my computer, my electrons, and all of the electricity that I pay for, are my property, to do with what I will. Now what I might do, for a variety of reasons, is acquire a copy of some new song. If you try to stop me, you're limiting what I can do with MY property, and saying that my physical property rights are inferior to the intellectual property rights of the music industry. Is that right?
For lack of better phrasing:
No, you dipshit, no-one is limiting your "physical property rights".
To draw a simple comparison that surely everyone could relate to: You go to the library and "rent" a book with the understanding that your end of the deal is to do nothing with the book but read it, and return it within a week's time. Though you are in physical -possession- of the book you only -own- the RIGHTS to use the book for whatever limited purposes within the defined terms TEMPORARILY as agreed upon when you GOT A GODDAMN MEMBERSHIP AT THE GODDAMN LIBRARY.
Seriously, does no-one read anything they jam the ACCEPT button for? ANY terms of service says in literally as clear as possible terms that YOU DO NOT OWN SHIT. You are purchasing the RIGHT to USE a SERVICE provided by a COMPANY. You do not OWN the fucking ELECTRONS. Do you own the source code to a game you bought because you bought it, and does it allow you to modify the game to suit your own vision and re-sell it? FUCK NO. It says right on the damn PACKAGE that it is COPYRIGHTED BY THE DAMN COMPANY. All you've bought is the RIGHT to -play- the game and the necessary files to do so.
You're glad someone brought that up? Why, so you could explain to everyone how you're such a dipshit that you don't even know what you're actually paying for? I mean, I won't pretend to be above piracy, but it's people like you who I can excuse for pirating shit; You can't -possibly- know any better.
Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
What the fuck? The market is intended for goods and services in exchange for money and profit. Neither party is to be coerced into either distributing or consuming that product. Putting something up for sale doesn't mean that you get to do what you please with it. Again, your "intellectual property doesn't exist" isn't a viewpoint, it's wrong.
Also, let me give you a scenario: I just finished my petroleum engineering dissertation in which I created a groundbreaking algorithm for the stochastic estimation of oil reserves. I put 5 years of incredibly hard work into this particular program and the results were published in a highly respected journal. They were published so that I receive personal recognition and for a general display of "what is possible." I absolutely don't want anybody using this algorithm, period. It is to be used by me solely, or the rights to it will be sold at my discretion. Fortunately, my hard work was noticed because oil companies are now making handsome offers in hopes that I will bring my method for their economic advantage.
Now, in your mind, you are okay with taking my published results, and using my method despite me not wanting them to be?
But that's the point - the market isn't right for ideas, because of the reasons I gave earlier. But what you're signaling, by putting the ideas on the market (where they shouldn't be), is that you're ok with their distribution. As to your example - absolutely. Because that idea can't be property, because the minute that idea is property, it means I can't do what I want with my oil reserves. Even better than that, I would feel free (if I had a background in Petroleum Engineering) to make improvements to your idea, to develop it, and to publish it, crediting you. If physicist me discovers some new natural phenomenon, and I publish a paper, why shouldn't someone take advantage of it? It's not like I created this phenomenon. All we can do is reshape, rearrange, and discover what's already present. Now, what you could do, which I would be perfectly ok with, is set up your own corporation, without having published this idea. Go around, and say "I will estimate shit for you." If it works, you can sell your service. The idea, though? That's either nobodies, or Gods (whichever you prefer).
Again, that's a very narrow view. It's not that we're attacking you as a person, but your ideas are small-minded and frankly, wrong.
Your logic here is that "if it exists on the market, I should be able to have it free of charge". That's ridiculous. Humanity would never get anywhere with that model. It's selfish, egotistical, and honestly immature.
Yes, if designers had their way, every person would be able to enjoy their game free of charge. But the issue is that economy doesn't allow for that. If they're going to put time and energy into making something, they need to get paid. The workers need to pay for food, housing, etc. The company needs to make break even not to go under, and they need to make a profit to be able to make games in the future.
The idea of IP has it's downsides, true. But in a without it, no one would ever create and share anything worthwhile. You can't honestly think that just giving away everything for free or taking what you want without asking or recompense is a way to live life and support a global economy. You're either trolling or uninformed.
Small-minded? Potentially. They stem from one uniform critique of the concept of Intellectual property. I could have gone with a Marxist critique, or with the more measured arguments that are so prevalent.
That wasn't my argument, and you know it. My argument was that ideas shouldn't be on the market at all, and what was brought up there was to show that individual A did, in fact, want there ideas shared.
That problem I leave to the companies. One problem is that current patterns of distribution are out of phase with current technology, which many people have pointed out. Until the companies can make it so that they're providing a service, rather than selling an idea, piracy will continue, and I will continue to support it.
But they do, and have done, and will continue to do so without the motivation of intellectual property. What intellectual property does is allow someone else to take credit for that idea, restrict further the development of technology, and restrict what I can do with my very very real physical property. As I've stated before, I'm being very, very serious. Under ordinary circumstances, would I have chosen a different line of argument? Probably. But this serves for now. I think that ideas need to be utilized for them to have any value, and by placing limits on that utilization, you restrict growth and development. I'm not taking everything for free. Just ideas.
Unfortunately for you, the way our reality works is that ideas manifest themselves in the form of physical objects, which in my and the developers' case, are intended to be sold for profit. Period. You don't have any claim to them, so if you are in petroleum engineering, stay the fuck away from my product. The sooner you out yourself as an altruist living in "everybody shares everything" la-la land, the sooner we can disregard your ideas for what they are: nonsense.
What the fuck? The market is intended for goods and services in exchange for money and profit. Neither party is to be coerced into either distributing or consuming that product. Putting something up for sale doesn't mean that you get to do what you please with it. Again, your "intellectual property doesn't exist" isn't a viewpoint, it's wrong.
Also, let me give you a scenario: I just finished my petroleum engineering dissertation in which I created a groundbreaking algorithm for the stochastic estimation of oil reserves. I put 5 years of incredibly hard work into this particular program and the results were published in a highly respected journal. They were published so that I receive personal recognition and for a general display of "what is possible." I absolutely don't want anybody using this algorithm, period. It is to be used by me solely, or the rights to it will be sold at my discretion. Fortunately, my hard work was noticed because oil companies are now making handsome offers in hopes that I will bring my method for their economic advantage.
Now, in your mind, you are okay with taking my published results, and using my method despite me not wanting them to be?
But that's the point - the market isn't right for ideas, because of the reasons I gave earlier. But what you're signaling, by putting the ideas on the market (where they shouldn't be), is that you're ok with their distribution. As to your example - absolutely. Because that idea can't be property, because the minute that idea is property, it means I can't do what I want with my oil reserves. Even better than that, I would feel free (if I had a background in Petroleum Engineering) to make improvements to your idea, to develop it, and to publish it, crediting you. If physicist me discovers some new natural phenomenon, and I publish a paper, why shouldn't someone take advantage of it? It's not like I created this phenomenon. All we can do is reshape, rearrange, and discover what's already present. Now, what you could do, which I would be perfectly ok with, is set up your own corporation, without having published this idea. Go around, and say "I will estimate shit for you." If it works, you can sell your service. The idea, though? That's either nobodies, or Gods (whichever you prefer).
Again, that's a very narrow view. It's not that we're attacking you as a person, but your ideas are small-minded and frankly, wrong.
Your logic here is that "if it exists on the market, I should be able to have it free of charge". That's ridiculous. Humanity would never get anywhere with that model. It's selfish, egotistical, and honestly immature.
Yes, if designers had their way, every person would be able to enjoy their game free of charge. But the issue is that economy doesn't allow for that. If they're going to put time and energy into making something, they need to get paid. The workers need to pay for food, housing, etc. The company needs to make break even not to go under, and they need to make a profit to be able to make games in the future.
The idea of IP has it's downsides, true. But in a without it, no one would ever create and share anything worthwhile. You can't honestly think that just giving away everything for free or taking what you want without asking or recompense is a way to live life and support a global economy. You're either trolling or uninformed.
Small-minded? Potentially. They stem from one uniform critique of the concept of Intellectual property. I could have gone with a Marxist critique, or with the more measured arguments that are so prevalent.
That wasn't my argument, and you know it. My argument was that ideas shouldn't be on the market at all, and what was brought up there was to show that individual A did, in fact, want there ideas shared.
That problem I leave to the companies. One problem is that current patterns of distribution are out of phase with current technology, which many people have pointed out. Until the companies can make it so that they're providing a service, rather than selling an idea, piracy will continue, and I will continue to support it.
But they do, and have done, and will continue to do so without the motivation of intellectual property. What intellectual property does is allow someone else to take credit for that idea, restrict further the development of technology, and restrict what I can do with my very very real physical property. As I've stated before, I'm being very, very serious. Under ordinary circumstances, would I have chosen a different line of argument? Probably. But this serves for now. I think that ideas need to be utilized for them to have any value, and by placing limits on that utilization, you restrict growth and development. I'm not taking everything for free. Just ideas.
If games were just ideas, that argument would hold water. Except they're not. They're months, years of programming, art design, and development. They're millions of dollars in wages, advertising, and creation. If a game was just "Guys! I thought of this cool thing!" and it popped into existence, I'd give that shit away for free all day every day.
But it doesn't work like that. As long as they take time, manpower, and money to make, they'll require money to continue being made. Same for movies, same for music, same for software. That shit does not come from nothing, it is like anything else, which is why you have to pay for it like everything else.
And yes, it was your argument:
If the originator didn't want his ideas distributed, he shouldn't have put them on the market. Edit: Point being, the originator in this case (most cases) clearly wants his ideas shared.
That's the same as saying "Well, if they didn't want those cars stolen, they wouldn't just put them on the street with easy locks to pick". Hell, it's almost the same justification as "Of course I grabbed her ass, look at how she's dressed!". You're saying that, because it's there, they obviously want you to steal it. That's a selfish view and you know it.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
There is also the ongoing question of whether EULAs are actually legal, due to first-sale rights. This question will almost certainly come up more in the next few years as more developers are in the "fuck used games as much as we can" mentality.
What the fuck? The market is intended for goods and services in exchange for money and profit. Neither party is to be coerced into either distributing or consuming that product. Putting something up for sale doesn't mean that you get to do what you please with it. Again, your "intellectual property doesn't exist" isn't a viewpoint, it's wrong.
Also, let me give you a scenario: I just finished my petroleum engineering dissertation in which I created a groundbreaking algorithm for the stochastic estimation of oil reserves. I put 5 years of incredibly hard work into this particular program and the results were published in a highly respected journal. They were published so that I receive personal recognition and for a general display of "what is possible." I absolutely don't want anybody using this algorithm, period. It is to be used by me solely, or the rights to it will be sold at my discretion. Fortunately, my hard work was noticed because oil companies are now making handsome offers in hopes that I will bring my method for their economic advantage.
Now, in your mind, you are okay with taking my published results, and using my method despite me not wanting them to be?
But that's the point - the market isn't right for ideas, because of the reasons I gave earlier. But what you're signaling, by putting the ideas on the market (where they shouldn't be), is that you're ok with their distribution. As to your example - absolutely. Because that idea can't be property, because the minute that idea is property, it means I can't do what I want with my oil reserves. Even better than that, I would feel free (if I had a background in Petroleum Engineering) to make improvements to your idea, to develop it, and to publish it, crediting you. If physicist me discovers some new natural phenomenon, and I publish a paper, why shouldn't someone take advantage of it? It's not like I created this phenomenon. All we can do is reshape, rearrange, and discover what's already present. Now, what you could do, which I would be perfectly ok with, is set up your own corporation, without having published this idea. Go around, and say "I will estimate shit for you." If it works, you can sell your service. The idea, though? That's either nobodies, or Gods (whichever you prefer).
Again, that's a very narrow view. It's not that we're attacking you as a person, but your ideas are small-minded and frankly, wrong.
Your logic here is that "if it exists on the market, I should be able to have it free of charge". That's ridiculous. Humanity would never get anywhere with that model. It's selfish, egotistical, and honestly immature.
Yes, if designers had their way, every person would be able to enjoy their game free of charge. But the issue is that economy doesn't allow for that. If they're going to put time and energy into making something, they need to get paid. The workers need to pay for food, housing, etc. The company needs to make break even not to go under, and they need to make a profit to be able to make games in the future.
The idea of IP has it's downsides, true. But in a without it, no one would ever create and share anything worthwhile. You can't honestly think that just giving away everything for free or taking what you want without asking or recompense is a way to live life and support a global economy. You're either trolling or uninformed.
Small-minded? Potentially. They stem from one uniform critique of the concept of Intellectual property. I could have gone with a Marxist critique, or with the more measured arguments that are so prevalent.
That wasn't my argument, and you know it. My argument was that ideas shouldn't be on the market at all, and what was brought up there was to show that individual A did, in fact, want there ideas shared.
That problem I leave to the companies. One problem is that current patterns of distribution are out of phase with current technology, which many people have pointed out. Until the companies can make it so that they're providing a service, rather than selling an idea, piracy will continue, and I will continue to support it.
But they do, and have done, and will continue to do so without the motivation of intellectual property. What intellectual property does is allow someone else to take credit for that idea, restrict further the development of technology, and restrict what I can do with my very very real physical property. As I've stated before, I'm being very, very serious. Under ordinary circumstances, would I have chosen a different line of argument? Probably. But this serves for now. I think that ideas need to be utilized for them to have any value, and by placing limits on that utilization, you restrict growth and development. I'm not taking everything for free. Just ideas.
Unfortunately for you, the way our reality works is that ideas manifest themselves in the form of physical objects, which in my and the developers' case, are intended to be sold for profit. Period. You don't have any claim to them, so if you are in petroleum engineering, stay the fuck away from my product. The sooner you out yourself as an altruist living in "everybody shares everything" la-la land, the sooner we can disregard your ideas for what they are: nonsense.
My reality too, fortunately. So sell the objects, if they exist. Please! I'm no altruist, and while I may have more idealism to my arguments than you, they flow from a very very self interested spring. But my ideas are in no way nonsense. Indeed, if you stop looking at them with an idea to refute them, you'll see that they flow very logically from one basic proposition - my personal physical property is mine to do with what I wish. The problem is, Intellectual Property violates that principle. There's no way for both of them to exist at the same time, so either my physical property rights have to be destroyed, or your Intellectual Property rights. I go for the removal of IP, which is rather clearly a legal construct. And you're absolutely right. I have no claim to them. But the funny thing is, neither do you. I was just saying that I would play with your ideas, and see what else might come of them (giving you credit as original developer as is your due). Could you oppose that?
On December 02 2011 13:48 SoLaR[i.C] wrote: [quote]
Nope, your notes example is incorrect. Your logic directly supports cheating, academic dishonesty, and the general disregard for others. You don't get to decide who things get distributed to. Again, I'm sorry you misunderstand so badly.
Oh please. Now you're just being stubborn. There is a clear distinction between taking credit for the work of another, and distributing another's work for others to read/consume. Cheating clearly falls into the former category, while piracy falls into the latter, along with the sharing of notes, teaching or tutoring for free, and basically the entirety of modern science.
So in your world, voluntarily educating others for free is the same as a person taking concepts derived by another and distributing them despite the originator not wanting them to be? Sorry, but no. We've already established that you don't believe in intellectual property, but the fact is you're wrong.
If the originator didn't want his ideas distributed, he shouldn't have put them on the market. Edit: Point being, the originator in this case (most cases) clearly wants his ideas shared. If I may quote Pete Townshend: "a creative person would prefer their music to be stolen and enjoyed than ignored" (BBC NEWS). I think, for the majority of artists out there, whether they be game designers, musicians, what have you, there's an innate desire for their creations to be enjoyed by others, which is the driving force in their decision to create in the first place. To be quite frank, IP, as it exists, serves to strangle most people, and it is only by removing that restriction that they can come to be known.
Your logic here is that "if it exists on the market, I should be able to have it free of charge". That's ridiculous. Humanity would never get anywhere with that model. It's selfish, egotistical, and honestly immature.
Without getting into the whole thing, I will say there is a very well thought out economical model referred to as "infinite goods / scarce goods" that you might want to read about.
This is assuming games are infinite and free. They aren't. You don't get 3 people together with an idea on a weekend and pop out Halo. Games, especially games worth buying, are a scarce resource in this model, so it's even worse to consider pirating them.
Let me go more into that: the example was with music, and it kind of holds with games, but I disagree. The idea is to charge more for things like concerts and live sessions but make digital music free. How does that work for games? A company isn't going to make enough profit on tech demos, expos, or donations. A triple-A title game is a multi-million dollar expenditure.
Also to contrast games and music in this scenario is how they're made. Yes, you need expensive music equipment, mixing software, instruments, and stuff like that. But that's a one-time buy and making the music itself is just having a space and time. Games require more people involved, more storage for data, servers for online games, the latest software and hardware for developing, and HAVE to be put onto a disc if it's a console title. PC games and music can be completely digital, console games need a physical copy, except the little indie games.
Interesting read though.
Edit: actually come to think of it, you could never use the described model for games. Music is all about profit, which is why you see musicians with mansions and a dozen cars. The average game developer makes a very modest wage, a free model would kill the industry. And like I said, there is no concert or live rendition allegory for gaming, they need to make their profits directly from the game sales itself and nothing more.
First off, Games are an infinite resource *once created*. That is exactly how piracy works. The marginal cost of reproducing a copy of a game is near zero (bandwidth / electricity costs is essentially it). Making the new game is a scarce good. Therefore, a company could sell the scarce good (in this tiny example, the creation of a new game) and use the infinite good (the completed product, with *completed* being the key word) as an advertising vessel.
And in your own post, you explained how it could work for games. - servers for online games. That is inherently a scarce good. Take WoW as an example. Using this business model, they could give the game away for free, and charge a subscription for *access to the server*. That access is scarce, the future patches (that are not yet created) are scarce. The created game content is infinite.
Of course, these are only small examples with very obvious real-world applications. There are a lot of scenarios this doesn't cover, but I think I will leave it to a business expert (rather than a mere code jockey like myself) to work out the full details. And those full details, once made, are infinite. But whatever genius figures them out in the first place should command a high salary for his time solving more problems.
Edit: I don't want to sound like I'm bowing out while the fight is going, but this will be my last post in this thread. Piracy is far too heated of a subject for me to get into. Everyone is so... angry.
Bolded is the point of contention. How do you sell a new game and then give it away for free? It's impossible, no one would buy it new and would just wait. Unless every game ever came with a pre-order bonus (physical or in-game), you can not both sell the game and give it away for free. Income has to come from somewhere, if not from game sales, then where?
The WoW example is more or less how it works. If they made it free to download with a monthly fee, it'd work pretty much exactly the same. Except MMOs (and MOBAs, I guess) are the only games that can run this model.
I don't consider it a fight, your example was one of the more well thought out ones on here. It hasn't changed my mind, I still dislike pirating, but it's a good discussion for future business models.
I lied. I can't ever leave these discussions.
But I think you misunderstood what is being sold in my example. I'm not saying "sell the game", I'm saying "sell the creation of the game". How do you do that? By offering ridiculous pre-order bonuses before the product is even made. You can ask "who would pre-order something not yet made and pay out the ass to fund it, knowing that most of the end consumers are getting it for free?"...
While that seems like a good example, thinking about it for a bit shows it really isn't. People are willing to put a bit or a bunch into one thing that they're interested in. This wouldn't happen if there were 2-3 Sons of Starcraft type movies a month. No one would buy pre-orders on every game, or even a majority of them. It's just not something someone would do if given the choice. Hell, I'd pre-order one game a year and get everything else free, and I love supporting games.
It's an interesting idea, but it would tank so fast if a lot or even some of the games did that.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
Well I could write the DJZAPZ'S SCROLL OF LOLZ (DSOL).
Did you read the DSOL? It's legally irrelevant.
Also he's being kind of douchey calling the guy functionally retarded and dipshit, what kind of people are you?
But I didn't sign the DSOL. You agree, whether you read it or not, to every ToS or EULA you Accept. You are legally bound to it. That's how a contract works. It's highly relevant, and punishable.
His words were 4chan-y, but his points were relevant.
On December 02 2011 13:52 refmac_cys.cys wrote: [quote] Oh please. Now you're just being stubborn. There is a clear distinction between taking credit for the work of another, and distributing another's work for others to read/consume. Cheating clearly falls into the former category, while piracy falls into the latter, along with the sharing of notes, teaching or tutoring for free, and basically the entirety of modern science.
So in your world, voluntarily educating others for free is the same as a person taking concepts derived by another and distributing them despite the originator not wanting them to be? Sorry, but no. We've already established that you don't believe in intellectual property, but the fact is you're wrong.
If the originator didn't want his ideas distributed, he shouldn't have put them on the market. Edit: Point being, the originator in this case (most cases) clearly wants his ideas shared. If I may quote Pete Townshend: "a creative person would prefer their music to be stolen and enjoyed than ignored" (BBC NEWS). I think, for the majority of artists out there, whether they be game designers, musicians, what have you, there's an innate desire for their creations to be enjoyed by others, which is the driving force in their decision to create in the first place. To be quite frank, IP, as it exists, serves to strangle most people, and it is only by removing that restriction that they can come to be known.
Your logic here is that "if it exists on the market, I should be able to have it free of charge". That's ridiculous. Humanity would never get anywhere with that model. It's selfish, egotistical, and honestly immature.
Without getting into the whole thing, I will say there is a very well thought out economical model referred to as "infinite goods / scarce goods" that you might want to read about.
This is assuming games are infinite and free. They aren't. You don't get 3 people together with an idea on a weekend and pop out Halo. Games, especially games worth buying, are a scarce resource in this model, so it's even worse to consider pirating them.
Let me go more into that: the example was with music, and it kind of holds with games, but I disagree. The idea is to charge more for things like concerts and live sessions but make digital music free. How does that work for games? A company isn't going to make enough profit on tech demos, expos, or donations. A triple-A title game is a multi-million dollar expenditure.
Also to contrast games and music in this scenario is how they're made. Yes, you need expensive music equipment, mixing software, instruments, and stuff like that. But that's a one-time buy and making the music itself is just having a space and time. Games require more people involved, more storage for data, servers for online games, the latest software and hardware for developing, and HAVE to be put onto a disc if it's a console title. PC games and music can be completely digital, console games need a physical copy, except the little indie games.
Interesting read though.
Edit: actually come to think of it, you could never use the described model for games. Music is all about profit, which is why you see musicians with mansions and a dozen cars. The average game developer makes a very modest wage, a free model would kill the industry. And like I said, there is no concert or live rendition allegory for gaming, they need to make their profits directly from the game sales itself and nothing more.
First off, Games are an infinite resource *once created*. That is exactly how piracy works. The marginal cost of reproducing a copy of a game is near zero (bandwidth / electricity costs is essentially it). Making the new game is a scarce good. Therefore, a company could sell the scarce good (in this tiny example, the creation of a new game) and use the infinite good (the completed product, with *completed* being the key word) as an advertising vessel.
And in your own post, you explained how it could work for games. - servers for online games. That is inherently a scarce good. Take WoW as an example. Using this business model, they could give the game away for free, and charge a subscription for *access to the server*. That access is scarce, the future patches (that are not yet created) are scarce. The created game content is infinite.
Of course, these are only small examples with very obvious real-world applications. There are a lot of scenarios this doesn't cover, but I think I will leave it to a business expert (rather than a mere code jockey like myself) to work out the full details. And those full details, once made, are infinite. But whatever genius figures them out in the first place should command a high salary for his time solving more problems.
Edit: I don't want to sound like I'm bowing out while the fight is going, but this will be my last post in this thread. Piracy is far too heated of a subject for me to get into. Everyone is so... angry.
Bolded is the point of contention. How do you sell a new game and then give it away for free? It's impossible, no one would buy it new and would just wait. Unless every game ever came with a pre-order bonus (physical or in-game), you can not both sell the game and give it away for free. Income has to come from somewhere, if not from game sales, then where?
The WoW example is more or less how it works. If they made it free to download with a monthly fee, it'd work pretty much exactly the same. Except MMOs (and MOBAs, I guess) are the only games that can run this model.
I don't consider it a fight, your example was one of the more well thought out ones on here. It hasn't changed my mind, I still dislike pirating, but it's a good discussion for future business models.
I lied. I can't ever leave these discussions.
But I think you misunderstood what is being sold in my example. I'm not saying "sell the game", I'm saying "sell the creation of the game". How do you do that? By offering ridiculous pre-order bonuses before the product is even made. You can ask "who would pre-order something not yet made and pay out the ass to fund it, knowing that most of the end consumers are getting it for free?"...
While that seems like a good example, thinking about it for a bit shows it really isn't. People are willing to put a bit or a bunch into one thing that they're interested in. This wouldn't happen if there were 2-3 Sons of Starcraft type movies a month. No one would buy pre-orders on every game, or even a majority of them. It's just not something someone would do if given the choice. Hell, I'd pre-order one game a year and get everything else free, and I love supporting games.
It's an interesting idea, but it would tank so fast if a lot or even some of the games did that.
Then there is our fundamental difference that will only end in anger. I believe in the inherent good of man. You do not. I think that, when given the choice and treated like human beings, people will behave themselves and do the right thing.
What the fuck? The market is intended for goods and services in exchange for money and profit. Neither party is to be coerced into either distributing or consuming that product. Putting something up for sale doesn't mean that you get to do what you please with it. Again, your "intellectual property doesn't exist" isn't a viewpoint, it's wrong.
Also, let me give you a scenario: I just finished my petroleum engineering dissertation in which I created a groundbreaking algorithm for the stochastic estimation of oil reserves. I put 5 years of incredibly hard work into this particular program and the results were published in a highly respected journal. They were published so that I receive personal recognition and for a general display of "what is possible." I absolutely don't want anybody using this algorithm, period. It is to be used by me solely, or the rights to it will be sold at my discretion. Fortunately, my hard work was noticed because oil companies are now making handsome offers in hopes that I will bring my method for their economic advantage.
Now, in your mind, you are okay with taking my published results, and using my method despite me not wanting them to be?
But that's the point - the market isn't right for ideas, because of the reasons I gave earlier. But what you're signaling, by putting the ideas on the market (where they shouldn't be), is that you're ok with their distribution. As to your example - absolutely. Because that idea can't be property, because the minute that idea is property, it means I can't do what I want with my oil reserves. Even better than that, I would feel free (if I had a background in Petroleum Engineering) to make improvements to your idea, to develop it, and to publish it, crediting you. If physicist me discovers some new natural phenomenon, and I publish a paper, why shouldn't someone take advantage of it? It's not like I created this phenomenon. All we can do is reshape, rearrange, and discover what's already present. Now, what you could do, which I would be perfectly ok with, is set up your own corporation, without having published this idea. Go around, and say "I will estimate shit for you." If it works, you can sell your service. The idea, though? That's either nobodies, or Gods (whichever you prefer).
Again, that's a very narrow view. It's not that we're attacking you as a person, but your ideas are small-minded and frankly, wrong.
Your logic here is that "if it exists on the market, I should be able to have it free of charge". That's ridiculous. Humanity would never get anywhere with that model. It's selfish, egotistical, and honestly immature.
Yes, if designers had their way, every person would be able to enjoy their game free of charge. But the issue is that economy doesn't allow for that. If they're going to put time and energy into making something, they need to get paid. The workers need to pay for food, housing, etc. The company needs to make break even not to go under, and they need to make a profit to be able to make games in the future.
The idea of IP has it's downsides, true. But in a without it, no one would ever create and share anything worthwhile. You can't honestly think that just giving away everything for free or taking what you want without asking or recompense is a way to live life and support a global economy. You're either trolling or uninformed.
Small-minded? Potentially. They stem from one uniform critique of the concept of Intellectual property. I could have gone with a Marxist critique, or with the more measured arguments that are so prevalent.
That wasn't my argument, and you know it. My argument was that ideas shouldn't be on the market at all, and what was brought up there was to show that individual A did, in fact, want there ideas shared.
That problem I leave to the companies. One problem is that current patterns of distribution are out of phase with current technology, which many people have pointed out. Until the companies can make it so that they're providing a service, rather than selling an idea, piracy will continue, and I will continue to support it.
But they do, and have done, and will continue to do so without the motivation of intellectual property. What intellectual property does is allow someone else to take credit for that idea, restrict further the development of technology, and restrict what I can do with my very very real physical property. As I've stated before, I'm being very, very serious. Under ordinary circumstances, would I have chosen a different line of argument? Probably. But this serves for now. I think that ideas need to be utilized for them to have any value, and by placing limits on that utilization, you restrict growth and development. I'm not taking everything for free. Just ideas.
If games were just ideas, that argument would hold water. Except they're not. They're months, years of programming, art design, and development. They're millions of dollars in wages, advertising, and creation. If a game was just "Guys! I thought of this cool thing!" and it popped into existence, I'd give that shit away for free all day every day.
But it doesn't work like that. As long as they take time, manpower, and money to make, they'll require money to continue being made. Same for movies, same for music, same for software. That shit does not come from nothing, it is like anything else, which is why you have to pay for it like everything else.
If the originator didn't want his ideas distributed, he shouldn't have put them on the market. Edit: Point being, the originator in this case (most cases) clearly wants his ideas shared.
That's the same as saying "Well, if they didn't want those cars stolen, they wouldn't just put them on the street with easy locks to pick". Hell, it's almost the same justification as "Of course I grabbed her ass, look at how she's dressed!". You're saying that, because it's there, they obviously want you to steal it. That's a selfish view and you know it.
But once the production is done, they are just ideas. They're just millions of billions of snippets of code. And I'm all for the monetization of Games. Music and Movies too. Just do it under a different umbrella.
That may have been how you read it, but it's not how it was intended to be used. I apologize for the confusion. I was attempting to establish that between two distinct states - someone not wanting their ideas to be shared at all, or someone wanting their ideas to be shared - the game maker or song producer clearly falls into the latter.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
Well I could write the DJZAPZ'S SCROLL OF LOLZ (DSOL).
Did you read the DSOL? It's legally irrelevant.
Also he's being kind of douchey calling the guy functionally retarded and dipshit, what kind of people are you?
But I didn't sign the DSOL. You agree, whether you read it or not, to every ToS or EULA you Accept. You are legally bound to it. That's how a contract works. It's highly relevant, and punishable.
His words were 4chan-y, but his points were relevant.
Are you kidding, I may or may not have clicked a button at the bottom of a large text not written in my native language. Try me.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
Well I could write the DJZAPZ'S SCROLL OF LOLZ (DSOL).
Did you read the DSOL? It's legally irrelevant.
Also he's being kind of douchey calling the guy functionally retarded and dipshit, what kind of people are you?
But I didn't sign the DSOL. You agree, whether you read it or not, to every ToS or EULA you Accept. You are legally bound to it. That's how a contract works. It's highly relevant, and punishable.
His words were 4chan-y, but his points were relevant.
I don't if I pirate the game... Edit: or rather, I don't accept the EULA or ToS in the first place if I pirate it.
On December 02 2011 13:59 SoLaR[i.C] wrote: [quote] So in your world, voluntarily educating others for free is the same as a person taking concepts derived by another and distributing them despite the originator not wanting them to be? Sorry, but no. We've already established that you don't believe in intellectual property, but the fact is you're wrong.
If the originator didn't want his ideas distributed, he shouldn't have put them on the market. Edit: Point being, the originator in this case (most cases) clearly wants his ideas shared. If I may quote Pete Townshend: "a creative person would prefer their music to be stolen and enjoyed than ignored" (BBC NEWS). I think, for the majority of artists out there, whether they be game designers, musicians, what have you, there's an innate desire for their creations to be enjoyed by others, which is the driving force in their decision to create in the first place. To be quite frank, IP, as it exists, serves to strangle most people, and it is only by removing that restriction that they can come to be known.
Your logic here is that "if it exists on the market, I should be able to have it free of charge". That's ridiculous. Humanity would never get anywhere with that model. It's selfish, egotistical, and honestly immature.
Without getting into the whole thing, I will say there is a very well thought out economical model referred to as "infinite goods / scarce goods" that you might want to read about.
This is assuming games are infinite and free. They aren't. You don't get 3 people together with an idea on a weekend and pop out Halo. Games, especially games worth buying, are a scarce resource in this model, so it's even worse to consider pirating them.
Let me go more into that: the example was with music, and it kind of holds with games, but I disagree. The idea is to charge more for things like concerts and live sessions but make digital music free. How does that work for games? A company isn't going to make enough profit on tech demos, expos, or donations. A triple-A title game is a multi-million dollar expenditure.
Also to contrast games and music in this scenario is how they're made. Yes, you need expensive music equipment, mixing software, instruments, and stuff like that. But that's a one-time buy and making the music itself is just having a space and time. Games require more people involved, more storage for data, servers for online games, the latest software and hardware for developing, and HAVE to be put onto a disc if it's a console title. PC games and music can be completely digital, console games need a physical copy, except the little indie games.
Interesting read though.
Edit: actually come to think of it, you could never use the described model for games. Music is all about profit, which is why you see musicians with mansions and a dozen cars. The average game developer makes a very modest wage, a free model would kill the industry. And like I said, there is no concert or live rendition allegory for gaming, they need to make their profits directly from the game sales itself and nothing more.
First off, Games are an infinite resource *once created*. That is exactly how piracy works. The marginal cost of reproducing a copy of a game is near zero (bandwidth / electricity costs is essentially it). Making the new game is a scarce good. Therefore, a company could sell the scarce good (in this tiny example, the creation of a new game) and use the infinite good (the completed product, with *completed* being the key word) as an advertising vessel.
And in your own post, you explained how it could work for games. - servers for online games. That is inherently a scarce good. Take WoW as an example. Using this business model, they could give the game away for free, and charge a subscription for *access to the server*. That access is scarce, the future patches (that are not yet created) are scarce. The created game content is infinite.
Of course, these are only small examples with very obvious real-world applications. There are a lot of scenarios this doesn't cover, but I think I will leave it to a business expert (rather than a mere code jockey like myself) to work out the full details. And those full details, once made, are infinite. But whatever genius figures them out in the first place should command a high salary for his time solving more problems.
Edit: I don't want to sound like I'm bowing out while the fight is going, but this will be my last post in this thread. Piracy is far too heated of a subject for me to get into. Everyone is so... angry.
Bolded is the point of contention. How do you sell a new game and then give it away for free? It's impossible, no one would buy it new and would just wait. Unless every game ever came with a pre-order bonus (physical or in-game), you can not both sell the game and give it away for free. Income has to come from somewhere, if not from game sales, then where?
The WoW example is more or less how it works. If they made it free to download with a monthly fee, it'd work pretty much exactly the same. Except MMOs (and MOBAs, I guess) are the only games that can run this model.
I don't consider it a fight, your example was one of the more well thought out ones on here. It hasn't changed my mind, I still dislike pirating, but it's a good discussion for future business models.
I lied. I can't ever leave these discussions.
But I think you misunderstood what is being sold in my example. I'm not saying "sell the game", I'm saying "sell the creation of the game". How do you do that? By offering ridiculous pre-order bonuses before the product is even made. You can ask "who would pre-order something not yet made and pay out the ass to fund it, knowing that most of the end consumers are getting it for free?"...
While that seems like a good example, thinking about it for a bit shows it really isn't. People are willing to put a bit or a bunch into one thing that they're interested in. This wouldn't happen if there were 2-3 Sons of Starcraft type movies a month. No one would buy pre-orders on every game, or even a majority of them. It's just not something someone would do if given the choice. Hell, I'd pre-order one game a year and get everything else free, and I love supporting games.
It's an interesting idea, but it would tank so fast if a lot or even some of the games did that.
Then there is our fundamental difference that will only end in anger. I believe in the inherent good of man. You do not. I think that, when given the choice and treated like human beings, people will behave themselves and do the right thing.
I do as well, which is why I've been arguing against piracy this whole time. Or rather, I think most people are good, but we need to help/police those that aren't.
It's unreasonable to expect every person to pay for every game when they can conceivably get it for free. They'd pay for some, maybe even half, but not all of them. Halving the income of gaming industries would destroy the livelyhood of those that work on games.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
Well I could write the DJZAPZ'S SCROLL OF LOLZ (DSOL).
Did you read the DSOL? It's legally irrelevant.
Also he's being kind of douchey calling the guy functionally retarded and dipshit, what kind of people are you?
But I didn't sign the DSOL. You agree, whether you read it or not, to every ToS or EULA you Accept. You are legally bound to it. That's how a contract works. It's highly relevant, and punishable.
His words were 4chan-y, but his points were relevant.
Are you kidding, I may or may not have clicked a button at the bottom of a large text not written in my native language. Try me.
If you get it legally, you can't play unless you agree. If you are playing without agreeing to it, it is literally illegal.
I pirate things, albeit infrequently. I live in the United States, so I can't say I can't afford games; I have plenty of money. The reason I do it is because I want free stuff. Who doesn't? But here's the question: why not do it? I don't have any moral obligation to support massive gaming corporations that will be fine without my money. I'd rather be $60 richer. If there's a good reason to buy a product rather than pirate it, I will. That's why I don't pirate DS games etc. But if I can get a comparable or better experience for free, why would I bother paying? This is a situation very similar to evolution. If organism A is a parasite to organism B, both will evolve in a way that will harm the other. If they had a mutualist relationship, they would work to gain more benefit out of supporting the other. Corporations making DRM's is like a parasitic relationship between them and consumers/pirates. Instead of making things worse for everyone, the gaming/movie/music companies need to make the bought product worth buying instead of pirating. Then the problem will become negligible as far as money lost goes.
As for indie games, I sure as hell wouldn't want a DRM-ridden infestation of a game. The fame gained from more people playing it is probably worth more.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
:D
And for the record, I don't honestly care anywhere near as much as I've made myself out to. There was a small moment where I was honestly taken aback by the ignorance of the dude I originally quoted, but that's about where my sincere emotional involvement ended. Seriously though, any rational adult that has a) Paid an electric bill and b) Had even the smallest notion of what they were agreeing to would know that you don't own the services you pay for, you pay for the rights to use the services.
You don't own a cabbie and his cab because you commissioned him to drive you somewhere. You commissioned him to drive you somewhere with the understanding that he could tell you to get the fuck out of his car at any moment because you violated any of his fully arbitrary unvocalized conditions that are your end of the bargain in him providing you a service.
Spoiler alert : I'm not actually mad, I'm just being dramatic. It'd be pretty awesome if someone actually got mad enough to SHOUT certain specific words for EMPHASIS, but seeing as this is the internet and I can do it not because of how I'm feeling but because the person I'm directing my message to will actually believe I'm mad, plus it makes me laugh my head off... yeah. Don't believe everything you read (or do, because I probably want you to :D)
Games are pulling in more money than ever, so I'm not particularly convinced there's a problem. It's not even clear that very many of those who pirate games would in fact buy them if piracy weren't available as an alternative, and, to the extent that they wouldn't, their piracy only serves to reduce the deadweight loss created by IP rights, which isn't exactly a bad thing.
On December 02 2011 14:03 refmac_cys.cys wrote: [quote] If the originator didn't want his ideas distributed, he shouldn't have put them on the market. Edit: Point being, the originator in this case (most cases) clearly wants his ideas shared. If I may quote Pete Townshend: "a creative person would prefer their music to be stolen and enjoyed than ignored" (BBC NEWS). I think, for the majority of artists out there, whether they be game designers, musicians, what have you, there's an innate desire for their creations to be enjoyed by others, which is the driving force in their decision to create in the first place. To be quite frank, IP, as it exists, serves to strangle most people, and it is only by removing that restriction that they can come to be known.
Your logic here is that "if it exists on the market, I should be able to have it free of charge". That's ridiculous. Humanity would never get anywhere with that model. It's selfish, egotistical, and honestly immature.
Without getting into the whole thing, I will say there is a very well thought out economical model referred to as "infinite goods / scarce goods" that you might want to read about.
This is assuming games are infinite and free. They aren't. You don't get 3 people together with an idea on a weekend and pop out Halo. Games, especially games worth buying, are a scarce resource in this model, so it's even worse to consider pirating them.
Let me go more into that: the example was with music, and it kind of holds with games, but I disagree. The idea is to charge more for things like concerts and live sessions but make digital music free. How does that work for games? A company isn't going to make enough profit on tech demos, expos, or donations. A triple-A title game is a multi-million dollar expenditure.
Also to contrast games and music in this scenario is how they're made. Yes, you need expensive music equipment, mixing software, instruments, and stuff like that. But that's a one-time buy and making the music itself is just having a space and time. Games require more people involved, more storage for data, servers for online games, the latest software and hardware for developing, and HAVE to be put onto a disc if it's a console title. PC games and music can be completely digital, console games need a physical copy, except the little indie games.
Interesting read though.
Edit: actually come to think of it, you could never use the described model for games. Music is all about profit, which is why you see musicians with mansions and a dozen cars. The average game developer makes a very modest wage, a free model would kill the industry. And like I said, there is no concert or live rendition allegory for gaming, they need to make their profits directly from the game sales itself and nothing more.
First off, Games are an infinite resource *once created*. That is exactly how piracy works. The marginal cost of reproducing a copy of a game is near zero (bandwidth / electricity costs is essentially it). Making the new game is a scarce good. Therefore, a company could sell the scarce good (in this tiny example, the creation of a new game) and use the infinite good (the completed product, with *completed* being the key word) as an advertising vessel.
And in your own post, you explained how it could work for games. - servers for online games. That is inherently a scarce good. Take WoW as an example. Using this business model, they could give the game away for free, and charge a subscription for *access to the server*. That access is scarce, the future patches (that are not yet created) are scarce. The created game content is infinite.
Of course, these are only small examples with very obvious real-world applications. There are a lot of scenarios this doesn't cover, but I think I will leave it to a business expert (rather than a mere code jockey like myself) to work out the full details. And those full details, once made, are infinite. But whatever genius figures them out in the first place should command a high salary for his time solving more problems.
Edit: I don't want to sound like I'm bowing out while the fight is going, but this will be my last post in this thread. Piracy is far too heated of a subject for me to get into. Everyone is so... angry.
Bolded is the point of contention. How do you sell a new game and then give it away for free? It's impossible, no one would buy it new and would just wait. Unless every game ever came with a pre-order bonus (physical or in-game), you can not both sell the game and give it away for free. Income has to come from somewhere, if not from game sales, then where?
The WoW example is more or less how it works. If they made it free to download with a monthly fee, it'd work pretty much exactly the same. Except MMOs (and MOBAs, I guess) are the only games that can run this model.
I don't consider it a fight, your example was one of the more well thought out ones on here. It hasn't changed my mind, I still dislike pirating, but it's a good discussion for future business models.
I lied. I can't ever leave these discussions.
But I think you misunderstood what is being sold in my example. I'm not saying "sell the game", I'm saying "sell the creation of the game". How do you do that? By offering ridiculous pre-order bonuses before the product is even made. You can ask "who would pre-order something not yet made and pay out the ass to fund it, knowing that most of the end consumers are getting it for free?"...
While that seems like a good example, thinking about it for a bit shows it really isn't. People are willing to put a bit or a bunch into one thing that they're interested in. This wouldn't happen if there were 2-3 Sons of Starcraft type movies a month. No one would buy pre-orders on every game, or even a majority of them. It's just not something someone would do if given the choice. Hell, I'd pre-order one game a year and get everything else free, and I love supporting games.
It's an interesting idea, but it would tank so fast if a lot or even some of the games did that.
Then there is our fundamental difference that will only end in anger. I believe in the inherent good of man. You do not. I think that, when given the choice and treated like human beings, people will behave themselves and do the right thing.
I do as well, which is why I've been arguing against piracy this whole time. Or rather, I think most people are good, but we need to help/police those that aren't.
It's unreasonable to expect every person to pay for every game when they can conceivably get it for free. They'd pay for some, maybe even half, but not all of them. Halving the income of gaming industries would destroy the livelyhood of those that work on games.
I'm not trying to argue for-or-against piracy. You have yet to say anything implying I defend piracy, but I just want to lay that out right now. My entire viewpoint on everything is that content creators could benefit so much more by embracing the new digital distribution methods and changing their viewpoints on what it is they are selling, how they sell it, and what it is worth.
But another quick example of studies indicating that those who share tend to be those who pay the most can be found by merely doing a Google search of "pirates buy more music".
There is also the Humble Indie Bundle, who stated that Linux users contributed far more than Windows users. Linux is a free-and-open-source OS, yet the community is very, very giving.
On a similar note, I put my money where my mouth is career wise. I can explain more if you care, but I'll just say that not only do I feel content creators should do this, I actually do it.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
:D
And for the record, I don't honestly care anywhere near as much as I've made myself out to. There was a small moment where I was honestly taken aback by the ignorance of the dude I originally quoted, but that's about where my sincere emotional involvement ended. Seriously though, any rational adult that has a) Paid an electric bill and b) Had even the smallest notion of what they were agreeing to would know that you don't own the services you pay for, you pay for the rights to use the services.
You don't own a cabbie and his cab because you commissioned him to drive you somewhere. You commissioned him to drive you somewhere with the understanding that he could tell you to get the fuck out of his car at any moment because you violated any of his fully arbitrary unvocalized conditions that are your end of the bargain in him providing you a service.
Spoiler alert : I'm not actually mad, I'm just being dramatic. It'd be pretty awesome if someone actually got mad enough to SHOUT certain specific words for EMPHASIS, but seeing as this is the internet and I can do it not because of how I'm feeling but because the person I'm directing my message to will actually believe I'm mad, plus it makes me laugh my head off... yeah. Don't believe everything you read (or do, because I probably want you to :D)
Obviously not. But I do own certain physical items, which I can use in any manner I choose.
On December 02 2011 15:40 Lightwip wrote: I pirate things, albeit infrequently. I live in the United States, so I can't say I can't afford games; I have plenty of money. The reason I do it is because I want free stuff. Who doesn't? But here's the question: why not do it? I don't have any moral obligation to support massive gaming corporations that will be fine without my money. I'd rather be $60 richer. If there's a good reason to buy a product rather than pirate it, I will. That's why I don't pirate DS games etc. But if I can get a comparable or better experience for free, why would I bother paying? This is a situation very similar to evolution. If organism A is a parasite to organism B, both will evolve in a way that will harm the other. If they had a mutualist relationship, they would work to gain more benefit out of supporting the other. Corporations making DRM's is like a parasitic relationship between them and consumers/pirates. Instead of making things worse for everyone, the gaming/movie/music companies need to make the bought product worth buying instead of pirating. Then the problem will become negligible as far as money lost goes.
As for indie games, I sure as hell wouldn't want a DRM-ridden infestation of a game. The fame gained from more people playing it is probably worth more.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
Well I could write the DJZAPZ'S SCROLL OF LOLZ (DSOL).
Did you read the DSOL? It's legally irrelevant.
Also he's being kind of douchey calling the guy functionally retarded and dipshit, what kind of people are you?
But I didn't sign the DSOL. You agree, whether you read it or not, to every ToS or EULA you Accept. You are legally bound to it. That's how a contract works. It's highly relevant, and punishable.
His words were 4chan-y, but his points were relevant.
Are you kidding, I may or may not have clicked a button at the bottom of a large text not written in my native language. Try me.
If you get it legally, you can't play unless you agree. If you are playing without agreeing to it, it is literally illegal.
I drank beer when I was 14 and that was illegal too. Sometimes (often) I drive above the speed limit and that's illegal. Yes you may very well be right, but when did the law become my standard of living? I take what's good from it and I trespass on the rest provided it's moral enough for my standards AND my risks of getting caught are low.
In this case, I consider that 1: My actions are morally correct, despite the fact that they're illegal. 15km/h driving zones are bullshit and I don't respect them. 2: I will respect them if they're enforced, that is, by necessity. AKA: If bullshit rules are enforced, I have to fold and I lose.
Not respecting an EULA may be illegal, but seriously, I can break it all day and none of it will hold up in court. And it shouldn't.
On December 02 2011 15:40 Lightwip wrote: I pirate things, albeit infrequently. I live in the United States, so I can't say I can't afford games; I have plenty of money. The reason I do it is because I want free stuff. Who doesn't? But here's the question: why not do it? I don't have any moral obligation to support massive gaming corporations that will be fine without my money. I'd rather be $60 richer. If there's a good reason to buy a product rather than pirate it, I will. That's why I don't pirate DS games etc. But if I can get a comparable or better experience for free, why would I bother paying? This is a situation very similar to evolution. If organism A is a parasite to organism B, both will evolve in a way that will harm the other. If they had a mutualist relationship, they would work to gain more benefit out of supporting the other. Corporations making DRM's is like a parasitic relationship between them and consumers/pirates. Instead of making things worse for everyone, the gaming/movie/music companies need to make the bought product worth buying instead of pirating. Then the problem will become negligible as far as money lost goes.
As for indie games, I sure as hell wouldn't want a DRM-ridden infestation of a game. The fame gained from more people playing it is probably worth more.
Your $60 doesn't matter. Yours plus the millions of others does.
Not sure tragedy of the commons really applies here, since nothing is being lost collectively. It's not an issue of distrust of others either. $60 means WAY more to me than it does to them, at any rate. The point is, I have no moral reason to support them anyways.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
Well I could write the DJZAPZ'S SCROLL OF LOLZ (DSOL).
Did you read the DSOL? It's legally irrelevant.
Also he's being kind of douchey calling the guy functionally retarded and dipshit, what kind of people are you?
But I didn't sign the DSOL. You agree, whether you read it or not, to every ToS or EULA you Accept. You are legally bound to it. That's how a contract works. It's highly relevant, and punishable.
His words were 4chan-y, but his points were relevant.
Are you kidding, I may or may not have clicked a button at the bottom of a large text not written in my native language. Try me.
If you get it legally, you can't play unless you agree. If you are playing without agreeing to it, it is literally illegal.
I drank beer when I was 14 and that was illegal too. Sometimes (often) I drive above the speed limit and that's illegal. Yes you may very well be right, but when did the law become my standard of living? I take what's good from it and I trespass on the rest provided it's moral enough for my standards AND my risks of getting caught are low.
In this case, I consider that 1: My actions are morally correct, despite the fact that they're illegal. 15km/h driving zones are bullshit and I don't respect them. 2: I will respect them if they're enforced, that is, by necessity. AKA: If bullshit rules are enforced, I have to fold and I lose.
Not respecting an EULA may be illegal, but seriously, I can break it all day and none of it will hold up in court. And it shouldn't.
It's not morally correct to take something that you should pay for and get it for free because you're too cheap/lazy to buy it or you feel entitled to something you can't afford. If you can justify that to yourself, seek help.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
Well I could write the DJZAPZ'S SCROLL OF LOLZ (DSOL).
Did you read the DSOL? It's legally irrelevant.
Also he's being kind of douchey calling the guy functionally retarded and dipshit, what kind of people are you?
But I didn't sign the DSOL. You agree, whether you read it or not, to every ToS or EULA you Accept. You are legally bound to it. That's how a contract works. It's highly relevant, and punishable.
His words were 4chan-y, but his points were relevant.
Are you kidding, I may or may not have clicked a button at the bottom of a large text not written in my native language. Try me.
If you get it legally, you can't play unless you agree. If you are playing without agreeing to it, it is literally illegal.
I drank beer when I was 14 and that was illegal too. Sometimes (often) I drive above the speed limit and that's illegal. Yes you may very well be right, but when did the law become my standard of living? I take what's good from it and I trespass on the rest provided it's moral enough for my standards AND my risks of getting caught are low.
In this case, I consider that 1: My actions are morally correct, despite the fact that they're illegal. 15km/h driving zones are bullshit and I don't respect them. 2: I will respect them if they're enforced, that is, by necessity. AKA: If bullshit rules are enforced, I have to fold and I lose.
Not respecting an EULA may be illegal, but seriously, I can break it all day and none of it will hold up in court. And it shouldn't.
It's not morally correct to take something that you should pay for and get it for free because you're too cheap/lazy to buy it or you feel entitled to something you can't afford. If you can justify that to yourself, seek help.
I think the problem you run into with this argument is that the thing being discussed is something that should be paid for.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
:D
And for the record, I don't honestly care anywhere near as much as I've made myself out to. There was a small moment where I was honestly taken aback by the ignorance of the dude I originally quoted, but that's about where my sincere emotional involvement ended. Seriously though, any rational adult that has a) Paid an electric bill and b) Had even the smallest notion of what they were agreeing to would know that you don't own the services you pay for, you pay for the rights to use the services.
You don't own a cabbie and his cab because you commissioned him to drive you somewhere. You commissioned him to drive you somewhere with the understanding that he could tell you to get the fuck out of his car at any moment because you violated any of his fully arbitrary unvocalized conditions that are your end of the bargain in him providing you a service.
Spoiler alert : I'm not actually mad, I'm just being dramatic. It'd be pretty awesome if someone actually got mad enough to SHOUT certain specific words for EMPHASIS, but seeing as this is the internet and I can do it not because of how I'm feeling but because the person I'm directing my message to will actually believe I'm mad, plus it makes me laugh my head off... yeah. Don't believe everything you read (or do, because I probably want you to :D)
Obviously not. But I do own certain physical items, which I can use in any manner I choose.
What, your computer?
Sure, you can use your computer however you choose.
The physical CD that files come on? Heck yeah, cut that thing into a ninja star and see if you can get it to stick into the wall.
The files on the CD? Nope, not really. You paid for the right to access the files but I'm pretty sure there's a stipulation that the files you've been "given" are not to be modified or redistributed without permission of the developer. Same goes for digital copies.
The internet? Nope, right to a service. You may not engage in copyright infringements simply because you think you made a case strong enough to vindicate your actions, because it is not your decision to make. You noted that this was not your decision to make when you agreed to the terms of service your internet service provider displayed to you when you signed the thing that says they could cut off your internet -because they're bored-, much less because you're using it to engage in illegal activities.
Claiming that purchasing a right to a service gives you the right to abuse that service is contradictory. It's something akin to renting a canoe, filling it with dynamite and trying to blow up a cruise liner with it... and expecting the canoe rental company to be totally fine with it because you paid that 80 bucks for the day of what they understood as "using the canoe to canoe around in for a day" and you understood as "Owning a canoe for 24 hours"
Same goes for electricity, though you'd be much harder pressed to find ways to power your electronics maliciously than you would be to use the internet for illegal activities.
"Don't be cheap" is one of the stupidest arguments in existence. No one has enough money to throw it around and waste it. If there's a good way to save money without harming yourself, you will do it.
I pirated Amnesia the Dark Descent and the Penumbra games, after realizing how awesome they were I bought them. I am not against piracy in both the music scene and videogaming scene because it actually supports developers in a way. For example, piracy helps bands gain notoriety because it allows their music spread to a greater number of people, sure they don't get paid from piracy but in the end it actually makes them more famous.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
Well I could write the DJZAPZ'S SCROLL OF LOLZ (DSOL).
Did you read the DSOL? It's legally irrelevant.
Also he's being kind of douchey calling the guy functionally retarded and dipshit, what kind of people are you?
But I didn't sign the DSOL. You agree, whether you read it or not, to every ToS or EULA you Accept. You are legally bound to it. That's how a contract works. It's highly relevant, and punishable.
His words were 4chan-y, but his points were relevant.
Are you kidding, I may or may not have clicked a button at the bottom of a large text not written in my native language. Try me.
If you get it legally, you can't play unless you agree. If you are playing without agreeing to it, it is literally illegal.
I drank beer when I was 14 and that was illegal too. Sometimes (often) I drive above the speed limit and that's illegal. Yes you may very well be right, but when did the law become my standard of living? I take what's good from it and I trespass on the rest provided it's moral enough for my standards AND my risks of getting caught are low.
In this case, I consider that 1: My actions are morally correct, despite the fact that they're illegal. 15km/h driving zones are bullshit and I don't respect them. 2: I will respect them if they're enforced, that is, by necessity. AKA: If bullshit rules are enforced, I have to fold and I lose.
Not respecting an EULA may be illegal, but seriously, I can break it all day and none of it will hold up in court. And it shouldn't.
It's not morally correct to take something that you should pay for and get it for free because you're too cheap/lazy to buy it or you feel entitled to something you can't afford. If you can justify that to yourself, seek help.
I think the problem you run into with this argument is that the thing being discussed is something that should be paid for.
Sorry if I misunderstand, but are you implying that they should not be paid for? Or that the current model should not be supported with money?
If the former, that's absurd. If the latter, I agree, but no model yet has been suitable compared to what we currently have.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
:D
And for the record, I don't honestly care anywhere near as much as I've made myself out to. There was a small moment where I was honestly taken aback by the ignorance of the dude I originally quoted, but that's about where my sincere emotional involvement ended. Seriously though, any rational adult that has a) Paid an electric bill and b) Had even the smallest notion of what they were agreeing to would know that you don't own the services you pay for, you pay for the rights to use the services.
You don't own a cabbie and his cab because you commissioned him to drive you somewhere. You commissioned him to drive you somewhere with the understanding that he could tell you to get the fuck out of his car at any moment because you violated any of his fully arbitrary unvocalized conditions that are your end of the bargain in him providing you a service.
Spoiler alert : I'm not actually mad, I'm just being dramatic. It'd be pretty awesome if someone actually got mad enough to SHOUT certain specific words for EMPHASIS, but seeing as this is the internet and I can do it not because of how I'm feeling but because the person I'm directing my message to will actually believe I'm mad, plus it makes me laugh my head off... yeah. Don't believe everything you read (or do, because I probably want you to :D)
Obviously not. But I do own certain physical items, which I can use in any manner I choose.
What, your computer?
Sure, you can use your computer however you choose.
The physical CD that files come on? Heck yeah, cut that thing into a ninja star and see if you can get it to stick into the wall.
The files on the CD? Nope, not really. You paid for the right to access the files but I'm pretty sure there's a stipulation that the files you've been "given" are not to be modified or redistributed without permission of the developer. Same goes for digital copies.
The internet? Nope, right to a service. You may not engage in copyright infringements simply because you think you made a case strong enough to vindicate your actions, because it is not your decision to make. You noted that this was not your decision to make when you agreed to the terms of service your internet service provider displayed to you when you signed the thing that says they could cut off your internet -because they're bored-, much less because you're using it to engage in illegal activities.
Claiming that purchasing a right to a service gives you the right to abuse that service is contradictory. It's something akin to renting a canoe, filling it with dynamite and trying to blow up a cruise liner with it... and expecting the canoe rental company to be totally fine with it because you paid that 80 bucks for the day of what they understood as "using the canoe to canoe around in for a day" and you understood as "Owning a canoe for 24 hours"
Same goes for electricity, though you'd be much harder pressed to find ways to power your electronics maliciously than you would be to use the internet for illegal activities.
I said nothing about distributing. I'm just in the act of acquiring here. My computer, my power source, and my internet so long as it's not prohibited in my contract with my ISP. I should have the absolute right to do what I will with those things, just as I have the absolute right to do what I will with my clothing, or my desk drawer. I'm not saying that I have a right to abuse my property, only that someone else's imaginary property shouldn't be able to control what I do with my property. If that seems to you to be abuse, so be it. To me, it seems like ample justification for the abolition of Intellectual Property.
On December 02 2011 15:55 Lightwip wrote: "Don't be cheap" is one of the stupidest arguments in existence. No one has enough money to throw it around and waste it. If there's a good way to save money without harming yourself, you will do it.
How about not overspending? I don't buy every good game that comes out. I rent some, I borrow some, I just watch people play some.
It's not so much "don't be cheap", it's "don't be cheap if you have the money, and don't feel you need to spend money you don't have".
There are so many people implying that they only pirate because they legitimately can't afford it. First of all, budgeting out $60 a month isn't an impossible task if you're not in poverty. If you have a PC that can handle the types of games you're pirating, you can afford a game a month. Hell, even $120 is easy on most salaries.
If you actually, seriously can't afford a game, then that still doesn't entitle you to get it anyway. You'll live without games. Use the time you would spend playing pirated games working to get a better job or playing old games you can afford.
"Why should I pay when I can perform a selfish, illegal action for free" is one of the stupidest arguments out there.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
Well I could write the DJZAPZ'S SCROLL OF LOLZ (DSOL).
Did you read the DSOL? It's legally irrelevant.
Also he's being kind of douchey calling the guy functionally retarded and dipshit, what kind of people are you?
But I didn't sign the DSOL. You agree, whether you read it or not, to every ToS or EULA you Accept. You are legally bound to it. That's how a contract works. It's highly relevant, and punishable.
His words were 4chan-y, but his points were relevant.
Are you kidding, I may or may not have clicked a button at the bottom of a large text not written in my native language. Try me.
If you get it legally, you can't play unless you agree. If you are playing without agreeing to it, it is literally illegal.
I drank beer when I was 14 and that was illegal too. Sometimes (often) I drive above the speed limit and that's illegal. Yes you may very well be right, but when did the law become my standard of living? I take what's good from it and I trespass on the rest provided it's moral enough for my standards AND my risks of getting caught are low.
In this case, I consider that 1: My actions are morally correct, despite the fact that they're illegal. 15km/h driving zones are bullshit and I don't respect them. 2: I will respect them if they're enforced, that is, by necessity. AKA: If bullshit rules are enforced, I have to fold and I lose.
Not respecting an EULA may be illegal, but seriously, I can break it all day and none of it will hold up in court. And it shouldn't.
It's not morally correct to take something that you should pay for and get it for free because you're too cheap/lazy to buy it or you feel entitled to something you can't afford. If you can justify that to yourself, seek help.
Seek help? Me and the millions of people who do? I'm not justifying myself because of the number of people who actually download music "illegally, but that just seems extreme, do you honestly think that I need help or are you just gunning for that exciting conversation twist?
I'm the guy who make a decent case for "pirating" games as a way to try something before I buy it. I'm one of the reasonable people who do use torrents, and I try to bring a nuanced view which gets dismissed by you altogether, as if the mere fact that laws are into place should be enough of a reason to live in such a way. As if big companies were persecuted by little Djzapz who tries to gain a little advantage in the market by trying games before buying them. Oh the humanity - how dare I download game for the sole purpose of testing them to decide whether or not I should buy them?
I know that you don't accept that as a valid way to go about things, but from my perspective, you don't really have much of a case against that.I honestly cannot think of a single good argument against that - I haven't heard one... You might, but I guess it wouldn't care for it much...
On December 02 2011 15:55 Lightwip wrote: "Don't be cheap" is one of the stupidest arguments in existence. No one has enough money to throw it around and waste it. If there's a good way to save money without harming yourself, you will do it.
Hell, even $120 is easy on most salaries.
As a masters student, I can tell you something. Nope. It's not my situation, but that of most students here in Montreal.
Granted, I agree it's not a good excuse, but you're still wrong about that... I don't know if you still live at your parents and life's easy OR if you're independent and making a comfortable amount of money, but $120 is quite a bit of money for a lot of people. And that's in Canada/US - not everyone lives here, we have it easy.
There's a lot of this whole "If the person couldn't afford the game in the first place, then when they pirate it, there's no loss to the company" mentality floating around. This is foolish. You only need look at how things operated before piracy was possible, or at least before it was as easily accessible as it is now. At that time, if you wanted a game you couldn't immediately afford, you would have to work and save money to buy that game. If you did not do this, you did not play the game. Now that piracy is easy, suddenly it's ok for people to play games which they won't work to afford? It doesn't make sense.
Also, the whole IP discussion going on is a really silly one. One or two people think that no one's hard work should be worth any money, and they should freely give all their time and labor to whomever wants to reap the advantages of it. Seriously? I've got some dishes you can come clean for me. Don't expect compensation.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
:D
And for the record, I don't honestly care anywhere near as much as I've made myself out to. There was a small moment where I was honestly taken aback by the ignorance of the dude I originally quoted, but that's about where my sincere emotional involvement ended. Seriously though, any rational adult that has a) Paid an electric bill and b) Had even the smallest notion of what they were agreeing to would know that you don't own the services you pay for, you pay for the rights to use the services.
You don't own a cabbie and his cab because you commissioned him to drive you somewhere. You commissioned him to drive you somewhere with the understanding that he could tell you to get the fuck out of his car at any moment because you violated any of his fully arbitrary unvocalized conditions that are your end of the bargain in him providing you a service.
Spoiler alert : I'm not actually mad, I'm just being dramatic. It'd be pretty awesome if someone actually got mad enough to SHOUT certain specific words for EMPHASIS, but seeing as this is the internet and I can do it not because of how I'm feeling but because the person I'm directing my message to will actually believe I'm mad, plus it makes me laugh my head off... yeah. Don't believe everything you read (or do, because I probably want you to :D)
Obviously not. But I do own certain physical items, which I can use in any manner I choose.
What, your computer?
Sure, you can use your computer however you choose.
The physical CD that files come on? Heck yeah, cut that thing into a ninja star and see if you can get it to stick into the wall.
The files on the CD? Nope, not really. You paid for the right to access the files but I'm pretty sure there's a stipulation that the files you've been "given" are not to be modified or redistributed without permission of the developer. Same goes for digital copies.
The internet? Nope, right to a service. You may not engage in copyright infringements simply because you think you made a case strong enough to vindicate your actions, because it is not your decision to make. You noted that this was not your decision to make when you agreed to the terms of service your internet service provider displayed to you when you signed the thing that says they could cut off your internet -because they're bored-, much less because you're using it to engage in illegal activities.
Claiming that purchasing a right to a service gives you the right to abuse that service is contradictory. It's something akin to renting a canoe, filling it with dynamite and trying to blow up a cruise liner with it... and expecting the canoe rental company to be totally fine with it because you paid that 80 bucks for the day of what they understood as "using the canoe to canoe around in for a day" and you understood as "Owning a canoe for 24 hours"
Same goes for electricity, though you'd be much harder pressed to find ways to power your electronics maliciously than you would be to use the internet for illegal activities.
I said nothing about distributing. I'm just in the act of acquiring here. My computer, my power source, and my internet so long as it's not prohibited in my contract with my ISP. I should have the absolute right to do what I will with those things, just as I have the absolute right to do what I will with my clothing, or my desk drawer. I'm not saying that I have a right to abuse my property, only that someone else's imaginary property shouldn't be able to control what I do with my property. If that seems to you to be abuse, so be it. To me, it seems like ample justification for the abolition of Intellectual Property.
You have the right to get whatever you want with your computer and internet and electricity. You do not have the right to run games that you get illegally. You still need to purchase the game to get that right. If you pirate a game and it just sits there, that's technically fine. The minute you start using it, it's theft.
On December 02 2011 15:22 Djzapz wrote: [quote] Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
Well I could write the DJZAPZ'S SCROLL OF LOLZ (DSOL).
Did you read the DSOL? It's legally irrelevant.
Also he's being kind of douchey calling the guy functionally retarded and dipshit, what kind of people are you?
But I didn't sign the DSOL. You agree, whether you read it or not, to every ToS or EULA you Accept. You are legally bound to it. That's how a contract works. It's highly relevant, and punishable.
His words were 4chan-y, but his points were relevant.
Are you kidding, I may or may not have clicked a button at the bottom of a large text not written in my native language. Try me.
If you get it legally, you can't play unless you agree. If you are playing without agreeing to it, it is literally illegal.
I drank beer when I was 14 and that was illegal too. Sometimes (often) I drive above the speed limit and that's illegal. Yes you may very well be right, but when did the law become my standard of living? I take what's good from it and I trespass on the rest provided it's moral enough for my standards AND my risks of getting caught are low.
In this case, I consider that 1: My actions are morally correct, despite the fact that they're illegal. 15km/h driving zones are bullshit and I don't respect them. 2: I will respect them if they're enforced, that is, by necessity. AKA: If bullshit rules are enforced, I have to fold and I lose.
Not respecting an EULA may be illegal, but seriously, I can break it all day and none of it will hold up in court. And it shouldn't.
It's not morally correct to take something that you should pay for and get it for free because you're too cheap/lazy to buy it or you feel entitled to something you can't afford. If you can justify that to yourself, seek help.
I think the problem you run into with this argument is that the thing being discussed is something that should be paid for.
Sorry if I misunderstand, but are you implying that they should not be paid for? Or that the current model should not be supported with money?
If the former, that's absurd. If the latter, I agree, but no model yet has been suitable compared to what we currently have.
Neither, I was just helpfully pointing out a possible counterpoint to your argument. My own argument, which you have read in close to its entirety at this point, would err on the side of the former, only as long as the thing being discussed is an idea. As soon as the transition is made from an idea to a service, monetary compensation becomes necessary for the economic transaction to occur. My thoughts, although following from a radically different premise, reach the same basic conclusion as the argument you seemed to agree with, although mine is eventually achieved through a critique of IP, rather than the identification of an 'infinite' resource (which, if I might say so, is quite a genius idea).
On December 02 2011 15:40 Lightwip wrote: I pirate things, albeit infrequently. I live in the United States, so I can't say I can't afford games; I have plenty of money. The reason I do it is because I want free stuff. Who doesn't? But here's the question: why not do it? I don't have any moral obligation to support massive gaming corporations that will be fine without my money. I'd rather be $60 richer. If there's a good reason to buy a product rather than pirate it, I will. That's why I don't pirate DS games etc. But if I can get a comparable or better experience for free, why would I bother paying? This is a situation very similar to evolution. If organism A is a parasite to organism B, both will evolve in a way that will harm the other. If they had a mutualist relationship, they would work to gain more benefit out of supporting the other. Corporations making DRM's is like a parasitic relationship between them and consumers/pirates. Instead of making things worse for everyone, the gaming/movie/music companies need to make the bought product worth buying instead of pirating. Then the problem will become negligible as far as money lost goes.
As for indie games, I sure as hell wouldn't want a DRM-ridden infestation of a game. The fame gained from more people playing it is probably worth more.
In much the same way I have no moral obligation to not smash in your front door, share your family, use your computer and shit in your toilet.
Why do I care if I can get it for free? I don't want to spend money on a computer, a house or a toilet.
It's funny because it's YOU that's the parasite in this equation.
I don't really want to hear about how you feel these guys may or may not rip you off for what they deliver. If you take offence to the cost of these games then DONT BUY IT.
You are not entitled to things that are not yours...or are you somewhat special? With your suspect moral compass I highly doubt it.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
:D
And for the record, I don't honestly care anywhere near as much as I've made myself out to. There was a small moment where I was honestly taken aback by the ignorance of the dude I originally quoted, but that's about where my sincere emotional involvement ended. Seriously though, any rational adult that has a) Paid an electric bill and b) Had even the smallest notion of what they were agreeing to would know that you don't own the services you pay for, you pay for the rights to use the services.
You don't own a cabbie and his cab because you commissioned him to drive you somewhere. You commissioned him to drive you somewhere with the understanding that he could tell you to get the fuck out of his car at any moment because you violated any of his fully arbitrary unvocalized conditions that are your end of the bargain in him providing you a service.
Spoiler alert : I'm not actually mad, I'm just being dramatic. It'd be pretty awesome if someone actually got mad enough to SHOUT certain specific words for EMPHASIS, but seeing as this is the internet and I can do it not because of how I'm feeling but because the person I'm directing my message to will actually believe I'm mad, plus it makes me laugh my head off... yeah. Don't believe everything you read (or do, because I probably want you to :D)
Obviously not. But I do own certain physical items, which I can use in any manner I choose.
What, your computer?
Sure, you can use your computer however you choose.
The physical CD that files come on? Heck yeah, cut that thing into a ninja star and see if you can get it to stick into the wall.
The files on the CD? Nope, not really. You paid for the right to access the files but I'm pretty sure there's a stipulation that the files you've been "given" are not to be modified or redistributed without permission of the developer. Same goes for digital copies.
The internet? Nope, right to a service. You may not engage in copyright infringements simply because you think you made a case strong enough to vindicate your actions, because it is not your decision to make. You noted that this was not your decision to make when you agreed to the terms of service your internet service provider displayed to you when you signed the thing that says they could cut off your internet -because they're bored-, much less because you're using it to engage in illegal activities.
Claiming that purchasing a right to a service gives you the right to abuse that service is contradictory. It's something akin to renting a canoe, filling it with dynamite and trying to blow up a cruise liner with it... and expecting the canoe rental company to be totally fine with it because you paid that 80 bucks for the day of what they understood as "using the canoe to canoe around in for a day" and you understood as "Owning a canoe for 24 hours"
Same goes for electricity, though you'd be much harder pressed to find ways to power your electronics maliciously than you would be to use the internet for illegal activities.
I said nothing about distributing. I'm just in the act of acquiring here. My computer, my power source, and my internet so long as it's not prohibited in my contract with my ISP. I should have the absolute right to do what I will with those things, just as I have the absolute right to do what I will with my clothing, or my desk drawer. I'm not saying that I have a right to abuse my property, only that someone else's imaginary property shouldn't be able to control what I do with my property. If that seems to you to be abuse, so be it. To me, it seems like ample justification for the abolition of Intellectual Property.
You have the right to get whatever you want with your computer and internet and electricity. You do not have the right to run games that you get illegally. You still need to purchase the game to get that right. If you pirate a game and it just sits there, that's technically fine. The minute you start using it, it's theft.
If games were sold as a service, I would agree with you, hands down. However, at the present moment, games are sold and marketed as products, dependent upon intellectual property. Abolish IP in the law, and sell a game as a service, and piracy does become theft. How to get there, though, is the question.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
:D
And for the record, I don't honestly care anywhere near as much as I've made myself out to. There was a small moment where I was honestly taken aback by the ignorance of the dude I originally quoted, but that's about where my sincere emotional involvement ended. Seriously though, any rational adult that has a) Paid an electric bill and b) Had even the smallest notion of what they were agreeing to would know that you don't own the services you pay for, you pay for the rights to use the services.
You don't own a cabbie and his cab because you commissioned him to drive you somewhere. You commissioned him to drive you somewhere with the understanding that he could tell you to get the fuck out of his car at any moment because you violated any of his fully arbitrary unvocalized conditions that are your end of the bargain in him providing you a service.
Spoiler alert : I'm not actually mad, I'm just being dramatic. It'd be pretty awesome if someone actually got mad enough to SHOUT certain specific words for EMPHASIS, but seeing as this is the internet and I can do it not because of how I'm feeling but because the person I'm directing my message to will actually believe I'm mad, plus it makes me laugh my head off... yeah. Don't believe everything you read (or do, because I probably want you to :D)
Obviously not. But I do own certain physical items, which I can use in any manner I choose.
What, your computer?
Sure, you can use your computer however you choose.
The physical CD that files come on? Heck yeah, cut that thing into a ninja star and see if you can get it to stick into the wall.
The files on the CD? Nope, not really. You paid for the right to access the files but I'm pretty sure there's a stipulation that the files you've been "given" are not to be modified or redistributed without permission of the developer. Same goes for digital copies.
The internet? Nope, right to a service. You may not engage in copyright infringements simply because you think you made a case strong enough to vindicate your actions, because it is not your decision to make. You noted that this was not your decision to make when you agreed to the terms of service your internet service provider displayed to you when you signed the thing that says they could cut off your internet -because they're bored-, much less because you're using it to engage in illegal activities.
Claiming that purchasing a right to a service gives you the right to abuse that service is contradictory. It's something akin to renting a canoe, filling it with dynamite and trying to blow up a cruise liner with it... and expecting the canoe rental company to be totally fine with it because you paid that 80 bucks for the day of what they understood as "using the canoe to canoe around in for a day" and you understood as "Owning a canoe for 24 hours"
Same goes for electricity, though you'd be much harder pressed to find ways to power your electronics maliciously than you would be to use the internet for illegal activities.
I said nothing about distributing. I'm just in the act of acquiring here. My computer, my power source, and my internet so long as it's not prohibited in my contract with my ISP. I should have the absolute right to do what I will with those things, just as I have the absolute right to do what I will with my clothing, or my desk drawer. I'm not saying that I have a right to abuse my property, only that someone else's imaginary property shouldn't be able to control what I do with my property. If that seems to you to be abuse, so be it. To me, it seems like ample justification for the abolition of Intellectual Property.
If you pirate a game and it just sits there, that's technically fine. The minute you start using it, it's theft.
I don't know where you got that idea, but it's totally wrong. Legally you're on the hook for copyright infringement every time you make a copy. That's one copy for downloading it--even if you never use it--plus an additional copy every time the work or some part of it is copied into your RAM. See MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc., 991 F.2d 511 (9th Cir. 1993).
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
:D
And for the record, I don't honestly care anywhere near as much as I've made myself out to. There was a small moment where I was honestly taken aback by the ignorance of the dude I originally quoted, but that's about where my sincere emotional involvement ended. Seriously though, any rational adult that has a) Paid an electric bill and b) Had even the smallest notion of what they were agreeing to would know that you don't own the services you pay for, you pay for the rights to use the services.
You don't own a cabbie and his cab because you commissioned him to drive you somewhere. You commissioned him to drive you somewhere with the understanding that he could tell you to get the fuck out of his car at any moment because you violated any of his fully arbitrary unvocalized conditions that are your end of the bargain in him providing you a service.
Spoiler alert : I'm not actually mad, I'm just being dramatic. It'd be pretty awesome if someone actually got mad enough to SHOUT certain specific words for EMPHASIS, but seeing as this is the internet and I can do it not because of how I'm feeling but because the person I'm directing my message to will actually believe I'm mad, plus it makes me laugh my head off... yeah. Don't believe everything you read (or do, because I probably want you to :D)
Obviously not. But I do own certain physical items, which I can use in any manner I choose.
What, your computer?
Sure, you can use your computer however you choose.
The physical CD that files come on? Heck yeah, cut that thing into a ninja star and see if you can get it to stick into the wall.
The files on the CD? Nope, not really. You paid for the right to access the files but I'm pretty sure there's a stipulation that the files you've been "given" are not to be modified or redistributed without permission of the developer. Same goes for digital copies.
The internet? Nope, right to a service. You may not engage in copyright infringements simply because you think you made a case strong enough to vindicate your actions, because it is not your decision to make. You noted that this was not your decision to make when you agreed to the terms of service your internet service provider displayed to you when you signed the thing that says they could cut off your internet -because they're bored-, much less because you're using it to engage in illegal activities.
Claiming that purchasing a right to a service gives you the right to abuse that service is contradictory. It's something akin to renting a canoe, filling it with dynamite and trying to blow up a cruise liner with it... and expecting the canoe rental company to be totally fine with it because you paid that 80 bucks for the day of what they understood as "using the canoe to canoe around in for a day" and you understood as "Owning a canoe for 24 hours"
Same goes for electricity, though you'd be much harder pressed to find ways to power your electronics maliciously than you would be to use the internet for illegal activities.
I said nothing about distributing. I'm just in the act of acquiring here. My computer, my power source, and my internet so long as it's not prohibited in my contract with my ISP. I should have the absolute right to do what I will with those things, just as I have the absolute right to do what I will with my clothing, or my desk drawer. I'm not saying that I have a right to abuse my property, only that someone else's imaginary property shouldn't be able to control what I do with my property. If that seems to you to be abuse, so be it. To me, it seems like ample justification for the abolition of Intellectual Property.
If you pirate a game and it just sits there, that's technically fine. The minute you start using it, it's theft.
I don't know where you got that idea, but it's totally wrong. Legally you're on the hook for copyright infringement every time you make a copy. That's one copy for downloading it--even if you never use it--plus an additional copy every time the work or some part of it is copied into your RAM. See MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc., 991 F.2d 511 (9th Cir. 1993).
Not from the law. From his own (and mine!) logic and morality. Mainly logic.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
:D
And for the record, I don't honestly care anywhere near as much as I've made myself out to. There was a small moment where I was honestly taken aback by the ignorance of the dude I originally quoted, but that's about where my sincere emotional involvement ended. Seriously though, any rational adult that has a) Paid an electric bill and b) Had even the smallest notion of what they were agreeing to would know that you don't own the services you pay for, you pay for the rights to use the services.
You don't own a cabbie and his cab because you commissioned him to drive you somewhere. You commissioned him to drive you somewhere with the understanding that he could tell you to get the fuck out of his car at any moment because you violated any of his fully arbitrary unvocalized conditions that are your end of the bargain in him providing you a service.
Spoiler alert : I'm not actually mad, I'm just being dramatic. It'd be pretty awesome if someone actually got mad enough to SHOUT certain specific words for EMPHASIS, but seeing as this is the internet and I can do it not because of how I'm feeling but because the person I'm directing my message to will actually believe I'm mad, plus it makes me laugh my head off... yeah. Don't believe everything you read (or do, because I probably want you to :D)
Obviously not. But I do own certain physical items, which I can use in any manner I choose.
What, your computer?
Sure, you can use your computer however you choose.
The physical CD that files come on? Heck yeah, cut that thing into a ninja star and see if you can get it to stick into the wall.
The files on the CD? Nope, not really. You paid for the right to access the files but I'm pretty sure there's a stipulation that the files you've been "given" are not to be modified or redistributed without permission of the developer. Same goes for digital copies.
The internet? Nope, right to a service. You may not engage in copyright infringements simply because you think you made a case strong enough to vindicate your actions, because it is not your decision to make. You noted that this was not your decision to make when you agreed to the terms of service your internet service provider displayed to you when you signed the thing that says they could cut off your internet -because they're bored-, much less because you're using it to engage in illegal activities.
Claiming that purchasing a right to a service gives you the right to abuse that service is contradictory. It's something akin to renting a canoe, filling it with dynamite and trying to blow up a cruise liner with it... and expecting the canoe rental company to be totally fine with it because you paid that 80 bucks for the day of what they understood as "using the canoe to canoe around in for a day" and you understood as "Owning a canoe for 24 hours"
Same goes for electricity, though you'd be much harder pressed to find ways to power your electronics maliciously than you would be to use the internet for illegal activities.
I said nothing about distributing. I'm just in the act of acquiring here. My computer, my power source, and my internet so long as it's not prohibited in my contract with my ISP. I should have the absolute right to do what I will with those things, just as I have the absolute right to do what I will with my clothing, or my desk drawer. I'm not saying that I have a right to abuse my property, only that someone else's imaginary property shouldn't be able to control what I do with my property. If that seems to you to be abuse, so be it. To me, it seems like ample justification for the abolition of Intellectual Property.
If you pirate a game and it just sits there, that's technically fine. The minute you start using it, it's theft.
I don't know where you got that idea, but it's totally wrong. Legally you're on the hook for copyright infringement every time you make a copy. That's one copy for downloading it--even if you never use it--plus an additional copy every time the work or some part of it is copied into your RAM. See MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc., 991 F.2d 511 (9th Cir. 1993).
Now that's really really cute but let's keep it to real world application, volatile memory copies being counted as copyright infringements is beyond ridiculous
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
:D
And for the record, I don't honestly care anywhere near as much as I've made myself out to. There was a small moment where I was honestly taken aback by the ignorance of the dude I originally quoted, but that's about where my sincere emotional involvement ended. Seriously though, any rational adult that has a) Paid an electric bill and b) Had even the smallest notion of what they were agreeing to would know that you don't own the services you pay for, you pay for the rights to use the services.
You don't own a cabbie and his cab because you commissioned him to drive you somewhere. You commissioned him to drive you somewhere with the understanding that he could tell you to get the fuck out of his car at any moment because you violated any of his fully arbitrary unvocalized conditions that are your end of the bargain in him providing you a service.
Spoiler alert : I'm not actually mad, I'm just being dramatic. It'd be pretty awesome if someone actually got mad enough to SHOUT certain specific words for EMPHASIS, but seeing as this is the internet and I can do it not because of how I'm feeling but because the person I'm directing my message to will actually believe I'm mad, plus it makes me laugh my head off... yeah. Don't believe everything you read (or do, because I probably want you to :D)
Obviously not. But I do own certain physical items, which I can use in any manner I choose.
What, your computer?
Sure, you can use your computer however you choose.
The physical CD that files come on? Heck yeah, cut that thing into a ninja star and see if you can get it to stick into the wall.
The files on the CD? Nope, not really. You paid for the right to access the files but I'm pretty sure there's a stipulation that the files you've been "given" are not to be modified or redistributed without permission of the developer. Same goes for digital copies.
The internet? Nope, right to a service. You may not engage in copyright infringements simply because you think you made a case strong enough to vindicate your actions, because it is not your decision to make. You noted that this was not your decision to make when you agreed to the terms of service your internet service provider displayed to you when you signed the thing that says they could cut off your internet -because they're bored-, much less because you're using it to engage in illegal activities.
Claiming that purchasing a right to a service gives you the right to abuse that service is contradictory. It's something akin to renting a canoe, filling it with dynamite and trying to blow up a cruise liner with it... and expecting the canoe rental company to be totally fine with it because you paid that 80 bucks for the day of what they understood as "using the canoe to canoe around in for a day" and you understood as "Owning a canoe for 24 hours"
Same goes for electricity, though you'd be much harder pressed to find ways to power your electronics maliciously than you would be to use the internet for illegal activities.
I said nothing about distributing. I'm just in the act of acquiring here. My computer, my power source, and my internet so long as it's not prohibited in my contract with my ISP. I should have the absolute right to do what I will with those things, just as I have the absolute right to do what I will with my clothing, or my desk drawer. I'm not saying that I have a right to abuse my property, only that someone else's imaginary property shouldn't be able to control what I do with my property. If that seems to you to be abuse, so be it. To me, it seems like ample justification for the abolition of Intellectual Property.
The point I've been trying to make is exactly that you do not own your power source or your internet in the same way that you own your clothing or your desk drawer. The very obvious difference is that where you do actually own your clothing and your desk drawer, you don't actually own your power source or your internet.
As such, you do not actually get to decide what you do with your power source or your internet, the companies providing that service to you get to decide; Unfortunately (debatable) internet service providers do not currently have the resources to track exactly what everyone is doing while still maintaining a profitable business model. The next-best solution is the honor system, which has you sign something that says "I won't abuse the service being provided to me" and then just trust you to actually not abuse it, because they have few ways of checking whether or not you ARE, and actually policing it is counter-productive, for them.
Again, you do not have an absolute right to do with these things what you will, because you do not actually own these things and they are not yours to do with what you will. So far, our simple debate has gone thusly:
Me : You can't do what you want with these things because you do not actually own them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them. Me : Yeah but you don't actually own these things, so you can't do what you want with them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them.
I challenge you to provide clear, sound reasoning as to -why- you should own these things based on factual analysis and empirical reasoning rather than emotional reasoning and theoretical analysis. Unless you can provide this, our simple debate is likely to continue thusly until I get bored and stop replying.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
:D
And for the record, I don't honestly care anywhere near as much as I've made myself out to. There was a small moment where I was honestly taken aback by the ignorance of the dude I originally quoted, but that's about where my sincere emotional involvement ended. Seriously though, any rational adult that has a) Paid an electric bill and b) Had even the smallest notion of what they were agreeing to would know that you don't own the services you pay for, you pay for the rights to use the services.
You don't own a cabbie and his cab because you commissioned him to drive you somewhere. You commissioned him to drive you somewhere with the understanding that he could tell you to get the fuck out of his car at any moment because you violated any of his fully arbitrary unvocalized conditions that are your end of the bargain in him providing you a service.
Spoiler alert : I'm not actually mad, I'm just being dramatic. It'd be pretty awesome if someone actually got mad enough to SHOUT certain specific words for EMPHASIS, but seeing as this is the internet and I can do it not because of how I'm feeling but because the person I'm directing my message to will actually believe I'm mad, plus it makes me laugh my head off... yeah. Don't believe everything you read (or do, because I probably want you to :D)
Obviously not. But I do own certain physical items, which I can use in any manner I choose.
What, your computer?
Sure, you can use your computer however you choose.
The physical CD that files come on? Heck yeah, cut that thing into a ninja star and see if you can get it to stick into the wall.
The files on the CD? Nope, not really. You paid for the right to access the files but I'm pretty sure there's a stipulation that the files you've been "given" are not to be modified or redistributed without permission of the developer. Same goes for digital copies.
The internet? Nope, right to a service. You may not engage in copyright infringements simply because you think you made a case strong enough to vindicate your actions, because it is not your decision to make. You noted that this was not your decision to make when you agreed to the terms of service your internet service provider displayed to you when you signed the thing that says they could cut off your internet -because they're bored-, much less because you're using it to engage in illegal activities.
Claiming that purchasing a right to a service gives you the right to abuse that service is contradictory. It's something akin to renting a canoe, filling it with dynamite and trying to blow up a cruise liner with it... and expecting the canoe rental company to be totally fine with it because you paid that 80 bucks for the day of what they understood as "using the canoe to canoe around in for a day" and you understood as "Owning a canoe for 24 hours"
Same goes for electricity, though you'd be much harder pressed to find ways to power your electronics maliciously than you would be to use the internet for illegal activities.
I said nothing about distributing. I'm just in the act of acquiring here. My computer, my power source, and my internet so long as it's not prohibited in my contract with my ISP. I should have the absolute right to do what I will with those things, just as I have the absolute right to do what I will with my clothing, or my desk drawer. I'm not saying that I have a right to abuse my property, only that someone else's imaginary property shouldn't be able to control what I do with my property. If that seems to you to be abuse, so be it. To me, it seems like ample justification for the abolition of Intellectual Property.
The point I've been trying to make is exactly that you do not own your power source or your internet in the same way that you own your clothing or your desk drawer. The very obvious difference is that where you do actually own your clothing and your desk drawer, you don't actually own your power source or your internet.
As such, you do not actually get to decide what you do with your power source or your internet, the companies providing that service to you get to decide; Unfortunately (debatable) internet service providers do not currently have the resources to track exactly what everyone is doing while still maintaining a profitable business model. The next-best solution is the honor system, which has you sign something that says "I won't abuse the service being provided to me" and then just trust you to actually not abuse it, because they have few ways of checking whether or not you ARE, and actually policing it is counter-productive, for them.
Again, you do not have an absolute right to do with these things what you will, because you do not actually own these things and they are not yours to do with what you will. So far, our simple debate has gone thusly:
Me : You can't do what you want with these things because you do not actually own them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them. Me : Yeah but you don't actually own these things, so you can't do what you want with them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them.
I challenge you to provide clear, sound reasoning as to -why- you should own these things based on factual analysis and empirical reasoning rather than emotional reasoning and theoretical analysis. Unless you can provide this, our simple debate is likely to continue thusly until I get bored and stop replying.
But so long as my agreement with my landlord doesn't mention anything about using the power outlet for piracy, and my public library doesn't mention piracy or illegal downloads in their ToS, then I'm perfectly within my rights to pirate whatever I damn well please. Edit: I'm not saying I should own these things. Never have been, with the internet (could build my own power source if necessary to prove this point). But if it's not mentioned in the contract, then it's fair game.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
:D
And for the record, I don't honestly care anywhere near as much as I've made myself out to. There was a small moment where I was honestly taken aback by the ignorance of the dude I originally quoted, but that's about where my sincere emotional involvement ended. Seriously though, any rational adult that has a) Paid an electric bill and b) Had even the smallest notion of what they were agreeing to would know that you don't own the services you pay for, you pay for the rights to use the services.
You don't own a cabbie and his cab because you commissioned him to drive you somewhere. You commissioned him to drive you somewhere with the understanding that he could tell you to get the fuck out of his car at any moment because you violated any of his fully arbitrary unvocalized conditions that are your end of the bargain in him providing you a service.
Spoiler alert : I'm not actually mad, I'm just being dramatic. It'd be pretty awesome if someone actually got mad enough to SHOUT certain specific words for EMPHASIS, but seeing as this is the internet and I can do it not because of how I'm feeling but because the person I'm directing my message to will actually believe I'm mad, plus it makes me laugh my head off... yeah. Don't believe everything you read (or do, because I probably want you to :D)
Obviously not. But I do own certain physical items, which I can use in any manner I choose.
What, your computer?
Sure, you can use your computer however you choose.
The physical CD that files come on? Heck yeah, cut that thing into a ninja star and see if you can get it to stick into the wall.
The files on the CD? Nope, not really. You paid for the right to access the files but I'm pretty sure there's a stipulation that the files you've been "given" are not to be modified or redistributed without permission of the developer. Same goes for digital copies.
The internet? Nope, right to a service. You may not engage in copyright infringements simply because you think you made a case strong enough to vindicate your actions, because it is not your decision to make. You noted that this was not your decision to make when you agreed to the terms of service your internet service provider displayed to you when you signed the thing that says they could cut off your internet -because they're bored-, much less because you're using it to engage in illegal activities.
Claiming that purchasing a right to a service gives you the right to abuse that service is contradictory. It's something akin to renting a canoe, filling it with dynamite and trying to blow up a cruise liner with it... and expecting the canoe rental company to be totally fine with it because you paid that 80 bucks for the day of what they understood as "using the canoe to canoe around in for a day" and you understood as "Owning a canoe for 24 hours"
Same goes for electricity, though you'd be much harder pressed to find ways to power your electronics maliciously than you would be to use the internet for illegal activities.
I said nothing about distributing. I'm just in the act of acquiring here. My computer, my power source, and my internet so long as it's not prohibited in my contract with my ISP. I should have the absolute right to do what I will with those things, just as I have the absolute right to do what I will with my clothing, or my desk drawer. I'm not saying that I have a right to abuse my property, only that someone else's imaginary property shouldn't be able to control what I do with my property. If that seems to you to be abuse, so be it. To me, it seems like ample justification for the abolition of Intellectual Property.
The point I've been trying to make is exactly that you do not own your power source or your internet in the same way that you own your clothing or your desk drawer. The very obvious difference is that where you do actually own your clothing and your desk drawer, you don't actually own your power source or your internet.
As such, you do not actually get to decide what you do with your power source or your internet, the companies providing that service to you get to decide; Unfortunately (debatable) internet service providers do not currently have the resources to track exactly what everyone is doing while still maintaining a profitable business model. The next-best solution is the honor system, which has you sign something that says "I won't abuse the service being provided to me" and then just trust you to actually not abuse it, because they have few ways of checking whether or not you ARE, and actually policing it is counter-productive, for them.
Again, you do not have an absolute right to do with these things what you will, because you do not actually own these things and they are not yours to do with what you will. So far, our simple debate has gone thusly:
Me : You can't do what you want with these things because you do not actually own them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them. Me : Yeah but you don't actually own these things, so you can't do what you want with them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them.
I challenge you to provide clear, sound reasoning as to -why- you should own these things based on factual analysis and empirical reasoning rather than emotional reasoning and theoretical analysis. Unless you can provide this, our simple debate is likely to continue thusly until I get bored and stop replying.
Finally some sense
I thought for a minute this thread was quickly resembling a communal free-for-all...
On December 02 2011 15:55 Lightwip wrote: "Don't be cheap" is one of the stupidest arguments in existence. No one has enough money to throw it around and waste it. If there's a good way to save money without harming yourself, you will do it.
How about not overspending? I don't buy every good game that comes out. I rent some, I borrow some, I just watch people play some.
It's not so much "don't be cheap", it's "don't be cheap if you have the money, and don't feel you need to spend money you don't have".
There are so many people implying that they only pirate because they legitimately can't afford it. First of all, budgeting out $60 a month isn't an impossible task if you're not in poverty. If you have a PC that can handle the types of games you're pirating, you can afford a game a month. Hell, even $120 is easy on most salaries.
If you actually, seriously can't afford a game, then that still doesn't entitle you to get it anyway. You'll live without games. Use the time you would spend playing pirated games working to get a better job or playing old games you can afford.
"Why should I pay when I can perform a selfish, illegal action for free" is one of the stupidest arguments out there.
You are tragically uneducated in practical applications of economics.
Not overspending? Define overspending. There is literally always more use for money. I could always use the $60 I get here for something else. I could also save said $60 by pirating the game. When it's 2-8 hours worth of a working day saved in money, that is a logical choice. When it's more, it's even more reasonable to "be cheap." It's not about not having the money, it's about not being wasteful when you don't have to be.
$150 million earmarks are chump change for the US government. Problems arise when they add up. Similarly, $60 for a game here and there, a $25 cd, 3 $20 DVD's and you're suddenly up to $225. Who wouldn't want $200 more?
Your last two points also show a terribly narrow-minded world view. What if someone has to steal food or work an illegal job to survive? Is it immoral to immigrate to the United States illegally to be able to live a better life? Is the INS a glorious moral crusade? Both of those actions are selfish and illegal. Does that make it immoral?
You can argue that pirating games and these situations are different. But you'd live without a job in America as a Latin American, right? Why is it important to become better off?
Also, what makes it so immoral to steal from an entity that as a whole behaves as a conniving, greedy, villainous psychopath? That's exactly what a corporation is.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
:D
And for the record, I don't honestly care anywhere near as much as I've made myself out to. There was a small moment where I was honestly taken aback by the ignorance of the dude I originally quoted, but that's about where my sincere emotional involvement ended. Seriously though, any rational adult that has a) Paid an electric bill and b) Had even the smallest notion of what they were agreeing to would know that you don't own the services you pay for, you pay for the rights to use the services.
You don't own a cabbie and his cab because you commissioned him to drive you somewhere. You commissioned him to drive you somewhere with the understanding that he could tell you to get the fuck out of his car at any moment because you violated any of his fully arbitrary unvocalized conditions that are your end of the bargain in him providing you a service.
Spoiler alert : I'm not actually mad, I'm just being dramatic. It'd be pretty awesome if someone actually got mad enough to SHOUT certain specific words for EMPHASIS, but seeing as this is the internet and I can do it not because of how I'm feeling but because the person I'm directing my message to will actually believe I'm mad, plus it makes me laugh my head off... yeah. Don't believe everything you read (or do, because I probably want you to :D)
Obviously not. But I do own certain physical items, which I can use in any manner I choose.
What, your computer?
Sure, you can use your computer however you choose.
The physical CD that files come on? Heck yeah, cut that thing into a ninja star and see if you can get it to stick into the wall.
The files on the CD? Nope, not really. You paid for the right to access the files but I'm pretty sure there's a stipulation that the files you've been "given" are not to be modified or redistributed without permission of the developer. Same goes for digital copies.
The internet? Nope, right to a service. You may not engage in copyright infringements simply because you think you made a case strong enough to vindicate your actions, because it is not your decision to make. You noted that this was not your decision to make when you agreed to the terms of service your internet service provider displayed to you when you signed the thing that says they could cut off your internet -because they're bored-, much less because you're using it to engage in illegal activities.
Claiming that purchasing a right to a service gives you the right to abuse that service is contradictory. It's something akin to renting a canoe, filling it with dynamite and trying to blow up a cruise liner with it... and expecting the canoe rental company to be totally fine with it because you paid that 80 bucks for the day of what they understood as "using the canoe to canoe around in for a day" and you understood as "Owning a canoe for 24 hours"
Same goes for electricity, though you'd be much harder pressed to find ways to power your electronics maliciously than you would be to use the internet for illegal activities.
I said nothing about distributing. I'm just in the act of acquiring here. My computer, my power source, and my internet so long as it's not prohibited in my contract with my ISP. I should have the absolute right to do what I will with those things, just as I have the absolute right to do what I will with my clothing, or my desk drawer. I'm not saying that I have a right to abuse my property, only that someone else's imaginary property shouldn't be able to control what I do with my property. If that seems to you to be abuse, so be it. To me, it seems like ample justification for the abolition of Intellectual Property.
The point I've been trying to make is exactly that you do not own your power source or your internet in the same way that you own your clothing or your desk drawer. The very obvious difference is that where you do actually own your clothing and your desk drawer, you don't actually own your power source or your internet.
As such, you do not actually get to decide what you do with your power source or your internet, the companies providing that service to you get to decide; Unfortunately (debatable) internet service providers do not currently have the resources to track exactly what everyone is doing while still maintaining a profitable business model. The next-best solution is the honor system, which has you sign something that says "I won't abuse the service being provided to me" and then just trust you to actually not abuse it, because they have few ways of checking whether or not you ARE, and actually policing it is counter-productive, for them.
Again, you do not have an absolute right to do with these things what you will, because you do not actually own these things and they are not yours to do with what you will. So far, our simple debate has gone thusly:
Me : You can't do what you want with these things because you do not actually own them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them. Me : Yeah but you don't actually own these things, so you can't do what you want with them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them.
I challenge you to provide clear, sound reasoning as to -why- you should own these things based on factual analysis and empirical reasoning rather than emotional reasoning and theoretical analysis. Unless you can provide this, our simple debate is likely to continue thusly until I get bored and stop replying.
But so long as my agreement with my landlord doesn't mention anything about using the power outlet for piracy, and my public library doesn't mention piracy or illegal downloads in their ToS, then I'm perfectly within my rights to pirate whatever I damn well please.
You're doing it wrong... Sure - upon your birth, you didn't sign a form when you were born agreeing to all US laws... Sadly, you're still not allowed to kill people.
Laws override the fact that you don't know about them. Piracy is illegal - and your best shot was not to pretend it's not the case, your best shot is to explain why your so-called "piracy" is justified. In many cases it isn't - in others, IMO, it is.
Edit: The law is a rigid POS. Sometimes, it's right, sometimes defying it doesn't matter, sometimes defying it the thing to do.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
:D
And for the record, I don't honestly care anywhere near as much as I've made myself out to. There was a small moment where I was honestly taken aback by the ignorance of the dude I originally quoted, but that's about where my sincere emotional involvement ended. Seriously though, any rational adult that has a) Paid an electric bill and b) Had even the smallest notion of what they were agreeing to would know that you don't own the services you pay for, you pay for the rights to use the services.
You don't own a cabbie and his cab because you commissioned him to drive you somewhere. You commissioned him to drive you somewhere with the understanding that he could tell you to get the fuck out of his car at any moment because you violated any of his fully arbitrary unvocalized conditions that are your end of the bargain in him providing you a service.
Spoiler alert : I'm not actually mad, I'm just being dramatic. It'd be pretty awesome if someone actually got mad enough to SHOUT certain specific words for EMPHASIS, but seeing as this is the internet and I can do it not because of how I'm feeling but because the person I'm directing my message to will actually believe I'm mad, plus it makes me laugh my head off... yeah. Don't believe everything you read (or do, because I probably want you to :D)
Obviously not. But I do own certain physical items, which I can use in any manner I choose.
What, your computer?
Sure, you can use your computer however you choose.
The physical CD that files come on? Heck yeah, cut that thing into a ninja star and see if you can get it to stick into the wall.
The files on the CD? Nope, not really. You paid for the right to access the files but I'm pretty sure there's a stipulation that the files you've been "given" are not to be modified or redistributed without permission of the developer. Same goes for digital copies.
The internet? Nope, right to a service. You may not engage in copyright infringements simply because you think you made a case strong enough to vindicate your actions, because it is not your decision to make. You noted that this was not your decision to make when you agreed to the terms of service your internet service provider displayed to you when you signed the thing that says they could cut off your internet -because they're bored-, much less because you're using it to engage in illegal activities.
Claiming that purchasing a right to a service gives you the right to abuse that service is contradictory. It's something akin to renting a canoe, filling it with dynamite and trying to blow up a cruise liner with it... and expecting the canoe rental company to be totally fine with it because you paid that 80 bucks for the day of what they understood as "using the canoe to canoe around in for a day" and you understood as "Owning a canoe for 24 hours"
Same goes for electricity, though you'd be much harder pressed to find ways to power your electronics maliciously than you would be to use the internet for illegal activities.
I said nothing about distributing. I'm just in the act of acquiring here. My computer, my power source, and my internet so long as it's not prohibited in my contract with my ISP. I should have the absolute right to do what I will with those things, just as I have the absolute right to do what I will with my clothing, or my desk drawer. I'm not saying that I have a right to abuse my property, only that someone else's imaginary property shouldn't be able to control what I do with my property. If that seems to you to be abuse, so be it. To me, it seems like ample justification for the abolition of Intellectual Property.
The point I've been trying to make is exactly that you do not own your power source or your internet in the same way that you own your clothing or your desk drawer. The very obvious difference is that where you do actually own your clothing and your desk drawer, you don't actually own your power source or your internet.
As such, you do not actually get to decide what you do with your power source or your internet, the companies providing that service to you get to decide; Unfortunately (debatable) internet service providers do not currently have the resources to track exactly what everyone is doing while still maintaining a profitable business model. The next-best solution is the honor system, which has you sign something that says "I won't abuse the service being provided to me" and then just trust you to actually not abuse it, because they have few ways of checking whether or not you ARE, and actually policing it is counter-productive, for them.
Again, you do not have an absolute right to do with these things what you will, because you do not actually own these things and they are not yours to do with what you will. So far, our simple debate has gone thusly:
Me : You can't do what you want with these things because you do not actually own them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them. Me : Yeah but you don't actually own these things, so you can't do what you want with them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them.
I challenge you to provide clear, sound reasoning as to -why- you should own these things based on factual analysis and empirical reasoning rather than emotional reasoning and theoretical analysis. Unless you can provide this, our simple debate is likely to continue thusly until I get bored and stop replying.
But so long as my agreement with my landlord doesn't mention anything about using the power outlet for piracy, and my public library doesn't mention piracy or illegal downloads in their ToS, then I'm perfectly within my rights to pirate whatever I damn well please. Edit: I'm not saying I should own these things. Never have been, with the internet (could build my own power source if necessary to prove this point). But if it's not mentioned in the contract, then it's fair game.
In general I think we can agree we despise lawyers. They find loopholes in everything to break moral obligation.
Not really sure why you would go down this path of reasoning. Just because it's not written down in a contract doesn't mean you have free reign to do what you want. I guess general decency doesn't factor into your thought process.
Time and again Ive met people both online and in real life that use absolutes to make their points, which factor in nothing of reality. Good entertainment for me nonetheless.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
:D
And for the record, I don't honestly care anywhere near as much as I've made myself out to. There was a small moment where I was honestly taken aback by the ignorance of the dude I originally quoted, but that's about where my sincere emotional involvement ended. Seriously though, any rational adult that has a) Paid an electric bill and b) Had even the smallest notion of what they were agreeing to would know that you don't own the services you pay for, you pay for the rights to use the services.
You don't own a cabbie and his cab because you commissioned him to drive you somewhere. You commissioned him to drive you somewhere with the understanding that he could tell you to get the fuck out of his car at any moment because you violated any of his fully arbitrary unvocalized conditions that are your end of the bargain in him providing you a service.
Spoiler alert : I'm not actually mad, I'm just being dramatic. It'd be pretty awesome if someone actually got mad enough to SHOUT certain specific words for EMPHASIS, but seeing as this is the internet and I can do it not because of how I'm feeling but because the person I'm directing my message to will actually believe I'm mad, plus it makes me laugh my head off... yeah. Don't believe everything you read (or do, because I probably want you to :D)
Obviously not. But I do own certain physical items, which I can use in any manner I choose.
What, your computer?
Sure, you can use your computer however you choose.
The physical CD that files come on? Heck yeah, cut that thing into a ninja star and see if you can get it to stick into the wall.
The files on the CD? Nope, not really. You paid for the right to access the files but I'm pretty sure there's a stipulation that the files you've been "given" are not to be modified or redistributed without permission of the developer. Same goes for digital copies.
The internet? Nope, right to a service. You may not engage in copyright infringements simply because you think you made a case strong enough to vindicate your actions, because it is not your decision to make. You noted that this was not your decision to make when you agreed to the terms of service your internet service provider displayed to you when you signed the thing that says they could cut off your internet -because they're bored-, much less because you're using it to engage in illegal activities.
Claiming that purchasing a right to a service gives you the right to abuse that service is contradictory. It's something akin to renting a canoe, filling it with dynamite and trying to blow up a cruise liner with it... and expecting the canoe rental company to be totally fine with it because you paid that 80 bucks for the day of what they understood as "using the canoe to canoe around in for a day" and you understood as "Owning a canoe for 24 hours"
Same goes for electricity, though you'd be much harder pressed to find ways to power your electronics maliciously than you would be to use the internet for illegal activities.
I said nothing about distributing. I'm just in the act of acquiring here. My computer, my power source, and my internet so long as it's not prohibited in my contract with my ISP. I should have the absolute right to do what I will with those things, just as I have the absolute right to do what I will with my clothing, or my desk drawer. I'm not saying that I have a right to abuse my property, only that someone else's imaginary property shouldn't be able to control what I do with my property. If that seems to you to be abuse, so be it. To me, it seems like ample justification for the abolition of Intellectual Property.
The point I've been trying to make is exactly that you do not own your power source or your internet in the same way that you own your clothing or your desk drawer. The very obvious difference is that where you do actually own your clothing and your desk drawer, you don't actually own your power source or your internet.
As such, you do not actually get to decide what you do with your power source or your internet, the companies providing that service to you get to decide; Unfortunately (debatable) internet service providers do not currently have the resources to track exactly what everyone is doing while still maintaining a profitable business model. The next-best solution is the honor system, which has you sign something that says "I won't abuse the service being provided to me" and then just trust you to actually not abuse it, because they have few ways of checking whether or not you ARE, and actually policing it is counter-productive, for them.
Again, you do not have an absolute right to do with these things what you will, because you do not actually own these things and they are not yours to do with what you will. So far, our simple debate has gone thusly:
Me : You can't do what you want with these things because you do not actually own them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them. Me : Yeah but you don't actually own these things, so you can't do what you want with them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them.
I challenge you to provide clear, sound reasoning as to -why- you should own these things based on factual analysis and empirical reasoning rather than emotional reasoning and theoretical analysis. Unless you can provide this, our simple debate is likely to continue thusly until I get bored and stop replying.
But so long as my agreement with my landlord doesn't mention anything about using the power outlet for piracy, and my public library doesn't mention piracy or illegal downloads in their ToS, then I'm perfectly within my rights to pirate whatever I damn well please.
You're doing it wrong... Sure - upon your birth, you didn't sign a form when you were born agreeing to all US laws... Sadly, you're still not allowed to kill people.
Laws override the fact that you don't know about them. Piracy is illegal - and your best shot was not to pretend it's not the case, your best shot is to explain why your so-called "piracy" is justified. In many cases it isn't - in others, IMO, it is.
My argument is not that it isn't illegal. It is, in all cases. My argument is that Intellectual Property - the basis for all piracy legislation and litigation - is not a legitimate concept, as it infringes on my physical property rights, which ought to be sacrosanct. If intellectual property is non-existant, piracy is perfectly legal.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
:D
And for the record, I don't honestly care anywhere near as much as I've made myself out to. There was a small moment where I was honestly taken aback by the ignorance of the dude I originally quoted, but that's about where my sincere emotional involvement ended. Seriously though, any rational adult that has a) Paid an electric bill and b) Had even the smallest notion of what they were agreeing to would know that you don't own the services you pay for, you pay for the rights to use the services.
You don't own a cabbie and his cab because you commissioned him to drive you somewhere. You commissioned him to drive you somewhere with the understanding that he could tell you to get the fuck out of his car at any moment because you violated any of his fully arbitrary unvocalized conditions that are your end of the bargain in him providing you a service.
Spoiler alert : I'm not actually mad, I'm just being dramatic. It'd be pretty awesome if someone actually got mad enough to SHOUT certain specific words for EMPHASIS, but seeing as this is the internet and I can do it not because of how I'm feeling but because the person I'm directing my message to will actually believe I'm mad, plus it makes me laugh my head off... yeah. Don't believe everything you read (or do, because I probably want you to :D)
Obviously not. But I do own certain physical items, which I can use in any manner I choose.
What, your computer?
Sure, you can use your computer however you choose.
The physical CD that files come on? Heck yeah, cut that thing into a ninja star and see if you can get it to stick into the wall.
The files on the CD? Nope, not really. You paid for the right to access the files but I'm pretty sure there's a stipulation that the files you've been "given" are not to be modified or redistributed without permission of the developer. Same goes for digital copies.
The internet? Nope, right to a service. You may not engage in copyright infringements simply because you think you made a case strong enough to vindicate your actions, because it is not your decision to make. You noted that this was not your decision to make when you agreed to the terms of service your internet service provider displayed to you when you signed the thing that says they could cut off your internet -because they're bored-, much less because you're using it to engage in illegal activities.
Claiming that purchasing a right to a service gives you the right to abuse that service is contradictory. It's something akin to renting a canoe, filling it with dynamite and trying to blow up a cruise liner with it... and expecting the canoe rental company to be totally fine with it because you paid that 80 bucks for the day of what they understood as "using the canoe to canoe around in for a day" and you understood as "Owning a canoe for 24 hours"
Same goes for electricity, though you'd be much harder pressed to find ways to power your electronics maliciously than you would be to use the internet for illegal activities.
I said nothing about distributing. I'm just in the act of acquiring here. My computer, my power source, and my internet so long as it's not prohibited in my contract with my ISP. I should have the absolute right to do what I will with those things, just as I have the absolute right to do what I will with my clothing, or my desk drawer. I'm not saying that I have a right to abuse my property, only that someone else's imaginary property shouldn't be able to control what I do with my property. If that seems to you to be abuse, so be it. To me, it seems like ample justification for the abolition of Intellectual Property.
The point I've been trying to make is exactly that you do not own your power source or your internet in the same way that you own your clothing or your desk drawer. The very obvious difference is that where you do actually own your clothing and your desk drawer, you don't actually own your power source or your internet.
As such, you do not actually get to decide what you do with your power source or your internet, the companies providing that service to you get to decide; Unfortunately (debatable) internet service providers do not currently have the resources to track exactly what everyone is doing while still maintaining a profitable business model. The next-best solution is the honor system, which has you sign something that says "I won't abuse the service being provided to me" and then just trust you to actually not abuse it, because they have few ways of checking whether or not you ARE, and actually policing it is counter-productive, for them.
Again, you do not have an absolute right to do with these things what you will, because you do not actually own these things and they are not yours to do with what you will. So far, our simple debate has gone thusly:
Me : You can't do what you want with these things because you do not actually own them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them. Me : Yeah but you don't actually own these things, so you can't do what you want with them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them.
I challenge you to provide clear, sound reasoning as to -why- you should own these things based on factual analysis and empirical reasoning rather than emotional reasoning and theoretical analysis. Unless you can provide this, our simple debate is likely to continue thusly until I get bored and stop replying.
But so long as my agreement with my landlord doesn't mention anything about using the power outlet for piracy, and my public library doesn't mention piracy or illegal downloads in their ToS, then I'm perfectly within my rights to pirate whatever I damn well please. Edit: I'm not saying I should own these things. Never have been, with the internet (could build my own power source if necessary to prove this point). But if it's not mentioned in the contract, then it's fair game.
I've never signed anything that says I shouldn't follow you around and piss on you every chance I get. It's my bladder, my urine, and my stream.
On December 02 2011 15:40 Lightwip wrote: I pirate things, albeit infrequently. I live in the United States, so I can't say I can't afford games; I have plenty of money. The reason I do it is because I want free stuff. Who doesn't? But here's the question: why not do it? I don't have any moral obligation to support massive gaming corporations that will be fine without my money. I'd rather be $60 richer. If there's a good reason to buy a product rather than pirate it, I will. That's why I don't pirate DS games etc. But if I can get a comparable or better experience for free, why would I bother paying? This is a situation very similar to evolution. If organism A is a parasite to organism B, both will evolve in a way that will harm the other. If they had a mutualist relationship, they would work to gain more benefit out of supporting the other. Corporations making DRM's is like a parasitic relationship between them and consumers/pirates. Instead of making things worse for everyone, the gaming/movie/music companies need to make the bought product worth buying instead of pirating. Then the problem will become negligible as far as money lost goes.
As for indie games, I sure as hell wouldn't want a DRM-ridden infestation of a game. The fame gained from more people playing it is probably worth more.
In much the same way I have no moral obligation to not smash in your front door, share your family, use your computer and shit in your toilet.
Why do I care if I can get it for free? I don't want to spend money on a computer, a house or a toilet.
It's funny because it's YOU that's the parasite in this equation.
I don't really want to hear about how you feel these guys may or may not rip you off for what they deliver. If you take offence to the cost of these games then DONT BUY IT. You are not entitled to things that are not yours...or are you somewhat special? With your suspect moral compass I highly doubt it.
You are constrained by practical considerations. Perhaps you have no moral obligations. However, I have no reason not to call the police and have you arrested, which is an almost certain negative consequence of taking my stuff. If I were likely to get in trouble for piracy, I wouldn't do it. Simple as that. Also, pirated goods are pretty nonrival, but a house is. Horrible comparison.
On December 02 2011 15:22 Djzapz wrote: [quote] Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
:D
And for the record, I don't honestly care anywhere near as much as I've made myself out to. There was a small moment where I was honestly taken aback by the ignorance of the dude I originally quoted, but that's about where my sincere emotional involvement ended. Seriously though, any rational adult that has a) Paid an electric bill and b) Had even the smallest notion of what they were agreeing to would know that you don't own the services you pay for, you pay for the rights to use the services.
You don't own a cabbie and his cab because you commissioned him to drive you somewhere. You commissioned him to drive you somewhere with the understanding that he could tell you to get the fuck out of his car at any moment because you violated any of his fully arbitrary unvocalized conditions that are your end of the bargain in him providing you a service.
Spoiler alert : I'm not actually mad, I'm just being dramatic. It'd be pretty awesome if someone actually got mad enough to SHOUT certain specific words for EMPHASIS, but seeing as this is the internet and I can do it not because of how I'm feeling but because the person I'm directing my message to will actually believe I'm mad, plus it makes me laugh my head off... yeah. Don't believe everything you read (or do, because I probably want you to :D)
Obviously not. But I do own certain physical items, which I can use in any manner I choose.
What, your computer?
Sure, you can use your computer however you choose.
The physical CD that files come on? Heck yeah, cut that thing into a ninja star and see if you can get it to stick into the wall.
The files on the CD? Nope, not really. You paid for the right to access the files but I'm pretty sure there's a stipulation that the files you've been "given" are not to be modified or redistributed without permission of the developer. Same goes for digital copies.
The internet? Nope, right to a service. You may not engage in copyright infringements simply because you think you made a case strong enough to vindicate your actions, because it is not your decision to make. You noted that this was not your decision to make when you agreed to the terms of service your internet service provider displayed to you when you signed the thing that says they could cut off your internet -because they're bored-, much less because you're using it to engage in illegal activities.
Claiming that purchasing a right to a service gives you the right to abuse that service is contradictory. It's something akin to renting a canoe, filling it with dynamite and trying to blow up a cruise liner with it... and expecting the canoe rental company to be totally fine with it because you paid that 80 bucks for the day of what they understood as "using the canoe to canoe around in for a day" and you understood as "Owning a canoe for 24 hours"
Same goes for electricity, though you'd be much harder pressed to find ways to power your electronics maliciously than you would be to use the internet for illegal activities.
I said nothing about distributing. I'm just in the act of acquiring here. My computer, my power source, and my internet so long as it's not prohibited in my contract with my ISP. I should have the absolute right to do what I will with those things, just as I have the absolute right to do what I will with my clothing, or my desk drawer. I'm not saying that I have a right to abuse my property, only that someone else's imaginary property shouldn't be able to control what I do with my property. If that seems to you to be abuse, so be it. To me, it seems like ample justification for the abolition of Intellectual Property.
The point I've been trying to make is exactly that you do not own your power source or your internet in the same way that you own your clothing or your desk drawer. The very obvious difference is that where you do actually own your clothing and your desk drawer, you don't actually own your power source or your internet.
As such, you do not actually get to decide what you do with your power source or your internet, the companies providing that service to you get to decide; Unfortunately (debatable) internet service providers do not currently have the resources to track exactly what everyone is doing while still maintaining a profitable business model. The next-best solution is the honor system, which has you sign something that says "I won't abuse the service being provided to me" and then just trust you to actually not abuse it, because they have few ways of checking whether or not you ARE, and actually policing it is counter-productive, for them.
Again, you do not have an absolute right to do with these things what you will, because you do not actually own these things and they are not yours to do with what you will. So far, our simple debate has gone thusly:
Me : You can't do what you want with these things because you do not actually own them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them. Me : Yeah but you don't actually own these things, so you can't do what you want with them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them.
I challenge you to provide clear, sound reasoning as to -why- you should own these things based on factual analysis and empirical reasoning rather than emotional reasoning and theoretical analysis. Unless you can provide this, our simple debate is likely to continue thusly until I get bored and stop replying.
But so long as my agreement with my landlord doesn't mention anything about using the power outlet for piracy, and my public library doesn't mention piracy or illegal downloads in their ToS, then I'm perfectly within my rights to pirate whatever I damn well please.
You're doing it wrong... Sure - upon your birth, you didn't sign a form when you were born agreeing to all US laws... Sadly, you're still not allowed to kill people.
Laws override the fact that you don't know about them. Piracy is illegal - and your best shot was not to pretend it's not the case, your best shot is to explain why your so-called "piracy" is justified. In many cases it isn't - in others, IMO, it is.
My argument is not that it isn't illegal. It is, in all cases. My argument is that Intellectual Property - the basis for all piracy legislation and litigation - is not a legitimate concept, as it infringes on my physical property rights, which ought to be sacrosanct. If intellectual property is non-existant, piracy is perfectly legal.
Yeah I don't know about that Anyway going to bed since most people don't bother answering my more "difficult" questions... =P Cheers people. Note: Turns my Usenet usage is perfectly legal in Canada =D
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
:D
And for the record, I don't honestly care anywhere near as much as I've made myself out to. There was a small moment where I was honestly taken aback by the ignorance of the dude I originally quoted, but that's about where my sincere emotional involvement ended. Seriously though, any rational adult that has a) Paid an electric bill and b) Had even the smallest notion of what they were agreeing to would know that you don't own the services you pay for, you pay for the rights to use the services.
You don't own a cabbie and his cab because you commissioned him to drive you somewhere. You commissioned him to drive you somewhere with the understanding that he could tell you to get the fuck out of his car at any moment because you violated any of his fully arbitrary unvocalized conditions that are your end of the bargain in him providing you a service.
Spoiler alert : I'm not actually mad, I'm just being dramatic. It'd be pretty awesome if someone actually got mad enough to SHOUT certain specific words for EMPHASIS, but seeing as this is the internet and I can do it not because of how I'm feeling but because the person I'm directing my message to will actually believe I'm mad, plus it makes me laugh my head off... yeah. Don't believe everything you read (or do, because I probably want you to :D)
Obviously not. But I do own certain physical items, which I can use in any manner I choose.
What, your computer?
Sure, you can use your computer however you choose.
The physical CD that files come on? Heck yeah, cut that thing into a ninja star and see if you can get it to stick into the wall.
The files on the CD? Nope, not really. You paid for the right to access the files but I'm pretty sure there's a stipulation that the files you've been "given" are not to be modified or redistributed without permission of the developer. Same goes for digital copies.
The internet? Nope, right to a service. You may not engage in copyright infringements simply because you think you made a case strong enough to vindicate your actions, because it is not your decision to make. You noted that this was not your decision to make when you agreed to the terms of service your internet service provider displayed to you when you signed the thing that says they could cut off your internet -because they're bored-, much less because you're using it to engage in illegal activities.
Claiming that purchasing a right to a service gives you the right to abuse that service is contradictory. It's something akin to renting a canoe, filling it with dynamite and trying to blow up a cruise liner with it... and expecting the canoe rental company to be totally fine with it because you paid that 80 bucks for the day of what they understood as "using the canoe to canoe around in for a day" and you understood as "Owning a canoe for 24 hours"
Same goes for electricity, though you'd be much harder pressed to find ways to power your electronics maliciously than you would be to use the internet for illegal activities.
I said nothing about distributing. I'm just in the act of acquiring here. My computer, my power source, and my internet so long as it's not prohibited in my contract with my ISP. I should have the absolute right to do what I will with those things, just as I have the absolute right to do what I will with my clothing, or my desk drawer. I'm not saying that I have a right to abuse my property, only that someone else's imaginary property shouldn't be able to control what I do with my property. If that seems to you to be abuse, so be it. To me, it seems like ample justification for the abolition of Intellectual Property.
The point I've been trying to make is exactly that you do not own your power source or your internet in the same way that you own your clothing or your desk drawer. The very obvious difference is that where you do actually own your clothing and your desk drawer, you don't actually own your power source or your internet.
As such, you do not actually get to decide what you do with your power source or your internet, the companies providing that service to you get to decide; Unfortunately (debatable) internet service providers do not currently have the resources to track exactly what everyone is doing while still maintaining a profitable business model. The next-best solution is the honor system, which has you sign something that says "I won't abuse the service being provided to me" and then just trust you to actually not abuse it, because they have few ways of checking whether or not you ARE, and actually policing it is counter-productive, for them.
Again, you do not have an absolute right to do with these things what you will, because you do not actually own these things and they are not yours to do with what you will. So far, our simple debate has gone thusly:
Me : You can't do what you want with these things because you do not actually own them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them. Me : Yeah but you don't actually own these things, so you can't do what you want with them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them.
I challenge you to provide clear, sound reasoning as to -why- you should own these things based on factual analysis and empirical reasoning rather than emotional reasoning and theoretical analysis. Unless you can provide this, our simple debate is likely to continue thusly until I get bored and stop replying.
But so long as my agreement with my landlord doesn't mention anything about using the power outlet for piracy, and my public library doesn't mention piracy or illegal downloads in their ToS, then I'm perfectly within my rights to pirate whatever I damn well please. Edit: I'm not saying I should own these things. Never have been, with the internet (could build my own power source if necessary to prove this point). But if it's not mentioned in the contract, then it's fair game.
In general I think we can agree we despise lawyers. They find loopholes in everything to break moral obligation.
Not really sure why you would go down this path of reasoning. Just because it's not written down in a contract doesn't mean you have free reign to do what you want. I guess general decency doesn't factor into your thought process.
Time and again Ive met people both online and in real life that use absolutes to make their points, which factor in nothing of reality. Good entertainment for me nonetheless.
Because I'm tired of seeing pirates give half truths and partial justifications for their actions. Unless you break down the concept which establishes piracy (as separate from the sharing of ideas), there's no way to justify the action.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
:D
And for the record, I don't honestly care anywhere near as much as I've made myself out to. There was a small moment where I was honestly taken aback by the ignorance of the dude I originally quoted, but that's about where my sincere emotional involvement ended. Seriously though, any rational adult that has a) Paid an electric bill and b) Had even the smallest notion of what they were agreeing to would know that you don't own the services you pay for, you pay for the rights to use the services.
You don't own a cabbie and his cab because you commissioned him to drive you somewhere. You commissioned him to drive you somewhere with the understanding that he could tell you to get the fuck out of his car at any moment because you violated any of his fully arbitrary unvocalized conditions that are your end of the bargain in him providing you a service.
Spoiler alert : I'm not actually mad, I'm just being dramatic. It'd be pretty awesome if someone actually got mad enough to SHOUT certain specific words for EMPHASIS, but seeing as this is the internet and I can do it not because of how I'm feeling but because the person I'm directing my message to will actually believe I'm mad, plus it makes me laugh my head off... yeah. Don't believe everything you read (or do, because I probably want you to :D)
Obviously not. But I do own certain physical items, which I can use in any manner I choose.
What, your computer?
Sure, you can use your computer however you choose.
The physical CD that files come on? Heck yeah, cut that thing into a ninja star and see if you can get it to stick into the wall.
The files on the CD? Nope, not really. You paid for the right to access the files but I'm pretty sure there's a stipulation that the files you've been "given" are not to be modified or redistributed without permission of the developer. Same goes for digital copies.
The internet? Nope, right to a service. You may not engage in copyright infringements simply because you think you made a case strong enough to vindicate your actions, because it is not your decision to make. You noted that this was not your decision to make when you agreed to the terms of service your internet service provider displayed to you when you signed the thing that says they could cut off your internet -because they're bored-, much less because you're using it to engage in illegal activities.
Claiming that purchasing a right to a service gives you the right to abuse that service is contradictory. It's something akin to renting a canoe, filling it with dynamite and trying to blow up a cruise liner with it... and expecting the canoe rental company to be totally fine with it because you paid that 80 bucks for the day of what they understood as "using the canoe to canoe around in for a day" and you understood as "Owning a canoe for 24 hours"
Same goes for electricity, though you'd be much harder pressed to find ways to power your electronics maliciously than you would be to use the internet for illegal activities.
I said nothing about distributing. I'm just in the act of acquiring here. My computer, my power source, and my internet so long as it's not prohibited in my contract with my ISP. I should have the absolute right to do what I will with those things, just as I have the absolute right to do what I will with my clothing, or my desk drawer. I'm not saying that I have a right to abuse my property, only that someone else's imaginary property shouldn't be able to control what I do with my property. If that seems to you to be abuse, so be it. To me, it seems like ample justification for the abolition of Intellectual Property.
The point I've been trying to make is exactly that you do not own your power source or your internet in the same way that you own your clothing or your desk drawer. The very obvious difference is that where you do actually own your clothing and your desk drawer, you don't actually own your power source or your internet.
As such, you do not actually get to decide what you do with your power source or your internet, the companies providing that service to you get to decide; Unfortunately (debatable) internet service providers do not currently have the resources to track exactly what everyone is doing while still maintaining a profitable business model. The next-best solution is the honor system, which has you sign something that says "I won't abuse the service being provided to me" and then just trust you to actually not abuse it, because they have few ways of checking whether or not you ARE, and actually policing it is counter-productive, for them.
Again, you do not have an absolute right to do with these things what you will, because you do not actually own these things and they are not yours to do with what you will. So far, our simple debate has gone thusly:
Me : You can't do what you want with these things because you do not actually own them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them. Me : Yeah but you don't actually own these things, so you can't do what you want with them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them.
I challenge you to provide clear, sound reasoning as to -why- you should own these things based on factual analysis and empirical reasoning rather than emotional reasoning and theoretical analysis. Unless you can provide this, our simple debate is likely to continue thusly until I get bored and stop replying.
But so long as my agreement with my landlord doesn't mention anything about using the power outlet for piracy, and my public library doesn't mention piracy or illegal downloads in their ToS, then I'm perfectly within my rights to pirate whatever I damn well please. Edit: I'm not saying I should own these things. Never have been, with the internet (could build my own power source if necessary to prove this point). But if it's not mentioned in the contract, then it's fair game.
Yeah, totally. You find a library that has no restrictions about what you are and aren't allowed to use their internet connection for AND has an internet connection that they've got based on the same "do whatever, no worries!" principle... then yeah, go nuts.
...but that -shouldn't- exist. And not even from a moral sense, but in the sense of companies covering their own asses. A library will have a "You can't use the internet for illegal activities" clause in their terms not because they care, but because An ISP will have a "You can't use the internet for illegal activities" clause in their terms not because they care, but because Copyright infringement and illegal activities are illegal.
You could offer a hypothetical situation where both an ISP and a library are providing you with a service that you can use for whatever you please, but all that really would be doing is shifting the blame to themselves rather than you, because at the very base of it all it is STILL ILLEGAL. Sure, -you- wouldn't be doing anything illegal (the blame would be on the ISP / library for allowing you to) but the fact that something illegal is still being done is the point in itself.
And to pre-emptively refute your claim of "Well I don't respect Intellectual Property so it isn't illegal"...
It comes back to the same theme. It's always felt really strange to me, but by living in the country that you live in you agree to abide by the rules that that country has laid out for you. It is not your DECISION to respect IP because you do not OWN your country, it is the decision of the country and you must respect their decision because you choose to live there. If you do not respect the country's decision, you must, by law, face the consequences of not respecting the "Terms of service" that your country involuntarily forced you to sign by mere fact of your existence (lolol countries r mean :D).
Ultimately you are only free within your country to be a unique individual and do whatever you want within the confines of morality and fairness laid out by the country you live in. If this were not the case, there are people who would have solved this long, drawn out argument simply by killing anyone who opposed them. Though anarchy is often a glorified theme, it doesn't actually sound that pleasant, to me.
On December 02 2011 15:55 Lightwip wrote: "Don't be cheap" is one of the stupidest arguments in existence. No one has enough money to throw it around and waste it. If there's a good way to save money without harming yourself, you will do it.
How about not overspending? I don't buy every good game that comes out. I rent some, I borrow some, I just watch people play some.
It's not so much "don't be cheap", it's "don't be cheap if you have the money, and don't feel you need to spend money you don't have".
There are so many people implying that they only pirate because they legitimately can't afford it. First of all, budgeting out $60 a month isn't an impossible task if you're not in poverty. If you have a PC that can handle the types of games you're pirating, you can afford a game a month. Hell, even $120 is easy on most salaries.
If you actually, seriously can't afford a game, then that still doesn't entitle you to get it anyway. You'll live without games. Use the time you would spend playing pirated games working to get a better job or playing old games you can afford.
"Why should I pay when I can perform a selfish, illegal action for free" is one of the stupidest arguments out there.
You are tragically uneducated in practical applications of economics.
Not overspending? Define overspending. There is literally always more use for money. I could always use the $60 I get here for something else. I could also save said $60 by pirating the game. When it's 2-8 hours worth of a working day saved in money, that is a logical choice. When it's more, it's even more reasonable to "be cheap." It's not about not having the money, it's about not being wasteful when you don't have to be.
$150 million earmarks are chump change for the US government. Problems arise when they add up. Similarly, $60 for a game here and there, a $25 cd, 3 $20 DVD's and you're suddenly up to $225. Who wouldn't want $200 more?
Your last two points also show a terribly narrow-minded world view. What if someone has to steal food or work an illegal job to survive? Is it immoral to immigrate to the United States illegally to be able to live a better life? Is the INS a glorious moral crusade? Both of those actions are selfish and illegal. Does that make it immoral?
You can argue that pirating games and these situations are different. But you'd live without a job in America as a Latin American, right? Why is it important to become better off?
Also, what makes it so immoral to steal from an entity that as a whole behaves as a conniving, greedy, villainous psychopath? That's exactly what a corporation is.
Overspending isn't that difficult of a concept. Maybe 1 good AAA game comes out a month. You probably don't want every single one, so maybe a full priced game every 2 months. Maybe an old game or pre-owned game or two every month. That's like, $60 a month for enough entertainment.
You're also using the argument "who cares if it's illegal as long as it's better for me?" Well, it's still illegal. You are committing an illegal act. So there's that.
Are you insinuating that video games are in any way the same as food, shelter, or a job? Talk about bad logic. You can survive without games, you don't need to pirate and steal shit to stay alive. No one is forcing you to pirate, you won't have a seizure if you don't play games. There's a difference between entertainment and self-preservation.
If you see all corporations like that, you're missing the people who hold it up. I'm sure the guy who programmed the /dance for Zerglings really goes home and murders puppies for fun.
No, they're built on people who have jobs, who don't get paid as much as they would in the corporate sector, who make games because they like it. Game developers, artists, and programmers make a fraction of what they could if they took their skills outside the game industry. Those are the people you're taking money away from. Good job.
Society is changing (nothing new here, this has always been the case) Internet for the common man is what? - maybe 10 years old (in Sweden most people have had access to internet for approx 10 years)
Now, people are *really* starting to use it for the first time, since changes in society takes a lot of time (but now my whole family is using internet). It is *now* that the real changes in society are taking place. It is now that the laws will not be able to keep up with these changes, since they happen very quickly.
But lets take a step backwards, look at Radio, the legal system have always been something that changes slowly (and indeed this is good). But we must of course realise that the changes in society must lead to changes in our legal system, since our legal system should be a codification of our society. Radio was introduced many years ago, but as Radio come to change society (and in time came to change legal system as well), so will Internet come to change society (and our legal system).
The question is how do you want our society to look like for your children?
Piracy isn't an issue. It's just media corporations pricing themselves out of the market. The fact of the matter is digital intellectual property has an overly inflated price due to the previous distribution monopoly they had during the 20th century. The way I see it, they can drop their prices or adopt new business models (as many companies already have, such as Steam and Spotify etc). I see piracy as a legitimate socialist movement, much like Occupy Wallstreet. Right now the system (copyright law, DMCA, the whole recording and film industries) is set up to favour the profits of a very, very small percentage of media producers.
On December 02 2011 15:40 Lightwip wrote: I pirate things, albeit infrequently. I live in the United States, so I can't say I can't afford games; I have plenty of money. The reason I do it is because I want free stuff. Who doesn't? But here's the question: why not do it? I don't have any moral obligation to support massive gaming corporations that will be fine without my money. I'd rather be $60 richer. If there's a good reason to buy a product rather than pirate it, I will. That's why I don't pirate DS games etc. But if I can get a comparable or better experience for free, why would I bother paying? This is a situation very similar to evolution. If organism A is a parasite to organism B, both will evolve in a way that will harm the other. If they had a mutualist relationship, they would work to gain more benefit out of supporting the other. Corporations making DRM's is like a parasitic relationship between them and consumers/pirates. Instead of making things worse for everyone, the gaming/movie/music companies need to make the bought product worth buying instead of pirating. Then the problem will become negligible as far as money lost goes.
As for indie games, I sure as hell wouldn't want a DRM-ridden infestation of a game. The fame gained from more people playing it is probably worth more.
In much the same way I have no moral obligation to not smash in your front door, share your family, use your computer and shit in your toilet.
Why do I care if I can get it for free? I don't want to spend money on a computer, a house or a toilet.
It's funny because it's YOU that's the parasite in this equation.
I don't really want to hear about how you feel these guys may or may not rip you off for what they deliver. If you take offence to the cost of these games then DONT BUY IT. You are not entitled to things that are not yours...or are you somewhat special? With your suspect moral compass I highly doubt it.
You are constrained by practical considerations. Perhaps you have no moral obligations. However, I have no reason not to call the police and have you arrested, which is an almost certain negative consequence of taking my stuff. If I were likely to get in trouble for piracy, I wouldn't do it. Simple as that. Also, pirated goods are pretty nonrival, but a house is. Horrible comparison.
So you pirate things that are not yours because you dont fear arrest from it? So in essence you are saying anything that wont land you in a pile of shit you have no moral obligation to think twice about doing. I guess this is why this world is so fucked up.
Thing I love most is that you kick off your post with "You are constrained by practical considerations". I'm sorry. I didnt know abstract madness/nonsense was what progressed the human race.
On December 02 2011 15:20 Staboteur wrote: Yes, Imad, but at least I'm not functionally retarded.
Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
:D
And for the record, I don't honestly care anywhere near as much as I've made myself out to. There was a small moment where I was honestly taken aback by the ignorance of the dude I originally quoted, but that's about where my sincere emotional involvement ended. Seriously though, any rational adult that has a) Paid an electric bill and b) Had even the smallest notion of what they were agreeing to would know that you don't own the services you pay for, you pay for the rights to use the services.
You don't own a cabbie and his cab because you commissioned him to drive you somewhere. You commissioned him to drive you somewhere with the understanding that he could tell you to get the fuck out of his car at any moment because you violated any of his fully arbitrary unvocalized conditions that are your end of the bargain in him providing you a service.
Spoiler alert : I'm not actually mad, I'm just being dramatic. It'd be pretty awesome if someone actually got mad enough to SHOUT certain specific words for EMPHASIS, but seeing as this is the internet and I can do it not because of how I'm feeling but because the person I'm directing my message to will actually believe I'm mad, plus it makes me laugh my head off... yeah. Don't believe everything you read (or do, because I probably want you to :D)
Obviously not. But I do own certain physical items, which I can use in any manner I choose.
What, your computer?
Sure, you can use your computer however you choose.
The physical CD that files come on? Heck yeah, cut that thing into a ninja star and see if you can get it to stick into the wall.
The files on the CD? Nope, not really. You paid for the right to access the files but I'm pretty sure there's a stipulation that the files you've been "given" are not to be modified or redistributed without permission of the developer. Same goes for digital copies.
The internet? Nope, right to a service. You may not engage in copyright infringements simply because you think you made a case strong enough to vindicate your actions, because it is not your decision to make. You noted that this was not your decision to make when you agreed to the terms of service your internet service provider displayed to you when you signed the thing that says they could cut off your internet -because they're bored-, much less because you're using it to engage in illegal activities.
Claiming that purchasing a right to a service gives you the right to abuse that service is contradictory. It's something akin to renting a canoe, filling it with dynamite and trying to blow up a cruise liner with it... and expecting the canoe rental company to be totally fine with it because you paid that 80 bucks for the day of what they understood as "using the canoe to canoe around in for a day" and you understood as "Owning a canoe for 24 hours"
Same goes for electricity, though you'd be much harder pressed to find ways to power your electronics maliciously than you would be to use the internet for illegal activities.
I said nothing about distributing. I'm just in the act of acquiring here. My computer, my power source, and my internet so long as it's not prohibited in my contract with my ISP. I should have the absolute right to do what I will with those things, just as I have the absolute right to do what I will with my clothing, or my desk drawer. I'm not saying that I have a right to abuse my property, only that someone else's imaginary property shouldn't be able to control what I do with my property. If that seems to you to be abuse, so be it. To me, it seems like ample justification for the abolition of Intellectual Property.
The point I've been trying to make is exactly that you do not own your power source or your internet in the same way that you own your clothing or your desk drawer. The very obvious difference is that where you do actually own your clothing and your desk drawer, you don't actually own your power source or your internet.
As such, you do not actually get to decide what you do with your power source or your internet, the companies providing that service to you get to decide; Unfortunately (debatable) internet service providers do not currently have the resources to track exactly what everyone is doing while still maintaining a profitable business model. The next-best solution is the honor system, which has you sign something that says "I won't abuse the service being provided to me" and then just trust you to actually not abuse it, because they have few ways of checking whether or not you ARE, and actually policing it is counter-productive, for them.
Again, you do not have an absolute right to do with these things what you will, because you do not actually own these things and they are not yours to do with what you will. So far, our simple debate has gone thusly:
Me : You can't do what you want with these things because you do not actually own them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them. Me : Yeah but you don't actually own these things, so you can't do what you want with them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them.
I challenge you to provide clear, sound reasoning as to -why- you should own these things based on factual analysis and empirical reasoning rather than emotional reasoning and theoretical analysis. Unless you can provide this, our simple debate is likely to continue thusly until I get bored and stop replying.
But so long as my agreement with my landlord doesn't mention anything about using the power outlet for piracy, and my public library doesn't mention piracy or illegal downloads in their ToS, then I'm perfectly within my rights to pirate whatever I damn well please. Edit: I'm not saying I should own these things. Never have been, with the internet (could build my own power source if necessary to prove this point). But if it's not mentioned in the contract, then it's fair game.
Yeah, totally. You find a library that has no restrictions about what you are and aren't allowed to use their internet connection for AND has an internet connection that they've got based on the same "do whatever, no worries!" principle... then yeah, go nuts.
...but that -shouldn't- exist. And not even from a moral sense, but in the sense of companies covering their own asses. A library will have a "You can't use the internet for illegal activities" clause in their terms not because they care, but because An ISP will have a "You can't use the internet for illegal activities" clause in their terms not because they care, but because Copyright infringement and illegal activities are illegal.
You could offer a hypothetical situation where both an ISP and a library are providing you with a service that you can use for whatever you please, but all that really would be doing is shifting the blame to themselves rather than you, because at the very base of it all it is STILL ILLEGAL. Sure, -you- wouldn't be doing anything illegal (the blame would be on the ISP / library for allowing you to) but the fact that something illegal is still being done is the point in itself.
And to pre-emptively refute your claim of "Well I don't respect Intellectual Property so it isn't illegal"...
It comes back to the same theme. It's always felt really strange to me, but by living in the country that you live in you agree to abide by the rules that that country has laid out for you. It is not your DECISION to respect IP because you do not OWN your country, it is the decision of the country and you must respect their decision because you choose to live there. If you do not respect the country's decision, you must, by law, face the consequences of not respecting the "Terms of service" that your country involuntarily forced you to sign by mere fact of your existence (lolol countries r mean :D).
Ultimately you are only free within your country to be a unique individual and do whatever you want within the confines of morality and fairness laid out by the country you live in. If this were not the case, there are people who would have solved this long, drawn out argument simply by killing anyone who opposed them. Though anarchy is often a glorified theme, it doesn't actually sound that pleasant, to me.
Nah, that's not where it would go. This argument is the argument for why IP shouldn't exist, not why I should pirate stuff (I don't, really, you may be surprised. Once or twice for hard to find songs). IP shouldn't exist because it prevents me from using those services to do what I want. It's better in it's less technical form (say balsa wood and a dollhouse, or chemicals and a drug), but it's still applicable.
On December 02 2011 15:22 Djzapz wrote: [quote] Man, you may be fine functionally, but...
Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
:D
And for the record, I don't honestly care anywhere near as much as I've made myself out to. There was a small moment where I was honestly taken aback by the ignorance of the dude I originally quoted, but that's about where my sincere emotional involvement ended. Seriously though, any rational adult that has a) Paid an electric bill and b) Had even the smallest notion of what they were agreeing to would know that you don't own the services you pay for, you pay for the rights to use the services.
You don't own a cabbie and his cab because you commissioned him to drive you somewhere. You commissioned him to drive you somewhere with the understanding that he could tell you to get the fuck out of his car at any moment because you violated any of his fully arbitrary unvocalized conditions that are your end of the bargain in him providing you a service.
Spoiler alert : I'm not actually mad, I'm just being dramatic. It'd be pretty awesome if someone actually got mad enough to SHOUT certain specific words for EMPHASIS, but seeing as this is the internet and I can do it not because of how I'm feeling but because the person I'm directing my message to will actually believe I'm mad, plus it makes me laugh my head off... yeah. Don't believe everything you read (or do, because I probably want you to :D)
Obviously not. But I do own certain physical items, which I can use in any manner I choose.
What, your computer?
Sure, you can use your computer however you choose.
The physical CD that files come on? Heck yeah, cut that thing into a ninja star and see if you can get it to stick into the wall.
The files on the CD? Nope, not really. You paid for the right to access the files but I'm pretty sure there's a stipulation that the files you've been "given" are not to be modified or redistributed without permission of the developer. Same goes for digital copies.
The internet? Nope, right to a service. You may not engage in copyright infringements simply because you think you made a case strong enough to vindicate your actions, because it is not your decision to make. You noted that this was not your decision to make when you agreed to the terms of service your internet service provider displayed to you when you signed the thing that says they could cut off your internet -because they're bored-, much less because you're using it to engage in illegal activities.
Claiming that purchasing a right to a service gives you the right to abuse that service is contradictory. It's something akin to renting a canoe, filling it with dynamite and trying to blow up a cruise liner with it... and expecting the canoe rental company to be totally fine with it because you paid that 80 bucks for the day of what they understood as "using the canoe to canoe around in for a day" and you understood as "Owning a canoe for 24 hours"
Same goes for electricity, though you'd be much harder pressed to find ways to power your electronics maliciously than you would be to use the internet for illegal activities.
I said nothing about distributing. I'm just in the act of acquiring here. My computer, my power source, and my internet so long as it's not prohibited in my contract with my ISP. I should have the absolute right to do what I will with those things, just as I have the absolute right to do what I will with my clothing, or my desk drawer. I'm not saying that I have a right to abuse my property, only that someone else's imaginary property shouldn't be able to control what I do with my property. If that seems to you to be abuse, so be it. To me, it seems like ample justification for the abolition of Intellectual Property.
The point I've been trying to make is exactly that you do not own your power source or your internet in the same way that you own your clothing or your desk drawer. The very obvious difference is that where you do actually own your clothing and your desk drawer, you don't actually own your power source or your internet.
As such, you do not actually get to decide what you do with your power source or your internet, the companies providing that service to you get to decide; Unfortunately (debatable) internet service providers do not currently have the resources to track exactly what everyone is doing while still maintaining a profitable business model. The next-best solution is the honor system, which has you sign something that says "I won't abuse the service being provided to me" and then just trust you to actually not abuse it, because they have few ways of checking whether or not you ARE, and actually policing it is counter-productive, for them.
Again, you do not have an absolute right to do with these things what you will, because you do not actually own these things and they are not yours to do with what you will. So far, our simple debate has gone thusly:
Me : You can't do what you want with these things because you do not actually own them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them. Me : Yeah but you don't actually own these things, so you can't do what you want with them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them.
I challenge you to provide clear, sound reasoning as to -why- you should own these things based on factual analysis and empirical reasoning rather than emotional reasoning and theoretical analysis. Unless you can provide this, our simple debate is likely to continue thusly until I get bored and stop replying.
But so long as my agreement with my landlord doesn't mention anything about using the power outlet for piracy, and my public library doesn't mention piracy or illegal downloads in their ToS, then I'm perfectly within my rights to pirate whatever I damn well please. Edit: I'm not saying I should own these things. Never have been, with the internet (could build my own power source if necessary to prove this point). But if it's not mentioned in the contract, then it's fair game.
Yeah, totally. You find a library that has no restrictions about what you are and aren't allowed to use their internet connection for AND has an internet connection that they've got based on the same "do whatever, no worries!" principle... then yeah, go nuts.
...but that -shouldn't- exist. And not even from a moral sense, but in the sense of companies covering their own asses. A library will have a "You can't use the internet for illegal activities" clause in their terms not because they care, but because An ISP will have a "You can't use the internet for illegal activities" clause in their terms not because they care, but because Copyright infringement and illegal activities are illegal.
You could offer a hypothetical situation where both an ISP and a library are providing you with a service that you can use for whatever you please, but all that really would be doing is shifting the blame to themselves rather than you, because at the very base of it all it is STILL ILLEGAL. Sure, -you- wouldn't be doing anything illegal (the blame would be on the ISP / library for allowing you to) but the fact that something illegal is still being done is the point in itself.
And to pre-emptively refute your claim of "Well I don't respect Intellectual Property so it isn't illegal"...
It comes back to the same theme. It's always felt really strange to me, but by living in the country that you live in you agree to abide by the rules that that country has laid out for you. It is not your DECISION to respect IP because you do not OWN your country, it is the decision of the country and you must respect their decision because you choose to live there. If you do not respect the country's decision, you must, by law, face the consequences of not respecting the "Terms of service" that your country involuntarily forced you to sign by mere fact of your existence (lolol countries r mean :D).
Ultimately you are only free within your country to be a unique individual and do whatever you want within the confines of morality and fairness laid out by the country you live in. If this were not the case, there are people who would have solved this long, drawn out argument simply by killing anyone who opposed them. Though anarchy is often a glorified theme, it doesn't actually sound that pleasant, to me.
Nah, that's not where it would go. This argument is the argument for why IP shouldn't exist, not why I should pirate stuff (I don't, really, you may be surprised. Once or twice for hard to find songs). IP shouldn't exist because it prevents me from using those services to do what I want. It's better in it's less technical form (say balsa wood and a dollhouse, or chemicals and a drug), but it's still applicable.
By a similar vein of logic, the United States shouldn't exist because it prevents you from doing what you want.
Sleep is more important than this debate. Your argument is senseless but you are too stubborn to even consider it.
On December 02 2011 15:26 HereAndNow wrote: [quote] Except his points were all more or less correct. Do you ever read the ToS or EULA? Probably not. Everything we're arguing is clearly stated on there.
:D
And for the record, I don't honestly care anywhere near as much as I've made myself out to. There was a small moment where I was honestly taken aback by the ignorance of the dude I originally quoted, but that's about where my sincere emotional involvement ended. Seriously though, any rational adult that has a) Paid an electric bill and b) Had even the smallest notion of what they were agreeing to would know that you don't own the services you pay for, you pay for the rights to use the services.
You don't own a cabbie and his cab because you commissioned him to drive you somewhere. You commissioned him to drive you somewhere with the understanding that he could tell you to get the fuck out of his car at any moment because you violated any of his fully arbitrary unvocalized conditions that are your end of the bargain in him providing you a service.
Spoiler alert : I'm not actually mad, I'm just being dramatic. It'd be pretty awesome if someone actually got mad enough to SHOUT certain specific words for EMPHASIS, but seeing as this is the internet and I can do it not because of how I'm feeling but because the person I'm directing my message to will actually believe I'm mad, plus it makes me laugh my head off... yeah. Don't believe everything you read (or do, because I probably want you to :D)
Obviously not. But I do own certain physical items, which I can use in any manner I choose.
What, your computer?
Sure, you can use your computer however you choose.
The physical CD that files come on? Heck yeah, cut that thing into a ninja star and see if you can get it to stick into the wall.
The files on the CD? Nope, not really. You paid for the right to access the files but I'm pretty sure there's a stipulation that the files you've been "given" are not to be modified or redistributed without permission of the developer. Same goes for digital copies.
The internet? Nope, right to a service. You may not engage in copyright infringements simply because you think you made a case strong enough to vindicate your actions, because it is not your decision to make. You noted that this was not your decision to make when you agreed to the terms of service your internet service provider displayed to you when you signed the thing that says they could cut off your internet -because they're bored-, much less because you're using it to engage in illegal activities.
Claiming that purchasing a right to a service gives you the right to abuse that service is contradictory. It's something akin to renting a canoe, filling it with dynamite and trying to blow up a cruise liner with it... and expecting the canoe rental company to be totally fine with it because you paid that 80 bucks for the day of what they understood as "using the canoe to canoe around in for a day" and you understood as "Owning a canoe for 24 hours"
Same goes for electricity, though you'd be much harder pressed to find ways to power your electronics maliciously than you would be to use the internet for illegal activities.
I said nothing about distributing. I'm just in the act of acquiring here. My computer, my power source, and my internet so long as it's not prohibited in my contract with my ISP. I should have the absolute right to do what I will with those things, just as I have the absolute right to do what I will with my clothing, or my desk drawer. I'm not saying that I have a right to abuse my property, only that someone else's imaginary property shouldn't be able to control what I do with my property. If that seems to you to be abuse, so be it. To me, it seems like ample justification for the abolition of Intellectual Property.
The point I've been trying to make is exactly that you do not own your power source or your internet in the same way that you own your clothing or your desk drawer. The very obvious difference is that where you do actually own your clothing and your desk drawer, you don't actually own your power source or your internet.
As such, you do not actually get to decide what you do with your power source or your internet, the companies providing that service to you get to decide; Unfortunately (debatable) internet service providers do not currently have the resources to track exactly what everyone is doing while still maintaining a profitable business model. The next-best solution is the honor system, which has you sign something that says "I won't abuse the service being provided to me" and then just trust you to actually not abuse it, because they have few ways of checking whether or not you ARE, and actually policing it is counter-productive, for them.
Again, you do not have an absolute right to do with these things what you will, because you do not actually own these things and they are not yours to do with what you will. So far, our simple debate has gone thusly:
Me : You can't do what you want with these things because you do not actually own them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them. Me : Yeah but you don't actually own these things, so you can't do what you want with them. You : Yeah but I should own them so I should be able to do whatever I want with them.
I challenge you to provide clear, sound reasoning as to -why- you should own these things based on factual analysis and empirical reasoning rather than emotional reasoning and theoretical analysis. Unless you can provide this, our simple debate is likely to continue thusly until I get bored and stop replying.
But so long as my agreement with my landlord doesn't mention anything about using the power outlet for piracy, and my public library doesn't mention piracy or illegal downloads in their ToS, then I'm perfectly within my rights to pirate whatever I damn well please. Edit: I'm not saying I should own these things. Never have been, with the internet (could build my own power source if necessary to prove this point). But if it's not mentioned in the contract, then it's fair game.
Yeah, totally. You find a library that has no restrictions about what you are and aren't allowed to use their internet connection for AND has an internet connection that they've got based on the same "do whatever, no worries!" principle... then yeah, go nuts.
...but that -shouldn't- exist. And not even from a moral sense, but in the sense of companies covering their own asses. A library will have a "You can't use the internet for illegal activities" clause in their terms not because they care, but because An ISP will have a "You can't use the internet for illegal activities" clause in their terms not because they care, but because Copyright infringement and illegal activities are illegal.
You could offer a hypothetical situation where both an ISP and a library are providing you with a service that you can use for whatever you please, but all that really would be doing is shifting the blame to themselves rather than you, because at the very base of it all it is STILL ILLEGAL. Sure, -you- wouldn't be doing anything illegal (the blame would be on the ISP / library for allowing you to) but the fact that something illegal is still being done is the point in itself.
And to pre-emptively refute your claim of "Well I don't respect Intellectual Property so it isn't illegal"...
It comes back to the same theme. It's always felt really strange to me, but by living in the country that you live in you agree to abide by the rules that that country has laid out for you. It is not your DECISION to respect IP because you do not OWN your country, it is the decision of the country and you must respect their decision because you choose to live there. If you do not respect the country's decision, you must, by law, face the consequences of not respecting the "Terms of service" that your country involuntarily forced you to sign by mere fact of your existence (lolol countries r mean :D).
Ultimately you are only free within your country to be a unique individual and do whatever you want within the confines of morality and fairness laid out by the country you live in. If this were not the case, there are people who would have solved this long, drawn out argument simply by killing anyone who opposed them. Though anarchy is often a glorified theme, it doesn't actually sound that pleasant, to me.
Nah, that's not where it would go. This argument is the argument for why IP shouldn't exist, not why I should pirate stuff (I don't, really, you may be surprised. Once or twice for hard to find songs). IP shouldn't exist because it prevents me from using those services to do what I want. It's better in it's less technical form (say balsa wood and a dollhouse, or chemicals and a drug), but it's still applicable.
By a similar vein of logic, the United States shouldn't exist because it prevents you from doing what you want.
Sleep is more important than this debate. Your argument is senseless but you are too stubborn to even consider it.
My argument is sensible, but it stems from a questionable premise. Night!
Its fair to say, that if we had quality games like Little Big Adventure, Baldurs gate, Broodwar, Deus Ex, Unreal Tournamente 2000, etc... (crysis). Those will sell well. Sure, those will be pirated 20 billion times if you want, but you still get rich from that game. Look at Bill Gates: 75% ppl use illegeal windows OS and he is still very, very rich. Thats how you do it. You get a great thing, that 20% wont steal, and you are golden.
Now we get crappy games everywhere (Sorry im from the old version and i belive apart from Deus Ex 3, all other games released this year are a joke), and they want the same ammount of money they wanted for a 4-6 year development game, they want us to buy DLCs that are basicly stripped down from the game before release (thou others are not, and in very few cases, ilove the idea, like in witch hunt from dragon age), and then ask us to spend even more on it.
Why is this something that gets me angry? Becouse the game producers know that noone in their right mind will pay 60 E for a SUB 5 hour game.
I have about 3 copies of every game i really liked, and they keep beeing bought in every store i know. See World of warcraft: Its not that the game cant be hacked, its that its so good you are not feeling raped while you pay for it (my case i like guild wars more as WoW looks like dolls for me, but hey.).
Also note that the call of duty franchise is one of the most downloaded in history, and they got the 3rd out not long ago. Well its gonna get them a ton of money anywa so, why not, right? I dont carre at all since i got enought games that are "replayable" for the rest of my life, but untill game start beeing actually good again (i mean you can turn on a game and think what you are seeing is impossible), im not buying another game.
Ill get a magazine that adds old games in full version with it and thats it...
EDIT: I noticed that many people are arguing about if it is moral to do this or that.
Do you know how Pirate rings work? Most of them give you free access to every game, movie song, os, etc you want. They do Always say: IF you like the game, plz buy it!.
Now... I downloaded some time ago Battlefield 3. I turned it on and played for about 40 minutes. After that i uninstalled it and deleted the 3 DVD image from the PC. I didnt like it at all to have another heavy scripted console first person shooter, thats all.
As you can guess, i did not buy the game.
On the other hand i did the same with Deus Ex 3, and i did buy the game. I will buy skyrim as well, once the expansons come in one "game of the year edition" pack, and i wont buy modern warfare 3 (didnt even bother in donwloading it). If i had DEMOS, i would not do this, but since publishers decided NOT to give demos anymore....
And in fact, i dont get it, demos are basicly made to lure ppl in, so they only reason i can think about not giving demos is becouse you know your game sucks :D.
Pirates aren't a socialist movement heroicly taking down big business, they are people like me. Broke and/or lazy with no moral objections to pirating stuff. I do not blame businesses from trying to protect their IP, and I actually agree that pirating should be illegal and prosecuted (it isn't in Netherlands). And no, this still doesn't conflict with my belief that pirating is not morally wrong. When I pirate I do not take away anything from anyone, that is all I need. No need to come up with complex arguments about the great social benefits of pirates.
DRM makes alot of sense, I have bought games because they were difficult to pirate at the time (many corrupted versions). And I have pirated games because were pirating them was easier than buying. I was about to buy Portal 2 from Steam when I realized I had left my phone downstairs, which I need for online purchasing, so I pirated instead. Maybe some day pirating will be so difficult I will stop doing it. Maybe there will be an actual chance of being caught, or maybe I will have to read through a 5 page guide on how to install a crack. Untill then, I will pirate, and so will pretty much everyone else I know.
I am happy to buy all my games, since those who provide me with entertainment deserve some money for it. But at the same time I like the fact that people who cannot afford the games I buy can still play them. I just don't see a reason that a resource that is almost unlimited by virtue of its nature is restricted to those who can afford it.
Yes there are those that abuse illegal software downloads, but in a world of material injustice software piracy wouldn't really be on my list of urgent moral problems. (And, as was said in this thread time and time again, profit expectations derived from the number of illegal software downloads are unrealistic)
What bugs me, however, is that I had to forfeit the right to resell some of my more recent computer games during purchase. Software companies apparently have no problems with restricting the right of property when it suits their interests.
I know how to combat piracy. Make games cheaper and charge extra for frequent patches. At the cost of losing some initial money in the western world, you gain millons of new costumers in the eastern world.
Those numbers mean basically nothing. You can't judge piracy on a single case basis. There is a group of pirates that have a huge throughput and literally pirate everything that is possible and due to the sheer amount there's no way to twist them into "lost customers". Even with a low estimate of a fifty million gamers in total, only a small portion of like 2-3% high-volume pirates would already account for most of the illegal downloads for any game.
Piracy is an issue for publishers if they let it be. Valve understands that providing a better/equal service that pirates offer, will deter piracy and result in greater sales. This has been proven by their business model and profit estimates.
Ubisoft however, is doing the exact opposite thing; forcing downright cruel DRM into their games that causes the honest customer infinity more hassle than the pirate has to deal with. Now they've seen Assassin's Creed:Rev fully pirated and released three weeks earlier than the official PC launch as a result.
Piracy is not *beatable* until ISPs deal with it personally, which is almost impossible/never going to happen due to privacy laws. Second-hand selling that retail outlets do is a bigger issue that the gaming industry will certainly eliminate sooner or later.
The guy "cracking" the game and making it available to download is a pirate. The guy downloading it isn't. (hasn't any technical knowledge) There is a massive difference here !
About "killing" / "camping" the pirates I don't know...I mean if you consider "pirates" with the definition I took at the beginning of my answer they WILL find a way around it anyway so that you think that they are legit or other sneaky hacks.
I mean look at World of Warcraft, Blizzard programmed one of the most advanced anti-hacking / anti-third-party tools that currently exists (The Warden) and there are still people hacking, botting that don't get caught. Even after ban-waves. Some time ago there were even talks of mass disconnections (10-15 people at the same time in Rated Batlegrounds) by DDoS...
The real question is actually the same one that the music industry and the movie industry faces (or pretty similar one since there aren't that many "men in the midle" in the video game inudstry".
If you fix video games, you will probably fix music and movies at the same time. You heard it here first (or not ^^).
When a person pirates something it isn't a lost sale. How do you know that they were going to buy the game anyways? How do you know they even played the game? And even if they would've bought the game had their experience with the game been good, so what? Can you really blame people for pirating games when developers continue to release console port after console port onto PCs with mass DRM designed to hurt paying customers? Also with the used PC game market being virtually non-existent, I better be playing a damn good game. The problem isn't pirates running amuck and "ruining" the industry. The problem is the developers/publishers releasing horrible games in the first place that no one would've payed for otherwise.
I bought Skyrim the day it came out. I was excited as fuck to play that game. When I played it I was very very disappointed. Looking back, I should've taken the opportunity to pirate the game first before paying $60 for a non-refundable watered down console port catered to casuals. Now to be fair the game isn't horrible, but it definitely isn't worth $60 and the fact that I can't sell/get a refund it is even more painful.
Now on the other side of the spectrum you have the Witcher. When I pirated that game I loved every second of it. Everything about it was so detailed and rich. You could tell that CDprojeckt (I think thats how you spell it) put tons and tons of effort into this game. I at first bought the game on steam, but then when they released The Witcher on GOG.com I bought that as well, because any developer that releases their game DRM free deserves every dime they get. I then would buy the Witcher 2 before finishing The Witcher, because that game is also DRM free. That DRM free game also sold 1,000,000 copies which is pretty darn good for a single player PC game. The 4.5 Million pirated is basically meaningless when you take into account what those 4.5 million people did with their "pirated" drm free copies.
When developers provide an excellent service and put out a quality product, then more people will trust them and give them their money. Pirates are unaffected by DRM it is pointless to have the legitimate buyer of the game be affected by things that Developers/publishers think is going to prevent piracy.
TL;DR: Make a quality game and more people will be willing to pay for it.
Skyrim is a game I really can't stand playing at all -- had I bought it first, I'd have spent 30 pounds for something I'd never play. I deleted it after an hour.
I bought Minecraft and Portal 2 just recently after having pirated both games first.
On December 02 2011 15:40 Lightwip wrote: I pirate things, albeit infrequently. I live in the United States, so I can't say I can't afford games; I have plenty of money. The reason I do it is because I want free stuff. Who doesn't? But here's the question: why not do it? I don't have any moral obligation to support massive gaming corporations that will be fine without my money. I'd rather be $60 richer. If there's a good reason to buy a product rather than pirate it, I will. That's why I don't pirate DS games etc. But if I can get a comparable or better experience for free, why would I bother paying? This is a situation very similar to evolution. If organism A is a parasite to organism B, both will evolve in a way that will harm the other. If they had a mutualist relationship, they would work to gain more benefit out of supporting the other. Corporations making DRM's is like a parasitic relationship between them and consumers/pirates. Instead of making things worse for everyone, the gaming/movie/music companies need to make the bought product worth buying instead of pirating. Then the problem will become negligible as far as money lost goes.
As for indie games, I sure as hell wouldn't want a DRM-ridden infestation of a game. The fame gained from more people playing it is probably worth more.
In much the same way I have no moral obligation to not smash in your front door, share your family, use your computer and shit in your toilet.
Why do I care if I can get it for free? I don't want to spend money on a computer, a house or a toilet.
It's funny because it's YOU that's the parasite in this equation.
I don't really want to hear about how you feel these guys may or may not rip you off for what they deliver. If you take offence to the cost of these games then DONT BUY IT.
You are not entitled to things that are not yours...or are you somewhat special? With your suspect moral compass I highly doubt it.
piracy is a balancing force against inequities in capitalist economies. these large companies think they're getting somewhere by going after people who steal their shit when the fact is that it's downright impossible to stop them. so instead of fighting people and wasting money on frivolous efforts to stop piracy, they should more reasonably price their products and make it less worth someone's time to search for pirated copies.
honestly steam is one of the best examples of a strategy that's succeeded. with their regular deals that steeply discount games and the ease of obtaining it then and there, it makes people willing to pay 20 or 30 bucks to get a solid copy. as long as they keep DRM garbage off it and don't abuse people's information, people will pay. it's all a matter of convenience.
same goes for music. charging $1.29 for a song on itunes and telling me in the TOS that i don't actually own it is bullshit... especially since i'm paying for something that's only in 256kbps and limited on what i can play it on. alternatively, i can take all of 30 seconds to find a free copy of the song at 320kbps and it's fucking mine. people will bitch that it hurts artists, but honestly there are other ways of making money than the status quo. pretty lights is a perfect example of an artist that offers a ton of his music for free on his website and relies on donations and concerts for money. people like that get my respect, and i have absolutely no problem paying/donating money to him. he deserves the cash. not itunes. itunes just hosts their shit and siphons money off artist profits like a parasite.
On December 02 2011 08:27 XerrolAvengerII wrote: I pirated witcher 2 and deus ex human revolution, and after playing some of those games I am hugely thankful that I didn't buy either of them, because if I had I would have raged my head off at how much they irritated me in terms of performance, controls, or mechanics.
Pirating is like free insurance for the gamer... if A) game runs on the machine - respectably B) game is also fun / not-irritating then C) buy the game...
Piracy protects the gaming consumer from bad game designers and distributors by protecting their money and allowing them to invest into the games and companies of worth! The gaming market has been crutching company names and flashy advertising to sell games, even when the quality has been slowly dropping. Piracy is an "abusable" tool that gamers should use to help them decide which game designers they want to encourage...
If you want more good games, you buy the games from good companies. Consider it natural selection to an extent.
And like i mentioned above, Piracy is an abusable tool, it SHOULD be used to inform gamers of quality... although, many people ABUSE it in order to keep unlicensed copies of software.
Nuff said.
Piracy isn't a tool for anything, it's illegal and people need to stop trying to justify stealing.
to copy is not stealing. It's not illegal everywhere, and who cares about legality? alcohol used to be illegal. now its legal. Is it bad or is it good? who cares.
It's stealing IP. You're taking something that belongs to someone else without permission of the owner, and without paying for it. That's stealing by definition.
You could hardly call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's property.
But no, it is not stealing, because the original material does not disappear. The original material and the copies of it are copied.
That's why it's called piracy, but you are still taking someone's property. And do you not understand the concept of intellectual property? I can and will call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's intellectual property, it's the entire concept of programming.
I am not taking property. The property does not disappear and is not damaged in any way.
I do not understand the concept of intellectual property. I understand what you mean with it, but I do not believe in it. What good does it do? How can intellectuality be property? I simply do not believe someone can own such a thing, but then, I do not believe in our "society" of today, I do not believe in it's workings and this idea of property is one of them. I believe in an enlightened society, and not in this one.
That's all I wanted to say, I'm not going to continue the discussion because there is nothing left to say.
That would make perfect sense if games didn't cost money to produce. You can't expect quality games to come from some dude who just makes games in his free time. Or even a few friends getting together to work on a game. A modern game cost A LOT to make. And companies need to be reimbursed for their efforts. It doesn't matter what you believe. What you believe doesn't fit practically into our economic system. Call our economic system stupid if you wish but that doesn't change the fact that you're damaging people who are just trying to make a living doing what they love.
On December 02 2011 08:27 XerrolAvengerII wrote: I pirated witcher 2 and deus ex human revolution, and after playing some of those games I am hugely thankful that I didn't buy either of them, because if I had I would have raged my head off at how much they irritated me in terms of performance, controls, or mechanics.
Pirating is like free insurance for the gamer... if A) game runs on the machine - respectably B) game is also fun / not-irritating then C) buy the game...
Piracy protects the gaming consumer from bad game designers and distributors by protecting their money and allowing them to invest into the games and companies of worth! The gaming market has been crutching company names and flashy advertising to sell games, even when the quality has been slowly dropping. Piracy is an "abusable" tool that gamers should use to help them decide which game designers they want to encourage...
If you want more good games, you buy the games from good companies. Consider it natural selection to an extent.
And like i mentioned above, Piracy is an abusable tool, it SHOULD be used to inform gamers of quality... although, many people ABUSE it in order to keep unlicensed copies of software.
Nuff said.
Piracy isn't a tool for anything, it's illegal and people need to stop trying to justify stealing.
to copy is not stealing. It's not illegal everywhere, and who cares about legality? alcohol used to be illegal. now its legal. Is it bad or is it good? who cares.
It's stealing IP. You're taking something that belongs to someone else without permission of the owner, and without paying for it. That's stealing by definition.
You could hardly call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's property.
But no, it is not stealing, because the original material does not disappear. The original material and the copies of it are copied.
That's why it's called piracy, but you are still taking someone's property. And do you not understand the concept of intellectual property? I can and will call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's intellectual property, it's the entire concept of programming.
I am not taking property. The property does not disappear and is not damaged in any way.
I do not understand the concept of intellectual property. I understand what you mean with it, but I do not believe in it. What good does it do? How can intellectuality be property? I simply do not believe someone can own such a thing, but then, I do not believe in our "society" of today, I do not believe in it's workings and this idea of property is one of them. I believe in an enlightened society, and not in this one.
That's all I wanted to say, I'm not going to continue the discussion because there is nothing left to say.
Someone's hard work, money and effort has gone in to inventing that intellectual property. The reason they do this is to sell the use of that intellectual property for the purposes of entertainment.
Think of Intellectual Property as if it is a service.
You can pay someone to wash your car or mow your lawn. Technically they aren't giving you any physical "thing".
Does this mean you also consider that not paying someone who provided you with a service to not be stealing? Do you consider it morally correct to not pay someone who provided you with their hard work and effort?
With Intellectual Property (in this case video games) you're paying someone for the time, effort and money they have invested into creating it in return for the benefits (entertainment) of using that product.
On December 02 2011 08:41 H0i wrote: The internet allows us to share ideas, and piracy is just a name for the effect of this sharing of ideas on our outdated societal systems, monetary, economical, political, etc.
Unfortunately we still live with outdated systems that cannot keep up with other developments, so for now what we have to do is simple. Support those developers who deserve it.
Babby's first political post.
If you want to make a statement, don't play the games at all. The fact that you're going to play a game means that the developers know it's being played, even if you don't pay for it. As the OP shows, there is way to track those things.
If you're really worried about making a statement about what games you like and don't like, buy the games you like and don't pirate or buy the games you don't like.
Again, as I posted above, if a game is worth you playing it, it's worth supporting. Don't pirate it, play it all the way through, and call it shit. That type of action is the cancer that's killing gaming.
This is exactly why I said I wouldn't continue the discussion. I knew already what the responses were going to be, my perspective on this requires a lot of creative thinking in order to understand, and I hope some people were able to do this.
On December 02 2011 08:27 XerrolAvengerII wrote: I pirated witcher 2 and deus ex human revolution, and after playing some of those games I am hugely thankful that I didn't buy either of them, because if I had I would have raged my head off at how much they irritated me in terms of performance, controls, or mechanics.
Pirating is like free insurance for the gamer... if A) game runs on the machine - respectably B) game is also fun / not-irritating then C) buy the game...
Piracy protects the gaming consumer from bad game designers and distributors by protecting their money and allowing them to invest into the games and companies of worth! The gaming market has been crutching company names and flashy advertising to sell games, even when the quality has been slowly dropping. Piracy is an "abusable" tool that gamers should use to help them decide which game designers they want to encourage...
If you want more good games, you buy the games from good companies. Consider it natural selection to an extent.
And like i mentioned above, Piracy is an abusable tool, it SHOULD be used to inform gamers of quality... although, many people ABUSE it in order to keep unlicensed copies of software.
Nuff said.
Piracy isn't a tool for anything, it's illegal and people need to stop trying to justify stealing.
to copy is not stealing. It's not illegal everywhere, and who cares about legality? alcohol used to be illegal. now its legal. Is it bad or is it good? who cares.
It's stealing IP. You're taking something that belongs to someone else without permission of the owner, and without paying for it. That's stealing by definition.
You could hardly call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's property.
But no, it is not stealing, because the original material does not disappear. The original material and the copies of it are copied.
That's why it's called piracy, but you are still taking someone's property. And do you not understand the concept of intellectual property? I can and will call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's intellectual property, it's the entire concept of programming.
I am not taking property. The property does not disappear and is not damaged in any way.
I do not understand the concept of intellectual property. I understand what you mean with it, but I do not believe in it. What good does it do? How can intellectuality be property? I simply do not believe someone can own such a thing, but then, I do not believe in our "society" of today, I do not believe in it's workings and this idea of property is one of them. I believe in an enlightened society, and not in this one.
That's all I wanted to say, I'm not going to continue the discussion because there is nothing left to say.
That would make perfect sense if games didn't cost money to produce. You can't expect quality games to come from some dude who just makes games in his free time. Or even a few friends getting together to work on a game. A modern game cost A LOT to make. And companies need to be reimbursed for their efforts. It doesn't matter what you believe. What you believe doesn't fit practically into our economic system. Call our economic system stupid if you wish but that doesn't change the fact that you're damaging people who are just trying to make a living doing what they love.
On December 02 2011 08:27 XerrolAvengerII wrote: I pirated witcher 2 and deus ex human revolution, and after playing some of those games I am hugely thankful that I didn't buy either of them, because if I had I would have raged my head off at how much they irritated me in terms of performance, controls, or mechanics.
Pirating is like free insurance for the gamer... if A) game runs on the machine - respectably B) game is also fun / not-irritating then C) buy the game...
Piracy protects the gaming consumer from bad game designers and distributors by protecting their money and allowing them to invest into the games and companies of worth! The gaming market has been crutching company names and flashy advertising to sell games, even when the quality has been slowly dropping. Piracy is an "abusable" tool that gamers should use to help them decide which game designers they want to encourage...
If you want more good games, you buy the games from good companies. Consider it natural selection to an extent.
And like i mentioned above, Piracy is an abusable tool, it SHOULD be used to inform gamers of quality... although, many people ABUSE it in order to keep unlicensed copies of software.
Nuff said.
Piracy isn't a tool for anything, it's illegal and people need to stop trying to justify stealing.
to copy is not stealing. It's not illegal everywhere, and who cares about legality? alcohol used to be illegal. now its legal. Is it bad or is it good? who cares.
It's stealing IP. You're taking something that belongs to someone else without permission of the owner, and without paying for it. That's stealing by definition.
You could hardly call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's property.
But no, it is not stealing, because the original material does not disappear. The original material and the copies of it are copied.
That's why it's called piracy, but you are still taking someone's property. And do you not understand the concept of intellectual property? I can and will call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's intellectual property, it's the entire concept of programming.
I am not taking property. The property does not disappear and is not damaged in any way.
I do not understand the concept of intellectual property. I understand what you mean with it, but I do not believe in it. What good does it do? How can intellectuality be property? I simply do not believe someone can own such a thing, but then, I do not believe in our "society" of today, I do not believe in it's workings and this idea of property is one of them. I believe in an enlightened society, and not in this one.
That's all I wanted to say, I'm not going to continue the discussion because there is nothing left to say.
Someone's hard work, money and effort has gone in to inventing that intellectual property. The reason they do this is to sell the use of that intellectual property for the purposes of entertainment.
Think of Intellectual Property as if it is a service.
You can pay someone to wash your car or mow your lawn. Technically they aren't giving you any physical "thing".
Does this mean you also consider that not paying someone who provided you with a service to not be stealing? Do you consider it morally correct to not pay someone who provided you with their hard work and effort?
With Intellectual Property (in this case video games) you're paying someone for the time, effort and money they have invested into creating it in return for the benefits (entertainment) of using that product.
On December 02 2011 08:41 H0i wrote: The internet allows us to share ideas, and piracy is just a name for the effect of this sharing of ideas on our outdated societal systems, monetary, economical, political, etc.
Unfortunately we still live with outdated systems that cannot keep up with other developments, so for now what we have to do is simple. Support those developers who deserve it.
Babby's first political post.
If you want to make a statement, don't play the games at all. The fact that you're going to play a game means that the developers know it's being played, even if you don't pay for it. As the OP shows, there is way to track those things.
If you're really worried about making a statement about what games you like and don't like, buy the games you like and don't pirate or buy the games you don't like.
Again, as I posted above, if a game is worth you playing it, it's worth supporting. Don't pirate it, play it all the way through, and call it shit. That type of action is the cancer that's killing gaming.
This is exactly why I said I wouldn't continue the discussion. I knew already what the responses were going to be, my perspective on this requires a lot of creative thinking in order to understand, and I hope some people were able to do this.
So you how do you think people should be compensated for the time and effort that's goes into creating these ideas?
On December 02 2011 21:29 TheDraken wrote: itunes just hosts their shit and siphons money off artist profits like a parasite.
It isn't much different than what record companies force bands through. Most bands are only allowed the smallest cut of a CD sale compared to where else the money is split up to. Same for band merch. The only genuine way to get money to a band without it having to trickle down the system of which they are at the bottom of, is to just go up to them at a gig and hand them a fat wad of cash.
On December 02 2011 08:27 XerrolAvengerII wrote: I pirated witcher 2 and deus ex human revolution, and after playing some of those games I am hugely thankful that I didn't buy either of them, because if I had I would have raged my head off at how much they irritated me in terms of performance, controls, or mechanics.
Pirating is like free insurance for the gamer... if A) game runs on the machine - respectably B) game is also fun / not-irritating then C) buy the game...
Piracy protects the gaming consumer from bad game designers and distributors by protecting their money and allowing them to invest into the games and companies of worth! The gaming market has been crutching company names and flashy advertising to sell games, even when the quality has been slowly dropping. Piracy is an "abusable" tool that gamers should use to help them decide which game designers they want to encourage...
If you want more good games, you buy the games from good companies. Consider it natural selection to an extent.
And like i mentioned above, Piracy is an abusable tool, it SHOULD be used to inform gamers of quality... although, many people ABUSE it in order to keep unlicensed copies of software.
Nuff said.
Piracy isn't a tool for anything, it's illegal and people need to stop trying to justify stealing.
to copy is not stealing. It's not illegal everywhere, and who cares about legality? alcohol used to be illegal. now its legal. Is it bad or is it good? who cares.
It's stealing IP. You're taking something that belongs to someone else without permission of the owner, and without paying for it. That's stealing by definition.
You could hardly call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's property.
But no, it is not stealing, because the original material does not disappear. The original material and the copies of it are copied.
That's why it's called piracy, but you are still taking someone's property. And do you not understand the concept of intellectual property? I can and will call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's intellectual property, it's the entire concept of programming.
I am not taking property. The property does not disappear and is not damaged in any way.
I do not understand the concept of intellectual property. I understand what you mean with it, but I do not believe in it. What good does it do? How can intellectuality be property? I simply do not believe someone can own such a thing, but then, I do not believe in our "society" of today, I do not believe in it's workings and this idea of property is one of them. I believe in an enlightened society, and not in this one.
That's all I wanted to say, I'm not going to continue the discussion because there is nothing left to say.
That would make perfect sense if games didn't cost money to produce. You can't expect quality games to come from some dude who just makes games in his free time. Or even a few friends getting together to work on a game. A modern game cost A LOT to make. And companies need to be reimbursed for their efforts. It doesn't matter what you believe. What you believe doesn't fit practically into our economic system. Call our economic system stupid if you wish but that doesn't change the fact that you're damaging people who are just trying to make a living doing what they love.
On December 02 2011 08:27 XerrolAvengerII wrote: I pirated witcher 2 and deus ex human revolution, and after playing some of those games I am hugely thankful that I didn't buy either of them, because if I had I would have raged my head off at how much they irritated me in terms of performance, controls, or mechanics.
Pirating is like free insurance for the gamer... if A) game runs on the machine - respectably B) game is also fun / not-irritating then C) buy the game...
Piracy protects the gaming consumer from bad game designers and distributors by protecting their money and allowing them to invest into the games and companies of worth! The gaming market has been crutching company names and flashy advertising to sell games, even when the quality has been slowly dropping. Piracy is an "abusable" tool that gamers should use to help them decide which game designers they want to encourage...
If you want more good games, you buy the games from good companies. Consider it natural selection to an extent.
And like i mentioned above, Piracy is an abusable tool, it SHOULD be used to inform gamers of quality... although, many people ABUSE it in order to keep unlicensed copies of software.
Nuff said.
Piracy isn't a tool for anything, it's illegal and people need to stop trying to justify stealing.
to copy is not stealing. It's not illegal everywhere, and who cares about legality? alcohol used to be illegal. now its legal. Is it bad or is it good? who cares.
It's stealing IP. You're taking something that belongs to someone else without permission of the owner, and without paying for it. That's stealing by definition.
You could hardly call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's property.
But no, it is not stealing, because the original material does not disappear. The original material and the copies of it are copied.
That's why it's called piracy, but you are still taking someone's property. And do you not understand the concept of intellectual property? I can and will call a collection of 1's and 0's someone's intellectual property, it's the entire concept of programming.
I am not taking property. The property does not disappear and is not damaged in any way.
I do not understand the concept of intellectual property. I understand what you mean with it, but I do not believe in it. What good does it do? How can intellectuality be property? I simply do not believe someone can own such a thing, but then, I do not believe in our "society" of today, I do not believe in it's workings and this idea of property is one of them. I believe in an enlightened society, and not in this one.
That's all I wanted to say, I'm not going to continue the discussion because there is nothing left to say.
Someone's hard work, money and effort has gone in to inventing that intellectual property. The reason they do this is to sell the use of that intellectual property for the purposes of entertainment.
Think of Intellectual Property as if it is a service.
You can pay someone to wash your car or mow your lawn. Technically they aren't giving you any physical "thing".
Does this mean you also consider that not paying someone who provided you with a service to not be stealing? Do you consider it morally correct to not pay someone who provided you with their hard work and effort?
With Intellectual Property (in this case video games) you're paying someone for the time, effort and money they have invested into creating it in return for the benefits (entertainment) of using that product.
On December 02 2011 08:41 H0i wrote: The internet allows us to share ideas, and piracy is just a name for the effect of this sharing of ideas on our outdated societal systems, monetary, economical, political, etc.
Unfortunately we still live with outdated systems that cannot keep up with other developments, so for now what we have to do is simple. Support those developers who deserve it.
Babby's first political post.
If you want to make a statement, don't play the games at all. The fact that you're going to play a game means that the developers know it's being played, even if you don't pay for it. As the OP shows, there is way to track those things.
If you're really worried about making a statement about what games you like and don't like, buy the games you like and don't pirate or buy the games you don't like.
Again, as I posted above, if a game is worth you playing it, it's worth supporting. Don't pirate it, play it all the way through, and call it shit. That type of action is the cancer that's killing gaming.
This is exactly why I said I wouldn't continue the discussion. I knew already what the responses were going to be, my perspective on this requires a lot of creative thinking in order to understand, and I hope some people were able to do this.
Your perspective is garbage. Trying to be a dick and claiming it's "too deep to understand" doesn't make it right, it just makes you pretentious and makes it clear to everyone you're not worth discussing this with.
When you actually come back with relevant and good ideas, you might get someone to agree with you who's not yourself.
I think Trial Periods add an unique alternative to pirating games while still providing the opportunity for potential players to try out a game, try out their computer specs, and simply see how they like it.
On December 03 2011 00:59 sc4k wrote: Anyone who pirates and has enough money to buy the games should be ashamed of themselves. Anyone who can't afford games but pirates them shouldn't.
Not really worthy replying to but heck.
Pirating isn't a bad thing, it builds fanbase.
I would not have been gaming so much if I hadn't pirated when I was unable to buy games for full retail.
On December 03 2011 00:59 sc4k wrote: Anyone who pirates and has enough money to buy the games should be ashamed of themselves. Anyone who can't afford games but pirates them shouldn't.
Why do people keep assuming everyone has the right to every game?
If you can't afford a game, you shouldn't get it. If it's because you're poor, then you have better things to do with your time than play games. If it's because you foolishly spend your money, you shouldn't get a game anyway.
Not having money for superfluous, non-essential items isn't a justification for theft.
On December 03 2011 00:59 sc4k wrote: Anyone who pirates and has enough money to buy the games should be ashamed of themselves. Anyone who can't afford games but pirates them shouldn't.
Why do people keep assuming everyone has the right to every game?
If you can't afford a game, you shouldn't get it. If it's because you're poor, then you have better things to do with your time than play games. If it's because you foolishly spend your money, you shouldn't get a game anyway.
Not having money for superfluous, non-essential items isn't a justification for theft.
On December 03 2011 00:59 sc4k wrote: Anyone who pirates and has enough money to buy the games should be ashamed of themselves. Anyone who can't afford games but pirates them shouldn't.
Why do people keep assuming everyone has the right to every game?
If you can't afford a game, you shouldn't get it. If it's because you're poor, then you have better things to do with your time than play games. If it's because you foolishly spend your money, you shouldn't get a game anyway.
Not having money for superfluous, non-essential items isn't a justification for theft.
Thats a really cool way of looking at it.
I may have been on the internet too long, because I automatically assumed you were being sarcastic and wrote a big angry paragraph.
pirating a game doesnt negatively affect the developers since i wasnt going to pay for it anyway.
if a developer does go out of business due to piracy then no one gets to pirate their games anymore.
market forces will decide how much piracy is viable in the market place before the industry either shrinks our outright dies. since the market is still growing its fair to say it can support a few more pirates.
On December 03 2011 00:59 sc4k wrote: Anyone who pirates and has enough money to buy the games should be ashamed of themselves. Anyone who can't afford games but pirates them shouldn't.
Why do people keep assuming everyone has the right to every game?
If you can't afford a game, you shouldn't get it. If it's because you're poor, then you have better things to do with your time than play games. If it's because you foolishly spend your money, you shouldn't get a game anyway.
Not having money for superfluous, non-essential items isn't a justification for theft.
Piracy is not theft. Theft implies that you take away what you steal. After you steal something, it's not there anymore. Which is clearly not the case here.
On December 03 2011 01:42 turdburgler wrote: pirating a game doesnt negatively affect the developers since i wasnt going to pay for it anyway.
if a developer does go out of business due to piracy then no one gets to pirate their games anymore.
market forces will decide how much piracy is viable in the market place before the industry either shrinks our outright dies. since the market is still growing its fair to say it can support a few more pirates.
just saiyan
But that bullshit and you know it. "I wasn't going to pay for this" and "I played the games" have to be mutually exclusive. If you want the service/product (in this case games), you have to pay for it. If you're not going to pay for it, then you don't get that good/service. It's that simple, that's how the economy and global market has worked for hundreds of years.
You are not entitled to something for free because you don't feel like paying in the first place.
On December 03 2011 00:59 sc4k wrote: Anyone who pirates and has enough money to buy the games should be ashamed of themselves. Anyone who can't afford games but pirates them shouldn't.
Why do people keep assuming everyone has the right to every game?
If you can't afford a game, you shouldn't get it. If it's because you're poor, then you have better things to do with your time than play games. If it's because you foolishly spend your money, you shouldn't get a game anyway.
Not having money for superfluous, non-essential items isn't a justification for theft.
piracy is not theft. Theft implies that you take away what you steal. Which is clearly not the case here.
Stop it with this argument. It's asinine, trying to use semantics to justify it. Here, I can do that too, and better:
Hey dictionary, what's the definition of theft?
theft noun 1.the act of stealing; the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another; larceny. 2.an instance of this. 3.Archaic . something stolen.
Well, what's stealing then?
steal verb (used with object) 1.to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, especially secretly or by force: A pickpocket stole his watch. 2.to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment. 3.to take, get, or win insidiously, surreptitiously, subtly, or by chance: He stole my girlfriend. 4.to move, bring, convey, or put secretly or quietly; smuggle (usually followed by away, from, in, into, etc.): They stole the bicycle into the bedroom to surprise the child. 5.Baseball . (of a base runner) to gain (a base) without the help of a walk or batted ball, as by running to it during the delivery of a pitch.
Bolded parts. Taking without permission or right? Appropriating ideas without right or acknowledgment? That's piracy. By definition, it's stealing. And the act of stealing is theft. Please, refute that.
On December 03 2011 01:42 turdburgler wrote: pirating a game doesnt negatively affect the developers since i wasnt going to pay for it anyway.
if a developer does go out of business due to piracy then no one gets to pirate their games anymore.
market forces will decide how much piracy is viable in the market place before the industry either shrinks our outright dies. since the market is still growing its fair to say it can support a few more pirates.
just saiyan
But that bullshit and you know it. "I wasn't going to pay for this" and "I played the games" have to be mutually exclusive. If you want the service/product (in this case games), you have to pay for it. If you're not going to pay for it, then you don't get that good/service. It's that simple, that's how the economy and global market has worked for hundreds of years.
You are not entitled to something for free because you don't feel like paying in the first place.
its not bullshit at all. if not enough people pay for it, games will stop being made, obviously reducing piracy to 0. either the business model will change or games will just stop (assuming piracy ever reaches anywhere near high %ages).
so now you have to argue is putting something out of business inherently immoral or is it just illegal, and if its illegal does that mean its immoral? theres already been 100 examples of things being legal but immoral and things being illegal but moral. so that question is answered.
then you have to say whether an action (which for the sake of argument) "will" put someone out of business being immoral? and i think the answer is clearly no. competition in every business area puts people out of business ever day, either mergers, take overs or competition cause job losses every day as 1 shop can serve 200 people with less staff than 2 shops serving 200 people. my action isnt any different to this.
so then you come back with "but its theft" but this isnt sony has 2 apples and im taking 1, so sony has 1 apple. this is the magic of the internet where sony has 2 apples, i take 1 apple and sony still has 2 apples. all im doing is saying im not part of the market willing to pay £50 for a game.
if you draw a venn diagram showing all the different people willing to pay different amounts for games, you would see the games industry would crash if they charged £120 for a game, or £100. the circle gets bigger as the price goes down. im putting my pin down and saying im not willing to pay £40 for a game, if the price was lower i might. so now because i can take the apples without sony losing any apples at all, whats immoral about me taking this game and playing it?
On December 03 2011 00:59 sc4k wrote: Anyone who pirates and has enough money to buy the games should be ashamed of themselves. Anyone who can't afford games but pirates them shouldn't.
Why do people keep assuming everyone has the right to every game?
If you can't afford a game, you shouldn't get it. If it's because you're poor, then you have better things to do with your time than play games. If it's because you foolishly spend your money, you shouldn't get a game anyway.
Not having money for superfluous, non-essential items isn't a justification for theft.
piracy is not theft. Theft implies that you take away what you steal. Which is clearly not the case here.
Stop it with this argument. It's asinine, trying to use semantics to justify it. Here, I can do that too, and better:
theft noun 1.the act of stealing; the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another; larceny. 2.an instance of this. 3.Archaic . something stolen.
steal verb (used with object) 1.to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, especially secretly or by force: A pickpocket stole his watch. 2.to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment. 3.to take, get, or win insidiously, surreptitiously, subtly, or by chance: He stole my girlfriend. 4.to move, bring, convey, or put secretly or quietly; smuggle (usually followed by away, from, in, into, etc.): They stole the bicycle into the bedroom to surprise the child. 5.Baseball . (of a base runner) to gain (a base) without the help of a walk or batted ball, as by running to it during the delivery of a pitch.
Bolded parts. Taking without permission or right? Appropriating ideas without right or acknowledgment? That's piracy. By definition, it's stealing. And the act of stealing is theft. Please, refute that.
i dont know what dictionary you use but thats not the legal definition of stealing, its 3 synonyms. the point of piracy is that its not taking anything, for me to take something it has to be possible for them to lose it, and they dont. whether i pirate this game or film or not, if im not willing to pay their prices im not part of their market as outlined by my post above, they arent losing what they were never going to get.
On December 03 2011 01:42 turdburgler wrote: pirating a game doesnt negatively affect the developers since i wasnt going to pay for it anyway.
if a developer does go out of business due to piracy then no one gets to pirate their games anymore.
market forces will decide how much piracy is viable in the market place before the industry either shrinks our outright dies. since the market is still growing its fair to say it can support a few more pirates.
just saiyan
But that bullshit and you know it. "I wasn't going to pay for this" and "I played the games" have to be mutually exclusive. If you want the service/product (in this case games), you have to pay for it. If you're not going to pay for it, then you don't get that good/service. It's that simple, that's how the economy and global market has worked for hundreds of years.
You are not entitled to something for free because you don't feel like paying in the first place.
its not bullshit at all. if not enough people pay for it, games will stop being made, obviously reducing piracy to 0. either the business model will change or games will just stop (assuming piracy ever reaches anywhere near high %ages).
so now you have to argue is putting something out of business inherently immoral or is it just illegal, and if its illegal does that mean its immoral? theres already been 100 examples of things being legal but immoral and things being illegal but moral. so that question is answered.
then you have to say whether an action (which for the sake of argument) "will" put someone out of business being immoral? and i think the answer is clearly no. competition in every business area puts people out of business ever day, either mergers, take overs or competition cause job losses every day as 1 shop can serve 200 people with less staff than 2 shops serving 200 people. my action isnt any different to this.
so then you come back with "but its theft" but this isnt sony has 2 apples and im taking 1, so sony has 1 apple. this is the magic of the internet where sony has 2 apples, i take 1 apple and sony still has 2 apples. all im doing is saying im not part of the market willing to pay £50 for a game.
if you draw a venn diagram showing all the different people willing to pay different amounts for games, you would see the games industry would crash if they charged £120 for a game, or £100. the circle gets bigger as the price goes down. im putting my pin down and saying im not willing to pay £40 for a game, if the price was lower i might. so now because i can take the apples without sony losing any apples at all, whats immoral about me taking this game and playing it?
Putting someone out of business is both immoral and illegal. There are laws against theft, both physical and intellectual property. Piracy is the latter.
It's also immoral because if you actually put someone out of business, you are putting dozens, maybe hundreds of employees out of work because a few thousand people were too cheap to buy a game. It's selfish, childish and immoral. It's a "mine mine mine gimme gimme" philosophy.
It is theft, just a new kind. You try to justify it saying there's no allegorical examples, but here's one:
I like to watch football. To watch football, I need to either:
A) Watch it with cable
or
B) Go to a live game
I don't feel like paying for either cable or a ticket. So here's what I'll do. I'll go to the stadium, sneak in without getting caught, and sit on the stairs. I'm not depriving anyone of a seat, and the stadium will be fine without my ticket price. It's not hurting anyone.
But it's still illegal and immoral. You'd still get punished if you get caught. You act like piracy is ok because there's a low chance of you getting caught and you're not directly stealing, but it's the same principle.
On December 03 2011 00:59 sc4k wrote: Anyone who pirates and has enough money to buy the games should be ashamed of themselves. Anyone who can't afford games but pirates them shouldn't.
Why do people keep assuming everyone has the right to every game?
If you can't afford a game, you shouldn't get it. If it's because you're poor, then you have better things to do with your time than play games. If it's because you foolishly spend your money, you shouldn't get a game anyway.
Not having money for superfluous, non-essential items isn't a justification for theft.
piracy is not theft. Theft implies that you take away what you steal. Which is clearly not the case here.
Stop it with this argument. It's asinine, trying to use semantics to justify it. Here, I can do that too, and better:
Hey dictionary, what's the definition of theft?
theft noun 1.the act of stealing; the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another; larceny. 2.an instance of this. 3.Archaic . something stolen.
Well, what's stealing then?
steal verb (used with object) 1.to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, especially secretly or by force: A pickpocket stole his watch. 2.to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment. 3.to take, get, or win insidiously, surreptitiously, subtly, or by chance: He stole my girlfriend. 4.to move, bring, convey, or put secretly or quietly; smuggle (usually followed by away, from, in, into, etc.): They stole the bicycle into the bedroom to surprise the child. 5.Baseball . (of a base runner) to gain (a base) without the help of a walk or batted ball, as by running to it during the delivery of a pitch.
Bolded parts. Taking without permission or right? Appropriating ideas without right or acknowledgment? That's piracy. By definition, it's stealing. And the act of stealing is theft. Please, refute that.
i dont know what dictionary you use but thats not the legal definition of stealing, its 3 synonyms. the point of piracy is that its not taking anything, for me to take something it has to be possible for them to lose it, and they dont. whether i pirate this game or film or not, if im not willing to pay their prices im not part of their market as outlined by my post above, they arent losing what they were never going to get.
I used dictionary.com, you want me to cite others? How about Merriam-Webster, or the Oxford dictionary? I can assure you (as I'm looking at them now), they have the same definitions:
If you take something without legal permission or right, it's stealing. That is the literal definition of the word everywhere in the world. The act of stealing is theft. That is the literal definition of the word everywhere in the world. That is how it works, you don't get to make up your own definition to make you feel better.
assuming taking that seat doesnt hurt anyone and it was going to be empty i dont see why its immoral. you are stating its immoral without saying why.
you also rebuffed my claim that putting people out of business isnt inherently immoral the same way. you are just stating things without any explanation
I'm only going to speak for myself here. I used to (when I was a lot younger) pirate some games because at the time I couldn't afford them and I couldn't get a job etc. Looking back at it, I did the wrong thing. I won't defend it. But I'm glad to say that I've grown out of this habit. As I have gotten older and I actually have an income now (even if it is only from my part-time uni job) I never, ever pirate a game. The reason for this is that I only have so much time for games these days and I know what I like. So I now have a fairly high strike rate with buying titles that I think will be good and actually turn out to be good and I feel perfectly happy spending the money. If there's a game I'm not sure about, I simply don't buy it. At worst, I will wait until it's bargain binned and then I will check it out.
This is the approach that I feel is best for my situation. I don't want to encourage piracy, so I don't participate in it. I also don't want to encourage developers making bad games, so I don't buy those games that I don't think earn my money. A lot of this is subjective, as I have certain developers I trust and game types I favour which factor into my decision making process. Conversely, I do view certain genres or developers in a negative light which makes it harder for them to make me spend my money. That's where the buying aspect comes in. If I'm not giving them money, then I'm hopefully influencing them to put more effort into their games or sending them out of business. I'm not going to pirate the game to find out if it's good or not, I feel like I know what I like and what I don't. Occasionally I will be let down by a game, but I'm ok with that. I don't expect every game/movie/book to be a home run and it's a lesson learned for future purchases.
On December 03 2011 02:20 turdburgler wrote: assuming taking that seat doesnt hurt anyone and it was going to be empty i dont see why its immortal. you are stating its immoral without saying why.
you also rebuffed my claim that putting people out of business isnt inherently immoral the same way. you are just stating things without any explanation
Taking something for nothing without asking or telling is immoral. Even if no one is technically getting hurt, unless you have consent for taking something, or trade money, goods, or services of your own, it's immoral. This is the way it's been for thousands of years. Are you suddenly immune to this morality or above other people? No, you're just ignoring this fact to try to feel better about your actions.
It's not immoral in the same way, because not all morality is the same. It is immoral for you to want something for free and to put people out of a job. By your actions, you are gaining, they are losing. You're also forcing them into this situation by not giving them a choice. They are not choosing to let you pirate. You are choosing your actions, forcing a consequence, and it only benefits you in the long run. That is almost exactly what immorality is.
There's plenty on philosophy elsewhere. If you have such a narrow and self-centered view on morality, and only do anything for your own gain and just say fuck everyone else, then you might want to read up on it.
Piracy is an inevitability in capitalist societies. All people desire to consume and engage culture, but most of us cannot afford to pay for the culture makers that produce it in our society since we are by large underpaid for whatever it is we do. The capitalist model is mostly incompatible with the creation of culture on a large scale, since a majority of people wishing to consume culture cannot afford to by large(notable exceptions to this are in some mass media formats in some markets, assuming it is not a monopoly market television can be an affordable way to consume some culture). We have labeled pirates as deviant to try to dissuade potential pirates since the nature of piracy is not conductive to capitalism. The requirements of capitalism basically means that culture has to be sold through bourgeoisie institutions for the most part, which means it becomes subject to the innate contradictions in capitalism, leading to the perpetual existence of piracy. (Note that sometimes piracy is simply an minor act of violence against the system, think people who argue games are too expensive and it's unfair)
Why is stealing some culture from a wealthy corporation considered deviant, but suing that individual for thousands of times more then the value of the stolen media not?
On December 03 2011 02:20 turdburgler wrote: assuming taking that seat doesnt hurt anyone and it was going to be empty i dont see why its immortal. you are stating its immoral without saying why.
you also rebuffed my claim that putting people out of business isnt inherently immoral the same way. you are just stating things without any explanation
Taking something for nothing without asking or telling is immoral. Even if no one is technically getting hurt, unless you have consent for taking something, or trade money, goods, or services of your own, it's immoral. This is the way it's been for thousands of years. Are you suddenly immune to this morality or above other people? No, you're just ignoring this fact to try to feel better about your actions.
It's not immoral in the same way, because not all morality is the same. It is immoral for you to want something for free and to put people out of a job. By your actions, you are gaining, they are losing. You're also forcing them into this situation by not giving them a choice. They are not choosing to let you pirate. You are choosing your actions, forcing a consequence, and it only benefits you in the long run. That is almost exactly what immorality is.
There's plenty on philosophy elsewhere. If you have such a narrow and self-centered view on morality, and only do anything for your own gain and just say fuck everyone else, then you might want to read up on it.
I'm with you. The intent to buy the game is completely immaterial. If that person really never intended to buy the game, why is he downloading it? The logic to that thought process is fundamentally flawed. By indicating that the game isn't worth paying for, it's implied that the game isn't of sufficient interest to the buyer. Why obtain the game at all if it's not worth it?
On December 03 2011 02:20 turdburgler wrote: assuming taking that seat doesnt hurt anyone and it was going to be empty i dont see why its immortal. you are stating its immoral without saying why.
you also rebuffed my claim that putting people out of business isnt inherently immoral the same way. you are just stating things without any explanation
Taking something for nothing without asking or telling is immoral. Even if no one is technically getting hurt, unless you have consent for taking something, or trade money, goods, or services of your own, it's immoral. This is the way it's been for thousands of years. Are you suddenly immune to this morality or above other people? No, you're just ignoring this fact to try to feel better about your actions.
It's not immoral in the same way, because not all morality is the same. It is immoral for you to want something for free and to put people out of a job. By your actions, you are gaining, they are losing. You're also forcing them into this situation by not giving them a choice. They are not choosing to let you pirate. You are choosing your actions, forcing a consequence, and it only benefits you in the long run. That is almost exactly what immorality is.
There's plenty on philosophy elsewhere. If you have such a narrow and self-centered view on morality, and only do anything for your own gain and just say fuck everyone else, then you might want to read up on it.
Or maybe it's only immoral for thousands of years b/c it's useful to those in power?
On December 03 2011 02:20 turdburgler wrote: assuming taking that seat doesnt hurt anyone and it was going to be empty i dont see why its immortal. you are stating its immoral without saying why.
you also rebuffed my claim that putting people out of business isnt inherently immoral the same way. you are just stating things without any explanation
Taking something for nothing without asking or telling is immoral. Even if no one is technically getting hurt, unless you have consent for taking something, or trade money, goods, or services of your own, it's immoral. This is the way it's been for thousands of years. Are you suddenly immune to this morality or above other people? No, you're just ignoring this fact to try to feel better about your actions.
It's not immoral in the same way, because not all morality is the same. It is immoral for you to want something for free and to put people out of a job. By your actions, you are gaining, they are losing. You're also forcing them into this situation by not giving them a choice. They are not choosing to let you pirate. You are choosing your actions, forcing a consequence, and it only benefits you in the long run. That is almost exactly what immorality is.
There's plenty on philosophy elsewhere. If you have such a narrow and self-centered view on morality, and only do anything for your own gain and just say fuck everyone else, then you might want to read up on it.
Or maybe it's only immoral for thousands of years b/c it's useful to those in power?
Hang on while I get my tinfoil hat.
But more seriously, I don't agree with you that most of culture is made inaccessible by cost. I have a supermarket job and only work a few days a week so that I can study. But I can still afford to buy the books I want, the games I think I'll like and watch the movies I'm interested in. Can I consume the whole of any of those cultural subsets? Of course not. But I can be intelligent in my approach to them and find what I like and participate in those areas. It's all about having realistic expectations about what you should and shouldn't have. Why should I think I have the right to anything I want? Why should I feel entitled to pick and choose which laws I feel like obeying? To be frank, would you be cool with someone walking into your house and just taking what he or she likes and then walking out without you being compensated?
On December 03 2011 02:20 turdburgler wrote: assuming taking that seat doesnt hurt anyone and it was going to be empty i dont see why its immortal. you are stating its immoral without saying why.
you also rebuffed my claim that putting people out of business isnt inherently immoral the same way. you are just stating things without any explanation
Taking something for nothing without asking or telling is immoral. Even if no one is technically getting hurt, unless you have consent for taking something, or trade money, goods, or services of your own, it's immoral. This is the way it's been for thousands of years. Are you suddenly immune to this morality or above other people? No, you're just ignoring this fact to try to feel better about your actions.
It's not immoral in the same way, because not all morality is the same. It is immoral for you to want something for free and to put people out of a job. By your actions, you are gaining, they are losing. You're also forcing them into this situation by not giving them a choice. They are not choosing to let you pirate. You are choosing your actions, forcing a consequence, and it only benefits you in the long run. That is almost exactly what immorality is.
There's plenty on philosophy elsewhere. If you have such a narrow and self-centered view on morality, and only do anything for your own gain and just say fuck everyone else, then you might want to read up on it.
I'm with you. The intent to buy the game is completely immaterial. If that person really never intended to buy the game, why is he downloading it? The logic to that thought process is fundamentally flawed. By indicating that the game isn't worth paying for, it's implied that the game isn't of sufficient interest to the buyer. Why obtain the game at all if it's not worth it?
This is the real point. The intent to buy a game and the intent to play it are (or should be) the same thing. To enjoy it, you must acquire it. To acquire it, you must buy it, or get it through a legal channel.
On December 03 2011 02:20 turdburgler wrote: assuming taking that seat doesnt hurt anyone and it was going to be empty i dont see why its immortal. you are stating its immoral without saying why.
you also rebuffed my claim that putting people out of business isnt inherently immoral the same way. you are just stating things without any explanation
Taking something for nothing without asking or telling is immoral. Even if no one is technically getting hurt, unless you have consent for taking something, or trade money, goods, or services of your own, it's immoral. This is the way it's been for thousands of years. Are you suddenly immune to this morality or above other people? No, you're just ignoring this fact to try to feel better about your actions.
It's not immoral in the same way, because not all morality is the same. It is immoral for you to want something for free and to put people out of a job. By your actions, you are gaining, they are losing. You're also forcing them into this situation by not giving them a choice. They are not choosing to let you pirate. You are choosing your actions, forcing a consequence, and it only benefits you in the long run. That is almost exactly what immorality is.
There's plenty on philosophy elsewhere. If you have such a narrow and self-centered view on morality, and only do anything for your own gain and just say fuck everyone else, then you might want to read up on it.
Or maybe it's only immoral for thousands of years b/c it's useful to those in power?
Take politics elsewhere.
If suddenly no one paid for anything that they didn't have to, it'd be anarchy. Why should I have to pay for someone to make me food? If they choose to make it when I ask, I'm not bound to give anything in return, I should just be able to leave.
People have rebelled against the immoral powerful for less important things than paying for goods and services. If you don't want to give in return for receiving, you're immoral. Anyone past the age of 10 know this, and many under that age do as well.
There's nothing wrong with giving something of equal value for what you are receiving, but culture sold through mainstream institutions are worth less then what you pay for them, so they can extract a profit.
A more "fair" from of culture distribution in our society would be something akin to the various humble bundles or so
On December 03 2011 02:43 Prinny-tai wrote: There's nothing wrong with giving something of equal value for what you are receiving, but culture sold through mainstream institutions are worth less then what you pay for them, so they can extract a profit.
Do you even have numbers to back that up? You're supporting somewhere around 100 or more people for a regular to big size game title. You have a work environment, filled with top of the line equipment, a lot of power and data being used, you have server costs if you digitally distribute and manufacturing costs if you sell discs, and both if you distribute both ways. If it's an online game, you need server upkeep, both manpower and cost of data/power. Those types of games also sometimes staff constant people for balance/patching/development for years down the road. You need advertising costs.
That's bloody expensive. What you think is a fair price for a game and what the actual cost of a game is are two completely different things. I'm sure if a developer could guarantee 40 million copies sold, they'd bring the cost down rapidly, but nothing aside from AAA titles makes it past a few million, tops.
If you're going to talk about business, I'd recommend getting the facts right first.
On December 03 2011 02:43 valaki wrote: I pirate because I can.
And you're a criminal for doing so. I'm glad we can both state the truth so clearly.
HereandNow, why are you trying to convince people that piracy is immoral? It is not in my book.
Corporations routinely ship factories in countries where labor and living conditions are dubious, putting thousands of people in the western world out of work. Also huge corporations have so much bargaining power that they make huge profits out of the insanely hard work of small farmers in 3rd world countries, who can barely survive. That to me is more immoral than pirating a game that i would not buy anyway.
I just don't understand why people try so hard to connect some sort of negative moral connotation to piracy. It's ubiquitous and the vast majority of people who pirate software and music really couldn't care less about the revenue they're (arguably) taking from game companies. I have saved probably $500 or more in the past few years via piracy, which i've turned around and spent on computer components that i bought from companies that advertise with video game developers. In the end any money that's being lost by the video game companies or distributors (not much considering how many people pirate games that would have no financial means to acquire them legally) is only a small fraction of what they're making. Just look at the yearly record breaking sales of major franchises if you think that's untrue.
On December 03 2011 02:51 harlock78 wrote: HereandNow, why are you trying to convince people that piracy is immoral? It is not in my book.
Corporations routinely ship factories in countries where labor and living conditions are dubious, putting thousands of people in the western world out of work. Also huge corporations have so much bargaining power that they make huge profits out of the insanely hard work of small farmers in 3rd world countries, who can barely survive. That to me is more immoral than pirating a game that i would not buy anyway.
And that's bad to justify like that as well.
"Well, if they're going to do immoral things, I should be able to as well"
Well no. -An eye for an eye leaves the world blind-. It's still wrong. Just because it's not as bad as what other people do doesn't make it ok.
You know, people kill each other all the time. I mean, that's bad. So I should get to walk around and piss on the shoes of every person I see. It's not as bad as them shooting me, right?
Also, if you people really thought piracy was ok, you'd use accounts that had more than 6 posts. Nice smurfs to cover your sense of worth.
On December 03 2011 02:43 Prinny-tai wrote: There's nothing wrong with giving something of equal value for what you are receiving, but culture sold through mainstream institutions are worth less then what you pay for them, so they can extract a profit.
A more "fair" from of culture distribution in our society would be something akin to the various humble bundles or so
Simply put, there's no way that would work on a large scale as people would abuse the system and pay significantly less that the products are worth. It's worth noting that most the humble bundles are plagued by people who only pay the bare minimum $0.01 to obtain the games. How fair would that be on a institutional scale for an entire industry where people abuse the system to their own benefit? Essentially you'd only be flipping the scenario you believe to be true so that it favours the broader populace. However, should this occur it will be fairly meaningless as the developers would lose any reason to produce the games as they see all their hard work and time under-valued to the point where it is no longer worth the effort to create games.
On December 03 2011 02:20 turdburgler wrote: assuming taking that seat doesnt hurt anyone and it was going to be empty i dont see why its immortal. you are stating its immoral without saying why.
you also rebuffed my claim that putting people out of business isnt inherently immoral the same way. you are just stating things without any explanation
Taking something for nothing without asking or telling is immoral. Even if no one is technically getting hurt, unless you have consent for taking something, or trade money, goods, or services of your own, it's immoral. This is the way it's been for thousands of years. Are you suddenly immune to this morality or above other people? No, you're just ignoring this fact to try to feel better about your actions.
It's not immoral in the same way, because not all morality is the same. It is immoral for you to want something for free and to put people out of a job. By your actions, you are gaining, they are losing. You're also forcing them into this situation by not giving them a choice. They are not choosing to let you pirate. You are choosing your actions, forcing a consequence, and it only benefits you in the long run. That is almost exactly what immorality is.
There's plenty on philosophy elsewhere. If you have such a narrow and self-centered view on morality, and only do anything for your own gain and just say fuck everyone else, then you might want to read up on it.
but the point is im not saying fuck everyone else. these examples specifically state that im not directly hurting anyone and any possible hurt to the business is no different than other financial problems any business faces.
im stating that many people are unwilling to pay X dollars or pounds for a game. if that means the company goes bust for charging that much then so be it. its actually irrelevant to the argument if i then take the game for free while its marketed at that price.
On December 03 2011 02:20 turdburgler wrote: assuming taking that seat doesnt hurt anyone and it was going to be empty i dont see why its immortal. you are stating its immoral without saying why.
you also rebuffed my claim that putting people out of business isnt inherently immoral the same way. you are just stating things without any explanation
Taking something for nothing without asking or telling is immoral. Even if no one is technically getting hurt, unless you have consent for taking something, or trade money, goods, or services of your own, it's immoral. This is the way it's been for thousands of years. Are you suddenly immune to this morality or above other people? No, you're just ignoring this fact to try to feel better about your actions.
It's not immoral in the same way, because not all morality is the same. It is immoral for you to want something for free and to put people out of a job. By your actions, you are gaining, they are losing. You're also forcing them into this situation by not giving them a choice. They are not choosing to let you pirate. You are choosing your actions, forcing a consequence, and it only benefits you in the long run. That is almost exactly what immorality is.
There's plenty on philosophy elsewhere. If you have such a narrow and self-centered view on morality, and only do anything for your own gain and just say fuck everyone else, then you might want to read up on it.
but the point is im not saying fuck everyone else. these examples specifically state that im not directly hurting anyone and any possible hurt to the business is no different than other financial problems any business faces.
im stating that many people are unwilling to pay X dollars or pounds for a game. if that means the company goes bust for charging that much then so be it. its actually irrelevant to the argument if i then take the game for free while its marketed at that price.
If it's not worth your money, why are you downloading it?
On December 03 2011 02:20 turdburgler wrote: assuming taking that seat doesnt hurt anyone and it was going to be empty i dont see why its immortal. you are stating its immoral without saying why.
you also rebuffed my claim that putting people out of business isnt inherently immoral the same way. you are just stating things without any explanation
Taking something for nothing without asking or telling is immoral. Even if no one is technically getting hurt, unless you have consent for taking something, or trade money, goods, or services of your own, it's immoral. This is the way it's been for thousands of years. Are you suddenly immune to this morality or above other people? No, you're just ignoring this fact to try to feel better about your actions.
It's not immoral in the same way, because not all morality is the same. It is immoral for you to want something for free and to put people out of a job. By your actions, you are gaining, they are losing. You're also forcing them into this situation by not giving them a choice. They are not choosing to let you pirate. You are choosing your actions, forcing a consequence, and it only benefits you in the long run. That is almost exactly what immorality is.
There's plenty on philosophy elsewhere. If you have such a narrow and self-centered view on morality, and only do anything for your own gain and just say fuck everyone else, then you might want to read up on it.
but the point is im not saying fuck everyone else. these examples specifically state that im not directly hurting anyone and any possible hurt to the business is no different than other financial problems any business faces.
im stating that many people are unwilling to pay X dollars or pounds for a game. if that means the company goes bust for charging that much then so be it. its actually irrelevant to the argument if i then take the game for free while its marketed at that price.
You are contributing to the problem, you are a part of it. If you are unwilling to get something at the price it's listed at, you don't get that. This is the way it's always worked. I don't think my house is worth as much as it is, but I have to pay for it anyway, otherwise I'm on the street.
On December 03 2011 03:42 seppolevne wrote: You are forgetting that this is intellectual property, not real objects.
Read the thread, it's been done a dozen times or more. There's a reason IP laws exist, and it's because taking ideas or other non-physical things that don't belong to you is still stealing.
LOL I'm sorry OP, but did you just seriously propose that single-player games piracy could be stopped by requiring players to connect to the internet for developers to repeatedly punish the game pirate?
Have you ever torrented ANY games? If so, what year and world are you living in?
On December 03 2011 02:43 Prinny-tai wrote: There's nothing wrong with giving something of equal value for what you are receiving, but culture sold through mainstream institutions are worth less then what you pay for them, so they can extract a profit.
A more "fair" from of culture distribution in our society would be something akin to the various humble bundles or so
Simply put, there's no way that would work on a large scale as people would abuse the system and pay significantly less that the products are worth. It's worth noting that most the humble bundles are plagued by people who only pay the bare minimum $0.01 to obtain the games. How fair would that be on a institutional scale for an entire industry where people abuse the system to their own benefit? Essentially you'd only be flipping the scenario you believe to be true so that it favours the broader populace. However, should this occur it will be fairly meaningless as the developers would lose any reason to produce the games as they see all their hard work and time under-valued to the point where it is no longer worth the effort to create games.
The humble bundle 3 now includes a bonus to anyone who can keep up with the average, and then they will add games to the people who payed the average and above. They give the option to pay one cent for a reason, I think they know that some people are cheap, but developers will reward those who spend a bit more.
On December 03 2011 02:20 turdburgler wrote: assuming taking that seat doesnt hurt anyone and it was going to be empty i dont see why its immortal. you are stating its immoral without saying why.
you also rebuffed my claim that putting people out of business isnt inherently immoral the same way. you are just stating things without any explanation
Taking something for nothing without asking or telling is immoral. Even if no one is technically getting hurt, unless you have consent for taking something, or trade money, goods, or services of your own, it's immoral. This is the way it's been for thousands of years. Are you suddenly immune to this morality or above other people? No, you're just ignoring this fact to try to feel better about your actions.
It's not immoral in the same way, because not all morality is the same. It is immoral for you to want something for free and to put people out of a job. By your actions, you are gaining, they are losing. You're also forcing them into this situation by not giving them a choice. They are not choosing to let you pirate. You are choosing your actions, forcing a consequence, and it only benefits you in the long run. That is almost exactly what immorality is.
There's plenty on philosophy elsewhere. If you have such a narrow and self-centered view on morality, and only do anything for your own gain and just say fuck everyone else, then you might want to read up on it.
but the point is im not saying fuck everyone else. these examples specifically state that im not directly hurting anyone and any possible hurt to the business is no different than other financial problems any business faces.
im stating that many people are unwilling to pay X dollars or pounds for a game. if that means the company goes bust for charging that much then so be it. its actually irrelevant to the argument if i then take the game for free while its marketed at that price.
If it's not worth your money, why are you downloading it?
That's basic economics. Have you ever seen a demand curve? Less people will be willing to buy at $60 than at $40, and even more people will be willing to "buy" at the cost of the time it takes to illegally download.
If not for pirate servers such as Iccup starcraft broodwar, and starcraft 2 would never have grown into the esport it is today.
You see? Piracy is fine. It is more than fine and it happens in every industry. I can take the chair my mother brought and refurnish it for years to come. I can borrow clothes from whoever wishes to give, and last but not least I can copy a game or some music that I would otherwise never have gotten and enjoy it.
Just like Brood War, and Skyrim proves the games industry wrong on so many levels. Witcher two and Amnesia does it too.
How is this an issue? Can anyone here say that they can reasonably afford a game, and they just decide to pirate it to be a dick?
Seriously. Even blizzard games are ridiculously priced. SC2 was selling for something like £45. Worse still, they don't convert the currencies, so they absolutely piss on European customers.
Another aspect is that not only do the sceners who make the pirate copies do that, they also make the game better. They even have better "customer" support.
Well even when the people trying so hard to say its bad do it, it makes me have a very hard time trying to justify their point of view.
Well that's silly. Didn't your parents or guardians ever tell you that two wrongs don't make a right? "But they did it too" is not justification for piracy.
On November 30 2011 22:24 SonicTitan wrote: Minecraft has been downloaded illegally over twelve million times. The creator wants less DRM, not more. There are lessons to be learned here.
Well, that data is kind of skewed because the pirates must redownload MC after every update.
Anyhow, I think it's funny what the devs did for DarkSoul, but it really wouldn't work.
Essentially, if they did that on the PC, it would just equate to more DRM.
On December 03 2011 00:59 sc4k wrote: Anyone who pirates and has enough money to buy the games should be ashamed of themselves. Anyone who can't afford games but pirates them shouldn't.
Not really worthy replying to but heck.
Pirating isn't a bad thing, it builds fanbase.
Well, if you are the sort of guy who pirates games first, THEN buys them legitimately, maybe you are okay. But it depends on how strict you are to your principles. If you have a bunch of games with 20+ hours played that you haven't paid for, but could have paid for, you are scum and I feel ashamed on your behalf.
We all as nerds should be uniting and paying into the brilliant industry that has provided so much enjoyment. And if you are against the commercialisation of the industry then put money into indie developers like TaleWorlds.
And if you complain about what you get nowadays, for 40 dollars...look at the sort of shit we were paying for back in the 80's. Games that would now be considered too bad to put on a free-to-play flash website costing 30 dollars, and counting for inflation that 30 dollars is probably around 40 modern dollars anyway??
Personally I think games are fine prices and especially with Steam discounts. If you have the money to buy games but pirate anyway, so you can afford more ramen noodles and fleshlights, then I stick to my guns and say that you should be ashamed of yourself and you probably deserve to fall over and chip your tooth.
On December 03 2011 07:03 FIStarcraft wrote: DRM is bad.
The inability of DRM to work very well on PC's has caused the PC game industry to gradually die off. On the other hand, DRM on consoles (and portables) works like a charm and all the money is heading in that direction. It's too bad pirates have their heads too far up their asses to realize they've made their bed and now must lie in it.
On December 03 2011 07:03 FIStarcraft wrote: DRM is bad.
The inability of DRM to work very well on PC's has caused the PC game industry to gradually die off. On the other hand, DRM on consoles (and portables) works like a charm and all the money is heading in that direction. It's too bad pirates have their heads too far up their asses to realize they've made their bed and now must lie in it.
This is so unbelievably wrong....holy crap. There's some games that get pirated more on the 360 than PC depending on if the releases are delayed or if support for the PC is bad etc. You think just like some CEO or ubisoft. "Better DRM will make us more money." Not one company has the courage to admit they simply suck at making PC games and that's why they sold poorly. It's a different market and they dont adapt, yet think they've made no mistakes in selling their product.
On December 03 2011 03:42 seppolevne wrote: You are forgetting that this is intellectual property, not real objects.
Read the thread, it's been done a dozen times or more. There's a reason IP laws exist, and it's because taking ideas or other non-physical things that don't belong to you is still stealing.
I dont see how there can be so much discussion on this topic everywhere. Pirating or illegally downloading any games/music movie or w/e is stealing. Its illegal. Those are just facts. Its a personal choice as to whether you want to do it though as there is really nothing keeping you from doing it. Whether its "wrong" or not is allso a matter of opinion. But really, I find it quite hilarious how much people can defend what they do with hilarious justifications and pretending its not stealing. Someday I want to see someone who just says, "I steal all these games because I can get away with it, they do nothing about it, and then I can spend my money somewhere else." I mean, an hour of reading this thread provides DOZENS of lolworthy reasons why its ok for so and so to steal some game.
But really, I have a huge library of pc and 360 games representing thousands of dollars of hard earned money of mine. I generally don't have a lot of respect for someone who steals anything rather than cutting their budget somewhere else or something. To be honest if you can't afford a videogame, then you probably can't afford the time spent playing either and should work on improving your financial situation. But to each their own. I really don't mean this as harshly as it sounds, its just kind of a theoretical observation. I obviously know situations are different for everyone and its quite possible that were my situation to change and I really could not afford a game I might think diffrently.
P.S. (I think the same about music and movies also btw, haven't downloaded music illegally since I was an idiot highschooler and even then it wasn't about the money it was that I wanted music my parents prohibited. Never pirated a movie. You like to watch movies get NetFlix.)
On December 03 2011 13:28 Atreides wrote: I dont see how there can be so much discussion on this topic everywhere. Pirating or illegally downloading any games/music movie or w/e is stealing. Its illegal. Those are just facts. Its a personal choice as to whether you want to do it though as there is really nothing keeping you from doing it. Whether its "wrong" or not is allso a matter of opinion. But really, I find it quite hilarious how much people can defend what they do with hilarious justifications and pretending its not stealing. Someday I want to see someone who just says, "I steal all these games because I can get away with it, they do nothing about it, and then I can spend my money somewhere else." I mean, an hour of reading this thread provides DOZENS of lolworthy reasons why its ok for so and so to steal some game.
But really, I have a huge library of pc and 360 games representing thousands of dollars of hard earned money of mine. I generally don't have a lot of respect for someone who steals anything rather than cutting their budget somewhere else or something. To be honest if you can't afford a videogame, then you probably can't afford the time spent playing either and should work on improving your financial situation. But to each their own. I really don't mean this as harshly as it sounds, its just kind of a theoretical observation. I obviously know situations are different for everyone and its quite possible that were my situation to change and I really could not afford a game I might think diffrently.
P.S. (I think the same about music and movies also btw, haven't downloaded music illegally since I was an idiot highschooler and even then it wasn't about the money it was that I wanted music my parents prohibited. Never pirated a movie. You like to watch movies get NetFlix.)
I steal all these games because I can get away with it, they do nothing about it, and then I can spend my money somewhere else.
There you go! I used to shoplift when I was in high school, mostly wow game cards/expansions, as well as a few other games (COD:WAW, MW2 and the map packs etc.), I probably got around 2 years worth of game time, very rarely ever paid for a wow subscription. I pirate for the same reason I used to shoplift, I'd rather spend my money on things that I can't get for free, or use to their full extent (Multiplayer on legit servers, for example) plain and simple. I too find it quite funny that so many people try to justify their pirating when in actuality you may as well just be shoplifting the game/movie/cd, stealing is stealing.
I believe piracy is just another example of consequence dictating source of actions (<3 Tool ), the vast majority of those that pirate would also shoplift if the chance of getting caught was equally as low.
I stopped shoplifting because I'm no longer a minor and now have a job, so I'm risking myself more than a slap on the wrist and the purchase cost of the game and eventually everyone gets caught, so I decided to stop while I still had some luck.
Just my 2 cents, of course there are going to be the deluded that still believe what they do isn't wrong and they're just 'trying them out', but oh well, no matter what they do people are still going to find a way to pirate.
The reason Piracy is "so bad" right now, is because the amount of bad developers is enormous. Piracy, as illegal as it is, is more of shit-sifter than a method of stealing. Competition drives innovation, smart developers WILL have ways to combat piracy, while earning the respect of its costumers who then usually buy the product.
Countless companies like EA who slam out 10 games a month of rehashed content deserve a kick in the balls.
Piracy, has given the software using community a lot of leverage, and with the ball in our court, it's clear we appreciate and respect good developers, but loot and pillage those who deceive. Arrrgh!
On December 03 2011 13:58 v3chr0 wrote: The reason Piracy is "so bad" right now, is because the amount of bad developers is enormous. Piracy, as illegal as it is, is more of shit-sifter than a method of stealing. Competition drives innovation, smart developers WILL have ways to combat piracy, while earning the respect of its costumers who then usually buy the game.
Piracy, has given the software using community a lot of leverage, and with the ball in our court, it's clear we appreciate and respect good developers, but loot and pillage those who deceive. Arrrgh!
Could you please give some examples of those that are good developers and those that are deceivers?
Personally, I see this as another way of trying to justify something that is frankly unjustifiable. For instance, a friend of mine was complaining about how Bethesda is probably going to charge for Skyrim mods with the steamworkshop integration and how that is "bullshit" and how charging for mods in Oblivion was also bullshit and is the main reason why Bethesda is a "shitty company". The thing is, he didn't even buy Skyrim, but (like a vast majority of pc gamers in general) feels entitled to not have to pay for any extra content they create in the future. He also says that Skyrim isn't worth buying, yet he's already logged over 40 hours, the game has yet to be out for a month.
This is the way many people try to justify their pirating, maybe to some it makes sense, but to me it just seems like another way to try and play it off like you're not doing something wrong.
On December 03 2011 02:20 turdburgler wrote: assuming taking that seat doesnt hurt anyone and it was going to be empty i dont see why its immortal. you are stating its immoral without saying why.
you also rebuffed my claim that putting people out of business isnt inherently immoral the same way. you are just stating things without any explanation
Taking something for nothing without asking or telling is immoral. Even if no one is technically getting hurt, unless you have consent for taking something, or trade money, goods, or services of your own, it's immoral. This is the way it's been for thousands of years. Are you suddenly immune to this morality or above other people? No, you're just ignoring this fact to try to feel better about your actions.
It's not immoral in the same way, because not all morality is the same. It is immoral for you to want something for free and to put people out of a job. By your actions, you are gaining, they are losing. You're also forcing them into this situation by not giving them a choice. They are not choosing to let you pirate. You are choosing your actions, forcing a consequence, and it only benefits you in the long run. That is almost exactly what immorality is.
There's plenty on philosophy elsewhere. If you have such a narrow and self-centered view on morality, and only do anything for your own gain and just say fuck everyone else, then you might want to read up on it.
I'm with you. The intent to buy the game is completely immaterial. If that person really never intended to buy the game, why is he downloading it? The logic to that thought process is fundamentally flawed. By indicating that the game isn't worth paying for, it's implied that the game isn't of sufficient interest to the buyer. Why obtain the game at all if it's not worth it?
would you pay £1000000 for a game? no. does that mean its worthless, no ofcourse not.
just because i wont pay £40 doesnt mean i think its worthless i just think its worth less
I don't understand how people can convince themselves that pirating games 'just to try them then buy them if they are good' or 'to support good developers and punish bad developers' is acceptable reasoning.
Nobody has the right to take something for free. It doesn't matter how bad a game is, you (should) have to pay for it to play it. Having low income, living in a place where you can't get games legitimately, none of these are good enough excuses to pirate a game. You can't walk into a clothes store, take a shirt, then decide after wearing it for a few weeks if you are going to bother paying for it. If you don't live near that clothes store, and can't have that shirt delivered to your house, then you don't get to wear it.
The same is not true for videogames/movies/music etc. Because they are available on the internet, people will access them illegally.
Before you tell me to get off my high-horse, I have of course downloaded stuff off the internet before. Plenty of music, some movies etc. The difference is I admit its fucking stealing and don't try to justify it as something less malicious.
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
what they need to do is provide more incentives to buy it. fuck DLM and DRM managers, they're annoying. sell me shit like maps and cool pointless merchandise to go with the game. its fucking fun and awesome. tin cases ( i know i was incredibly disappointed when i got sc2 in some shitty paper sleeve) metal figurines, etc. make it fun to BUY
( i really want the collectors edition to skyrim )
On December 03 2011 13:58 v3chr0 wrote: The reason Piracy is "so bad" right now, is because the amount of bad developers is enormous. Piracy, as illegal as it is, is more of shit-sifter than a method of stealing. Competition drives innovation, smart developers WILL have ways to combat piracy, while earning the respect of its costumers who then usually buy the game.
Piracy, has given the software using community a lot of leverage, and with the ball in our court, it's clear we appreciate and respect good developers, but loot and pillage those who deceive. Arrrgh!
Could you please give some examples of those that are good developers and those that are deceivers?
Personally, I see this as another way of trying to justify something that is frankly unjustifiable. For instance, a friend of mine was complaining about how Bethesda is probably going to charge for Skyrim mods with the steamworkshop integration and how that is "bullshit" and how charging for mods in Oblivion was also bullshit and is the main reason why Bethesda is a "shitty company". The thing is, he didn't even buy Skyrim, but (like a vast majority of pc gamers in general) feels entitled to not have to pay for any extra content they create in the future. He also says that Skyrim isn't worth buying, yet he's already logged over 40 hours, the game has yet to be out for a month.
This is the way many people try to justify their pirating, maybe to some it makes sense, but to me it just seems like another way to try and play it off like you're not doing something wrong.
I'm speaking for myself. I buy any product I'm going to use further than trying it.
Firefly Studios for one, along with EA. Even Bethesda hypes the shit out of their games then releases bug-infested-console-configured Skyrim. If it weren't for modders, TES would have died off after Morrowind because Oblivion and Skyrim are both far from what youd expect. The modders made those games exponentially better, and more playable. 1000 mods made for Skyrim the first week it was released, 1000 mods... with no creation kit.
Blizzard, is the greatest developer, ever. Ubisoft, and Ravensoft are good,
The problem comes from the fact that these companies release products people have no way of trying. When you hype the shit out a game that costs $60 to a consumer base of mostly teens/young adults with piracy being available, it's only common sense these things will happen. How is it not the responsibility of the company to have a way to deter (e-)piracy, something that has been around since the existence of video games/movies.
Good companies get way more notoriety from piracy, and I would go as far to bet that they attract tons of new paying customers this way. The only down side I can see is that it may hurt new or underfunded companies who do create good products.
Piracy is illegal, yes, but it's no where near as bad as it seems.
This anecdote sparked within me an idea: Imagine if such justice was dispensed by the user-base of paying players? What if not only the devs, but all honest gamers could invade and slaughter all of the pirates in their own game world? What better way to combat piracy than to empower those who legitimately pay to relentlessly slay and abuse those who would seek a free ride?
On December 03 2011 13:58 v3chr0 wrote: The reason Piracy is "so bad" right now, is because the amount of bad developers is enormous. Piracy, as illegal as it is, is more of shit-sifter than a method of stealing. Competition drives innovation, smart developers WILL have ways to combat piracy, while earning the respect of its costumers who then usually buy the game.
Piracy, has given the software using community a lot of leverage, and with the ball in our court, it's clear we appreciate and respect good developers, but loot and pillage those who deceive. Arrrgh!
Could you please give some examples of those that are good developers and those that are deceivers?
Personally, I see this as another way of trying to justify something that is frankly unjustifiable. For instance, a friend of mine was complaining about how Bethesda is probably going to charge for Skyrim mods with the steamworkshop integration and how that is "bullshit" and how charging for mods in Oblivion was also bullshit and is the main reason why Bethesda is a "shitty company". The thing is, he didn't even buy Skyrim, but (like a vast majority of pc gamers in general) feels entitled to not have to pay for any extra content they create in the future. He also says that Skyrim isn't worth buying, yet he's already logged over 40 hours, the game has yet to be out for a month.
This is the way many people try to justify their pirating, maybe to some it makes sense, but to me it just seems like another way to try and play it off like you're not doing something wrong.
I'm speaking for myself. I buy any product I'm going to use further than trying it.
Firefly Studios for one, along with EA. Even Bethesda hypes the shit out of their games then releases bug-infested-console-configured Skyrim. If it weren't for modders, TES would have died off after Morrowind because Oblivion and Skyrim are both far from what youd expect. The modders made those games exponentially better, and more playable. 1000 mods made for Skyrim the first week it was released, 1000 mods... with no creation kit.
Blizzard, is the greatest developer, ever. Ubisoft, and Ravensoft are good,
The problem comes from the fact that these companies release products people have no way of trying. When you hype the shit out a game that costs $60 to a consumer base of mostly teens/young adults with piracy being available, it's only common sense these things will happen. How is it not the responsibility of the company to have a way to deter (e-)piracy, something that has been around since the existence of video games/movies.
Good companies get way more notoriety from piracy, and I would go as far to bet that they attract tons of new paying customers this way. The only down side I can see is that it may hurt new or underfunded companies who do create good products.
EA has a plethora of reasons to dislike, but that in no way justifies pirating, especially when you take into account games like Mass Effect or Dead Space that were major contenders for game of the year. I personally have never played a Firefly Studios game, so I have no idea how great or horrendous they are.
I don't think Bethesda hyping a game up has anything to do with them being a horrible developer, I also think the claim that the game was 'bug infested' is highly over exaggerated. Speaking for myself, I got the game at release and had absolutely no problems running or playing the game, the only bug that I noticed in my first playthrough was being unable to use the mouse in the main menu, instead I was forced to use the keyboard, I did not have this problem during in-game menus, though. The minor bugs here and there in no way make the game unplayable; these claims are just more excuses to pirate, if the game was so unplayable, why do so many people have an average work week of hours logged in a game that's been out for less than 3 weeks?
I fail to see how a fantastic modding community devalues the game or company that produced it whatsoever, if anything, it shows how great the games are that so many people would spend their time adding their own additions to it.
You mention Ubisoft as being a great developer, but they get some of the most flack for adding their DRM, that of which rivals EA's for it's intrusiveness, which in the past has made games completely unplayable for legitimate buyers.
Honestly, everything you've stated just sounds like the same excuses everyone else uses, at the end of the day, the only effective way to combat piracy is release console versions or make a great multiplayer with DRM, neither of these of fail proof, but it's one of the main reasons why companies like Blizzard, Activision and Valve are the biggest out there.
Idk I have never pirated a game and I see were they are coming from. It's like buying a car without test driving it. Maybe it's good maybe it's not. If you buy a car that breaks down the dealer has to fix it if it is in the first month after being sold. No game developer has this. Buy a terrible pretty much totally unplayable game that was lied based on the trailers and good luck getting your money back. Getting a POS game that ruins your experience makes you want to pirate to make up that 60 bucks you just blew on a <5 hour game single player game with no replay ability.
It's kind of a shame how badly monopolizing the game industry fucked it up. All the games now like CoD are just re hashed from the year before with some new skins and barely any improvements and yet you are forced to buy when everyone else transferred to the new game. Look at all the sports games they are a total joke.
On December 03 2011 15:26 tokicheese wrote: Idk I have never pirated a game and I see were they are coming from. It's like buying a car without test driving it. Maybe it's good maybe it's not. If you buy a car that breaks down the dealer has to fix it if it is in the first month after being sold. No game developer has this. Buy a terrible pretty much totally unplayable game that was lied based on the trailers and good luck getting your money back. Getting a POS game that ruins your experience makes you want to pirate to make up that 60 bucks you just blew on a <5 hour game single player game with no replay ability.
It's kind of a shame how badly monopolizing the game industry fucked it up. All the games now like CoD are just re hashed from the year before with some new skins and barely any improvements and yet you are forced to buy when everyone else transferred to the new game. Look at all the sports games they are a total joke.
Yeah, but how many games are literally totally unplayable and don't receive any patches to fix it? We're talking about an IP, not a physical item, what about the cds, board games, movies, and books that you buy that you found out were shitty, are you able to return those for full price? I agree with what you said about rehashes, and it's unfortunate but these games wouldn't be doing as hot as they are if there were no demand for them.
I'm sure this has been said alot this thread already but I don't think pirating is as bad as they make it out to be. I think most people who pirate games were not going to buy the games anyways, and some people buy it after they try it, some don't. I pirated a few games of the years; I never would have bought them at the time because I didn't have any money to buy them. Now that I actually have money I've bought several of these games. Probably wouldn't have bought them now if torrents didn't exist. I don't think this is that uncommon tbh.
I don't think pirating is justifiable or "right," but I don't think its a huge burden on the gaming industry.
On December 03 2011 17:26 nennx wrote: I'm sure this has been said alot this thread already but I don't think pirating is as bad as they make it out to be. I think most people who pirate games were not going to buy the games anyways, and some people buy it after they try it, some don't. I pirated a few games of the years; I never would have bought them at the time because I didn't have any money to buy them. Now that I actually have money I've bought several of these games. Probably wouldn't have bought them now if torrents didn't exist. I don't think this is that uncommon tbh.
I don't think pirating is justifiable or "right," but I don't think its a huge burden on the gaming industry.
If this would be the case it wouldn't be such a big deal to add multiplayer to the games even Assassins Creed and Mass Effect have multi now, look at Blizzard removing LAN from SC2 and Diablo3 to combat services like ICCup or Garena. I know people that will never buy a single player game, and yet have money to buy multiplayer titles because otherwise they would be unable to play online
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.
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.
This 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
I 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.
Personally I take umbrage with people saying that 'wanting to buy' and 'wanting to play' should be completely different. When Dead Island came out, a few of my friends from out of state started playing it and loved it. They tried for weeks to get me to play, but I had very little interest in the game. Finally, one of them convinced me to pirate it and try it to see if I liked it, and if so I could buy it and play with them. I downloaded it, played it for about an hour, uninstalled it and didn't buy it because the game just wasn't fun to me. I treated it (and all other games I've downloaded, which is very few) as demos. I'll play for an hour or two to decide if they're worth the $60 for me.
Am I 'hurting the industry' by doing this? I'd argue the complete opposite. Every game I've pirated (again, this is not a large number, probably less than 8) has been a game I was on the fence about and would not have bought at full price. A few of them I liked enough in my few hours playing to buy, the rest I did not and stopped playing. Minecraft, perfect example. A friend was raving about it but it didn't sound that interesting to me. I downloaded it, played it for a few hours, and then went and bought it.
Am I the norm? No. Does that make what I do wrong? Decide for yourself, but I think not.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[B] Nobody has the right to take something for free. It doesn't matter how bad a game is, you (should) have to pay for it to play it. Having low income, living in a place where you can't get games legitimately, none of these are good enough excuses to pirate a game. You can't walk into a clothes store, take a shirt, then decide after wearing it for a few weeks if you are going to bother paying for it. If you don't live near that clothes store, and can't have that shirt delivered to your house, then you don't get to wear it.
You're correct. We don't currently have that "right". But we should do.
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.
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.
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)
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.
This 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
I 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.
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.
This 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
I 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.
My bad... Really, my bad. I was quite sure I had written more than that, I apologize
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.
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
I 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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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=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.
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.
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 :/
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?
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.
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?
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=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.
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.
I have a hard time thinking that you even understood what i wrote but i shall reply to it anyway trying to explain it again. Let us for a minute say that we live in a perfect world where games are free... oky ? Now let us chose between the free original version of say... Mass effect 2 and the free pirate version. Now the guy who got the original: - risks to get banned and never be able to play again if SOMEONE ELSE made a post about him on the EA/bioware forum AND losse all of his Origin game together with ME 2 - has to pay an ridiculous sum for very small and crappy DLC's that are important only for the story and can ether get riped of, waste time and watch them on you tube or never know the full story and walk away with no full understanding of what his action really led to...etc ( see the coming of the reaper... w.e it was called... DLC for ME 2 ). This basically stands true for all EA owned developers Now lets say we buy pirate version: - No risk to get banned what so ever - Can still post on the forums - Can pirate the DLC's as well thus not paying half the price you payed for the game just to understand the story completely Oky so in this perfect word the "original" game still has disadvantages over the pirated one. Thus i am saying... why in a world would a "selfish person" that disobeyed the law many times by.. speeding, smoking pot... and a whole lot of other minor crimes most where probably did at some point in time and don't really regret doing them ... why ithe hell would i buy the original game !? And then you come and say... supporting the developer ( which btw is SUPPORTING them NOT giving them the money directly, the money goes to EA ). And you know what... a lot of ppl would, just like millions of ppl donated to wikipedia tho the wikipedia services are offered for free... imagine if wikipedia was stupid enough to have there pages load harder/some page not load at all and some of the info inaccurate ONLY for the ppl who donated... would that number still be in the millions, NO, it would be most likely in the dozens . You basically get yourself from a situation of : I can steal this thing and non will see me or i can be a nice lad and pay for it Into a situation of I can steal this thing or i can be a nice lad an pay the money for it and then the vendor will cut it in half, give half of it to me and the other half throw in the garbage can. It does not make piracy "oky"... but damn it if you live in a country where it is safe and you don't do it you might have a problem
My point is not defending the pirate but rather just saying "Why won't the developers break from companies that enforce DRM"... there are those which do not such as Activision, which is still "evil", but does not force any DRM upon blizzard games up to date ( sc2 log in is arguably one but there are guest profiles where you can play offline and it works exactly as a pirate copy would ) and "Why don't they do something that MIGHT benefit a customer over a pirate"... online mod is taking away developer time but something like having an account only form where you DO NOT risk getting your game taken away depending on what you write... hell diablo 3 in game action hose is a good example... i do not think it took to much time for blizzard to create it and it will sure as hell help give a hardcore gamer a reason to buy it since he can make real money selling his items there. Many.. many developers do not do the above and they refuse to believe that is one of the main reasons they loss sales for the game ( and the fixing literally takes away non to a few hours of development time ).
On December 06 2011 08:24 Liquid`Drone wrote: 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.
It has nothing to do with mindlessly following the law. It has everything to do with having a conscience and recognizing that in this case, the law is sensible and just (in intent, not necessarily in the punishment applied) . No, you are not entitled to play whatever game you want just because you incorrectly assume that it doesn't hurt anyone - but I won't waste either of our time rehashing arguments that have already been posted from both sides.
EPT
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