If i were in control i would just make a law that made games available for a certain amount of time. Like a 1 hr guest pass which could be expanded or shortened down by developers if they felt you didn't need as much time to get the feel of the game or if you needed more, give you more time :)
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How could you break a law if it was legal? If it was legal you wouldn't be breaking law.
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Oh good, somebody else sees the obvious flaw in this,
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Because "Pirating" would never be legal. Its like legalizing Murder.
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Surprise, pirating was legal in late 80s and early 90th. Game developers have supported piracy, as it was a cheap method to promote game. Сompare how now Activision wasting hundreds of millions of dollars, several times the amount needed to produce game, to sell yet another CoD. In old days they prefered shareware: you trying game, you like it, you give money to developers, and give it to try out to your friends. Almost the same method and in the same time period been used in Russia with music industry - lots of singers became popular by giving away their music, and taking money from concerts.
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Ah yes. Your right. Except for one thing. That wasnt piracy. If they WANT you to copy it, then it isnt pirating, is it? Pirating implies theft. Taking something, that is not yours and that you don`t have permission to take.
Also, the late 80s? Your kidding me. In that world, videogames had a significantly lower saturation in pop-culture, meaning piracy really could be good promotion. Also, creating and distributing pirated content was far more difficult in those days.
Switch to current times, and you have the interwebs, with all its piratebays etc. Anyone and their mother can pirate now, and they often do. The amount pirated today on your average game, dwarfs the total sales of a game in the late 80s.
As for your "Shareware" comment. We have that equivalent today. Its called "DRM-Free". Though, that still isn`t legal unless sanctioned by copyright holders.
Either way, there is still a case to be made, that it is not piracy, if you have already purchased that same material. It technically would be a backup. The law is iffy on this, and varies by country/region though.
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What's wrong with 80th? You said "Because "Pirating" would never be legal", and I gave an example of
such situation. With other naming it word, it wasn't illegal.
About shareware... Just read this.
Oh, and as you so much insist on evil pirats (I bought too many games to be greedy for some more for free, but I dont give a F about poor schoolboys with computers), also read this and this.
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Your articles are interesting reads, and they make good points. Complete bullshit conjecture though.
The biggest proponents of anti-piracy and DRM are the bigger companies. This is because their content is already really popular, and they have saturated pop-culture with their superior marketing. Piracy is NOT good for them. This marketing/popularity was not the case in the 80s. As such, they were smaller, and they did benefit from file-sharing (SANCTIONED distribution. NOT Piracy).
The conjecture that the "90% loss" stat are people that wouldn't buy it anyway, or new fans, is just that. Conjecture. You could also say the argument that because piracy is so wide spread, when you try to steal battlefield, and can't, then you just go next door and steal CoD.
What do you think happens if piracy is stopped all together? Those who exclusively/mostly pirate will decide to stop gaming all together? Of course not. They steal because they CAN. If they can't do it anymore, then they have to make an actual choice to buy something.
In no way shape or form, was what was happening in the 80s to ever be considered pirating. They ENCOURAGED and ALLOWED the distribution of their digital content. THAT IS NOT PIRACY. Piracy was illegal back then too, but it wasn't piracy, because they allowed the content to be distributed.
I'll give you an example:
A man owns a bakery. He bake dozens of Muffins, puts them on a platter, then places them on the counter. Now if he had a sign saying "Free Muffins" or has indicated that they are available for free, then its perfectly fine for people to take them. If he does NOT have that sign, and indicates they are for sale only. If you take them, YOU ARE A THIEF. Piracy is the same. IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT THE FUCK YOU THINK, ON WHETHER FREE SHIT IS GOOD PROMOTION. It doesn't give you the right to take things from people who don't want them taken (Stealing).
Thinking and talking about filesharing, and the state of piracy, and whether these acts should or should not be implemented are fine. But until the companies agree, its just theft. Most of these conversations are bullshit to justify theft. "Hey man, I'm hungry, so I took muffins. Its ok though, because its good promotion, and somebody once gave some away for free."
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If you're talking about physical piracy, then I hate to break it to you, but it's been legal in the past. It was called privateering. And comparing it to murder isn't inappropriate, as privateering often did involve murder. /Offtopic
Back to the subject of filesharing, completely inappropriately referred to as piracy, your statement is ridiculous. Which is why I'm ridiculing you in this reply.
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Yes, it was called privateering. Sanctioned theft from one government/group to another government/group. I bet if you ask the "Other government/group", that they wouldnt consider it legal. Its a spin on terminology, to have a 3rd party do your dirty work for you. The dirty work being the attrition of supplies for war. It was still theft, and not legal.
As for the murder in privateering? Again, war of attrition. Government lets the thieves run a muck, to damage their enemy.
Question, were these "Privateers" allowed to kill/steal in the same government that sanctioned these acts? of course not.
I have no issue with "filesharing". However, when the files are copyrighted material and not Public Domain, or sanctioned by the owners, then that is not "Filesharing". Thats called Piracy. Read a dictionary, the "Piracy" meaning directly relates to robbery/theft. While Filesharing relates to the distribution of digitally stored information.
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lol, "murder," what's the difference between justified and unjustified killing? Killing is still killing, doesn't matter how you justify it.
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Murder implies a crime. Killing implies an act, devoid of morale/legal fault.
A soldier goes to Afghanistan, and kills 20 people. Those death could be in the line of duty.
A soldier goes to Afghanistan, and murders 20 people. That indicates an act against the rules.
Now morally, you can feel killing is also wrong, but murder by definition is wrong.
Piracy, by definition, indicates theft. You can't legalize theft.
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Can you cite a source? I can't find anything on the legalization of Piracy in CZ.
I found these links, that were most relevant and recent I could find:
Piracy in the Czech Republic.
Czech film pirates caused damage of CZK 2.6 billion (Most recent in 2012 I could find).
Czech Republic, Slovakia freeze anti-piracy pact.
If you have a better link, please let me know. I would be very interested. Everything I've read though, does not indicate that Piracy is legal in any way. Enlighten me please.
If it is legal, I would find that to be pretty insanely stupid.
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Under the Czech Copyright Act of 2000, piracy is illegal in the Czech Republic with exception to a few areas. Among these controversial areas are:
A private copying exception (Article 30)
Which details that you can, in fact, download movies/music/books/everything classified as "art", if you don't share it with others. That, of course, makes using torrents to download stuff illegal, but share sites are fine.
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Only if im having any doubts, or im not convinced about how it will run on my computer, if its good, and runs well on my computer, i will uninstall it and purchase it when the price goes down :P
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This is how the majority of "pirates" work. Games are expensive, and a lot of pirates are the ones who have the knowledge of a huge number of games. I did some pirating when I was in college because I didn't have 50 dollars to buy the newest top of the line game just to have it suck. Reviews back then were just in magazines, so it cost money to find out if they sucked anyway. Big named developers are figuring out that demos keep a good chunk of pirates at bay (heh), and if a AAA title does something revolutionary and doesn't have a demo, chances are it's a pile of junk and the developer doesn't want to lose the money they invested on it.
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I actually do download full versions of games that have no demos to try out. If I like I delete and buy, if not, just delete. I think every game should have a demo wtf's the problem with games that don't?
OH! Also I download pirate versions of games that are region blocked and prevent me from buying in my region! But that's only because it's the only way I can play the game... and I don't feel guilty on these cases because, well... they don't WANT me to buy the game, they literally say: "NO! YOU CANT BUY THIS, I DON'T WANT YOUR MONEY".
As for the "I can't afford it, so I'll pirate it" argument... SORRY, but people who say this would steal a 50" TV if they didn't risk going to jail, because they can't afford it. Piracy IS stealing.
"Oh LFLFM, so you STEAL games that aren't available in your region...!" - yes, I've done it before and I'll do it again. And I encourage people to steal any code that I write too, if I don't let them give me money for it.
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If piracy was legal, it wouldn't be long before there was nothing worth pirating.
Besides, that being the case, piracy would be a redundant concept. You would be simply downloading freeware (with optional donation), not pirating games.
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Developers make money off of selling their software. If everyone could pirate legally, then the developers wouldn't make money. Why spend your time making new software if you can't even feed yourself? If developers stop making software, then there will be nothing worth pirating.
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The Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act pretty much covers it...
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...If pirating is legal there would be no actual market for selling movies, video games, or music. So for the most part if pirating was legal there wouldn't be many good games to play.
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There would be fewer games in number, but probably not fewer good ones. With the only financing available becoming donations, it's hard to predict what projects would succeed, but they'd have to be good enough to attract fans. Then again, the recent COD games have plenty of fans, so... It really is hard to predict what would happen.
But based on the amount of money regularly raised by pay-what-you-want campaigns and kickstarter funding, I'd say such a scenario would be an improvement over what we have now.
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You're the one trolling. Pirates are generally better gamers, as we've had experience with a larger amount of games. This allows us to better judge the quality of games and thus make more informed decisions on which developers to give our limited amount of money to.
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Besides a gamer should love games and should respect the developers and should support their hobby by buying games, and not pirate them..
Are you talking the pirates has better skills just because the amount of games? im not pirate and i have more games than time to play them. "our limited amount of money" are you kidding me? you can find tons of games during the sale with price of a meal!!!! the problem is people rather download it since its "free" thats the problem and we players that buy games we got crappy ports because the devs doesnt trust on pc platform.
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"you can find tons of games during the sale with price of a meal!!!! "
LOL! Are you telling people to buy games instead of food, now?
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Of course not, my little friend. I am not underestimate your intelligence. =3
Only teasin'.
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If pirating was legal, there wouldn't be a market for game design -> no one would work just so all their games get downloaded for free => no new games made, we'd all be stuck playing Pong or Tetris (not that that is a bad state to be in).
To me, the question is null and void. xD
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This isn't true. While there may be less of a market for games, this just means that the people that are in it just for the money and thus aren't passionate about gaming wouldn't be in the market. The rest of the games would be free with advertising inside the game, a cash shop, or some other way to generate income. The market for good games would still be huge, so people making games for profit would have to be more creative with their sales strategies. Then it would be illegal to download games that have been altered to remove income-generating mechanics, textures, and what-not :).
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I think it would boost kickstarter approach so if enough people "preorder" or well... order game from devs than this game would be produced. That way devs get cash and players get game (and backers can get also some other bonuses :P )
IMO this is design of the future... design invented in the past as this is how first artists were working :-)
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So if you never sell a painting, you'd stop being a painter? If you love making art, you don't stop doing it just because the paycheck sucks.
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if piracy were legal, AND i have an easy way to actually buy things like videogames and music (the situation of my country in that area, well... SUCK)...
i will probably still buying things that worth it, because i want to show to that person, that is doing a good job, and i want more from them.
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Yeah, like I'll try out a demo or play it with someone else and then if I like it I'll go buy it. It shows my appreciation of the people who made it.
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It was a rhetorical question.
You do know that "software piracy" is illegal by definition, right?
That's as silly as asking "Would you shoot people, if that wouldn't hurt them"...
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if killing was legal hitler would rule the world ...
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That's the point of pay-what-you-want. There's a reason AAA titles have a flat cost of 60 dollars - They take more money and time to produce than any of the pay-what-you-want games.
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I'm not sure what you point was with that example. It's not really a pay-what-you-want either, given the $1 minimum.
Anyway, thank you for pointing that game out. It looks interesting enough for me to pirate. I rather doubt it will be worth the $1 minimum, but we shall see.
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yeah, i fell the same... is like if companies gives a good service, and good prices, people give them money...
and then we have "Stop bitching, pc gamers", and silly (ass drilling) DRM, low quality gmaes, stupid policys about their products, ripp-off to customers, etc,etc,etc...
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If there's no demo then why not? You wouldn't buy a car you had never seen or test driven...
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Nobody would make more games because they're just losing money instead of gaining.
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Wtf how is it not true? If everybody pirates your game you won't earn anything. Unless you're talking about buying ingame items with real life money, but people can't "pirate" that.
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there are games which devs encourage people to download them and if they like it - support them. And somehow this model is working ;x
And as for "nobody make games" - go to kickstarter and you will see people who are throwing money to see games which they were dreamin about.
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If everybody pirates your game you won't earn anything.
If this were true, then it would be true. But the issue here is not if EVERYONE pirates, but how to turn a profit when your product is available for free. Do not underestimate the power of "free will" donations.
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Pirating is actually completely legal here as long as it is for personal use :).
Personally, I do not pirate much. Pirating Scribblenauts Unlimited right now until it gets released on Europe.
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I will buy it anyways so I do not see much problem :p. Also, it will only be released in 2013
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Actually, PC gaming would survive, it's console gaming that would be on verge of death, or even would die.
Tons of PC profits comes from Free2Play games, which would fit this "legal pirating". Many indie games have "play, and if you like pay" model or sales. But what works on PC, won't work on consoles, with it's "20% of game price goes to console manufacturer". Especially in X360 case, which is real reason of crappy-and-overpriced-in-same-time DLCs, since MS said "we won't allow gamers to download any free new content, only patches can be free, rest must have price, even if it's new colour for X360 logo".
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I don't think indie games would benefit from it. There will be many people that like to support indie games but most people don't care about them or even don't know them because indie devs don't have as much money for advertising as big publishers. And in the scenario where pirating is legal more people would pirate AAA games and either forget about indie games or pirate them too (pirating doesn't stop at indie games (look at Minecraft)).Why should they want to pay money for smaller games when they get famous games for free. Big publishers could easily set up free2play games and get their money this way, indie devs don't have enough money and resources to set something like that up. That all would lead into that there are no more indie games.
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The only way for AAA titles to be profitable without sales would be to make them P2W. So people wouldn't be getting a satisfactory experience in those games for free. And indie games already have to rely on the goodwill of their fans, as the illegal status of piracy in some parts of the world hasn't exactly stopped anyone yet.
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I don't think that would happen. Hell, there are several studies which results says that people who pirate are the ones who actually buy more.
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People who pirate buy more? That really can't be true. Most people would never buy the games they pirate, there are only some that really just try them before they buy (or they just claim to only try it). Who made these studies and which people are asked? There are much more people that pirate than people that say it.
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Title says it all. I know most of you dont pirate games, And I was just wondering... Would you pirate if it was legal to pirate games?
Alternatively, Would you pirate if games had no DRM at all? (For example, If you pirate CoD you gotta play on cracked servers, But if theres no DRM a pirate copy is EXACTLY the same as the real thing)
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