So I was reading this article and the author had a good point, I felt. But I read some of the comments from people like: "Agreed.Piracy is stealing,plain and simple"

Now I don't have a Kotaku account, so I'd like to talk with you guys about this. Piracy isn't stealing, as some people say it is, because there is no deprivation of a product. It is simply the duplication. I know people try creating similes or metaphors as examples (like the guy with the supermarket example in the comments), but in truth I think this is a one-of-a-kind thing that was only possible in modern times.

Thoughts?

1 decade ago*

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It's stealing intellectual products.

1 decade ago
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Not really stealing. It's like if you went to a car dealer, saw a vehicle that interested you, and just simply used some alien technology to duplicate the car for yourself.

The dealer doesn't lose any actual money, but he may have lost a potential sale.

1 decade ago
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Wrong. The whole argument is that piracy steals intellectual property. Automotive engineers made that vehicle to meet those exact specifications; it is a product of their mental and physical capacity. You would not be able to design or make that vehicle yourself.

1 decade ago
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sharing is caring!
and copyright is bad!

1 decade ago
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+1

1 decade ago
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@Nearlight I think you're wrong. If I write an application, sell it on the internet and 50% of people using my software is pirating it they are not stealing from me. Their just not contributing to a sale - I don't make profit, but I don't lose anything except potential sales. The piracy of your product may also get those who do so to purchase your product to receive automated updates and other perks.

1 decade ago
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Its stealing intellectual property, basically stealing the concept, the idea. Which is a different thing to stealing physical property

1 decade ago
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that sounds more like plagiarism than piracy, i think

1 decade ago
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I don't think so. It would be like that if they actually developed something from it and sold it, but they are not modifying it, they modify only the things that would force them to pay.

1 decade ago
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I always torrent games to test if i can run it, not every game has a demo.
Anything wrong with that? I always buy the games i've torrented!

1 decade ago
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Piracy's no big deal. If you respect your customers, they'll buy your stupid game. Adding excessive DRM, or demanding $1000 because you pirated a game just makes you look like a company populated entirely by lunatics. Personally though, I don't pirate new games, partly because of my shitty download rate, but mostly because of my stupid morals. If a game has DRM, (Steam not included) I just don't play it.

1 decade ago
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This

Also, take in account that piracy is not because people don't want to pay for the real thing. Most of the time it's because the product is so freaking expensive. I understand when a new game comes out at the store with a price tag of 50 € because there's a lot going on with publishers, distributors and all that stuff. But why the same game costs just the same on Steam for example? It's a digital version, no disc, no box, no manual, no extra stuff there, just a damn download. Piracy will decrease when companies start lowering their excessive prices, that's what I believe.

1 decade ago
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"Piracy will decrease when companies start lowering their excessive prices, that's what I believe."

This. This so much.

1 decade ago
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At least you are talking in the Euro value. Come to Australia and prices for games go into the $100's. And for people who say that the min wage is $15, its not. Not even the large retailers (Safeway for example) pay >$15.00 for a person >18 years old.

1 decade ago
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I think I saw an ad on TV for Modern Warfare 3 for $249.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.

1 decade ago
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i must add, for example, those games that will never be in your country, because a-b-c reasons, and downloading a prate version it's the only way to play them

aaaaaaaaand .... "Piracy will decrease when companies start lowering their excessive prices, that's what I believe." this is so f**ing true ... just look this winter sales =P

1 decade ago
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There is no stealing, however there is someone who isn't getting paid. Which is bad.

1 decade ago
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But they're also not getting paid if I don't play the game period. My playing the game or not has absolutely no bearing on them. It's whether these developers care enough to go after people who are playing the game for free, which, I must bring back up, does not affect them at all. I'm sure if we looked into this issue enough we'd come over philosophical grounds on if we should allow people to gain enjoyment for free when people have put time into creating that thing.

1 decade ago
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"It's whether these developers care enough to go after people who are playing the game for free, which, I must bring back up, does not affect them at all."

But it does affect them, those people are potential customers and undermine the system that that would fund developers and thus limit an IP.

Therefore, it would only make sense to buy the game rather than just saying "its a good game" after beating a pirated version.

1 decade ago
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"But it does affect them, those people are potential customers and undermine the system that that would fund developers and thus limit an IP."
The phrase 'potential customer' is fallacious. Everyone with money is a 'potential customer,' but that does not mean they will buy the product. The same thing holds true with pirates. They could buy a product or not, just as my grandma could. But no one is going after her for not buying this game. As I said earlier (and what you quoted), it depends on whether the developers care others are gaining enjoyment of the product for free. This is not affecting them, however.

I'm not sure what you mean by saying "undermine the system that would fund developers and thus limit an IP." How is this happening? The "system that would fund developers" is what, payment? Steam? Last I checked, pirates aren't hacking into either systems.

1 decade ago
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I was talking about their Intellectual Properties. By limiting an IP, I meant that the developers would lose a sale for a game and possibly not make a sequel to a game that would deserve one due to lack of funds. I understand that its a stretch, since word of mouth would promote it if the game really is that popular. However, it's still a lost sale that could have been used to make a better game.

1 decade ago
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You haven't told me [i]why[/i] it's a lost sale. I've told you why it's not, but you haven't even countered that.

1 decade ago
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Its a lost sale because its unlikely that the pirate would buy the game, especially if the pirate completed the game. In most cases they would just shrug it off (talking from experience.)

BTW I'm talking about pirates that would get recently released games that aren't hard to come by. I'm excluding special cases where the game is a classic and unavailable due to its rarity.

1 decade ago
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More often than not the stuff I pirate is stuff I was never going to buy in the first place (i.e. movies that I know will probably suck, Wii games I will probably play once if at all, etc.)

For TV, I pirate all my shows because cable and satellite are extremely overpriced for the handful of shows I actually watch, also f**k commercials. If I could pay money for just the shows I watch and that money go to those shows ONLY and not some monopolizing company, I would gladly pay.

1 decade ago
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Piracy is wrong, plain and simple. It's not stealing, not in the traditional sense anyways, but you are depriving the seller of potential sales.

It's a moral issue for everybody as to how they justify their piracy, but it's still wrong in the end.

EDIT:
I also want to mention that I am against DRM of any kind beyond unique Game-keys. It is definitely the wrong way to fight piracy, it only hurts your consumers in the end. Ubisoft in particular are basically begging you to pirate their games due to their absolutely ridiculous DRM. And what CDP-Red is doing in response to piracy of their game is definitely wrong, and something I believe should be illegal. Threatening people like that is, in my mind, worse than piracy.

It's one thing if they sent them a letter saying something along the lines of "Hey man, it's cool that you enjoyed our game. If you'd like to support our development of future games and content please send us the $50 you might have otherwise spent on our game. Thanks for you time and have fun with our game." But the path they've taken is abominable.

1 decade ago
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Ironic part is, is that CDP could have made a lot more money simply asking for a donation in return for the product then they would if they spent the money to hire lawyers and pay for an ensuing legal battle against what could be rather poor individuals. The amount of positive PR would have also gained for more net sales as people heard about this nice company that was affected by piracy rather then being cast in this current negative image much like Ubisoft and EA are with their DRM fiasco.

1 decade ago
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"you are depriving the seller of potential sales"

Define 'potential sales'.
Not all people who pirate games are guaranteed to buy a game if piracy is not an available option for them the same way that not all people who pirate games aren't willing to buy the game eventually.

1 decade ago
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I'm not saying every pirated copy is a lost sale, however there are people who would have bought the game if they couldn't get it for free. That is why I put the whole "potential" part in there. It's not guaranteed lost sales, but they are potentially lost sales.

1 decade ago
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Few would have bought the game from the publisher if it woasnt available for free in most cases though. Companies count EVERY pirated copy as a lost sale/revenue even though everyone should know that not everyone that pirated a copy of Justin Beiber's w/e album or the old 1800's classical music collection would have paid for it. Copyright is a joke. No reason why any piece of digital media should be protected for potentially 170+ years, and in the case of a typical corporation that copyrights something, that copyright might never expire, (life of the "creator"/owner + 70 years).

1 decade ago
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IMHO I think people are stealing their property, because in The Witcher 2 for example millions of people are pirating the game for FREE. Now Cd Projeckt is fighting back by tracing these people and demanding reparations, however just like JoJoker said ^ "It's stealing Intellectual Products"

In a way people are stealing such intellectual products and playing it with 0! return on investment to the developers and in this case also the publisher. Tell me would you want a game you created to just be pirated with no return on the amount of investment you have accomplished to create this fine product? (I.E. The Witcher 2)

Sure, I bet this will cause a stur within a community such as this but tell me,

Piracy isn't stealing until It takes an arrow to the knee...

1 decade ago
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While making money for your work is all well and good, it should be and often is calculated in any software development that a certain percent of "sales" will be "lost" due to piracy of SOME sort.

On another note, there are plenty of people in the world that make things and give them away with out expecting any compensation what so ever. Plenty of modders make hi resolution textures, do voice over work, recode a game, fix bugs and so on for the grand sum of 0 dollars. Why? Because they enjoy doing it, or at some level at least enjoying sharing their products which are a piece of themselves.

And while I cant code out a game, I have given my services for free or accepted a tip in return for many hours of work.

1 decade ago
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It's not stealing, but it isn't completely ok. I say pirating is ok IF you pirate games to play them before buying them. However, if you're doing it primarily because you don't WANT to spend money (as opposed to not being able to) then you are in fact being a giant d-bag.

1 decade ago
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I just pirate games to see if I would want to buy it or not. If I don't like it, I will just uninstall it, if I do like it, I will just buy it just to support the developers =/.

1 decade ago
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Which in my opinion is totally OK.

1 decade ago
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I mostly agree with you, but pirating isn't necessary to try a game anymore. Case and point, OnLive 30 minute trials of full games. Then again, my argument is void if OnLive doesn't work in the region.

1 decade ago
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Can you become hooked on a game after just 30mins? Hell, some of the shitty tutorials on some games are 30mins long and after you dont want to play anymore anyway. IT took me at least an hr before I got into killing floor and even longer for minecraft and terraria. Thats also suggesting that along with actually working in your region, that OnLive hosts every game created. What about out of production games like Metal Gear Solid or Tzar or 7th Legion or X-com? Sure gog.com MIGHT carry it, but how will you try them out or even buy them?

Due to recent copyright change, even abandoned games by companies no longer in existence are still copyrighted and the only way to get your hands on them is to either pay a few hundred dollars for a small lump of plastic, OR a quick trip to your fav search engine. In this case, its still counted as piracy, yet not even a potential sale was lost since the game is no longer available.

1 decade ago
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I see your point, older games are harder to come by and there is a premium if someone wants to play a classic SNES or PS1 title. In that case, I would agree with you. For newer games that are common and available literally everywhere, I don't see why one should pirate a game. Even if I throw OnLive out of the mix, youtube has plenty of playthroughs for someone to get the gist of a game.

1 decade ago
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Youtube is no substitute for first-hand experience.

1 decade ago
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So, you don't watch/read reviews on your purchases to get the gist of how something will work. I didn't say watch someone beat the game, but rather suggested that if you want to get a feel for a game, then watch some gameplay. If someone really is that interested in the experience, one can always rent or buy the game.

1 decade ago
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Where I live, pretty much every Videogame store sales pirated copies of games. It's actually pretty hard to find ligitimate copies actually :S

1 decade ago
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I know this situation exists in many places around the globe. I don't blame the consumers buying the games, they have virtually no other option unless they're able/willing to pay extortionate import prices(which I believe isn't the norm).

1 decade ago
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Piracy is the stealing of an idea.

When it comes to this, everyone's a hypocrite. We have no problem stealing someone else's idea, but we wouldn't want our own stolen, regardless of monetary loss.

1 decade ago
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Inception!

1 decade ago
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I disagree. If I write an application, sell it on the internet and 50% of people using my software is pirating it they are not stealing from me. Their just not contributing to a sale - I don't make profit, but I don't lose anything except potential sales. The piracy of your product may also get those who do so to purchase your product to receive automated updates and other perks.

1 decade ago
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Piracy isn't stealing, but that doesn't mean that it is not illegal and should not be punished. Taking part in illegal use and distribution of software should be harder and more severely punished than it is. If something doesn't change, PC gaming will get worse and worse until even shitty console ports are too expensive to make a profit.

1 decade ago
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So up to 100k per count of "alleged" copyright infringement isnt high enough? Should we start executing people that use torrents or leak media? Removal of internet access is already in the works just for being accused of copyright infringement 5 times I think at least in the US.

1 decade ago
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Piracy isn't that great really. All it gives you is extra booty, and a bunch of random skills. I was hoping it might start me with a swashbuckling pants or sword or something, but sadly no :( The extra booty though is almost enough to make it worth taking, but then you'd have a skill sitting there that you never put any points into and only have for the first thing it gives you. In which case, Dodge, Burglary, Perception, and many others like them would prove much more useful.

Maybe I just don't like it because I'm not real big on excessive skill usage though. One of these days I'll have to try a character with a bunch of melee skills to see how it works out. Actually, I think I'll do that right now.

1 decade ago
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You also need a ship to get started...very costly.

1 decade ago
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I think of it as renting for a self determined period of time, most games that's I'd pirate would be to try em out and 80% of the time I bye them, the other 20% are crap games

1 decade ago
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its a tough subject with no real answer but trying to do something about it is really hard without infringing on a lot of stuff.

1 decade ago
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I think the real problem is when you can get a better game (no crazy DRM) on Pirate Bay than by paying for it.

1 decade ago
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Maybe when companies stop putting out broken games, games with sh**ty control schemes, rpg's with no plot or fun involved, and instead start putting out GOOD games that work right and are fun, there would be less piracy. I refuse to buy a game anymore without trying it first. Why? Been bitten too many times. Let's start with the D&D series of games. Some are great (Baldur's Gate, NWN), and some have come out so broken, buggy, or just poorly executed it's not funny. When a new genre gets popular, a ton of clones come out, some good, some horrible. I tried Sanctum, Dungeon Defenders, Orcs Must Die, and Defense Grid: The Awakening. I liked them and guess what, I bought them. Others I've tried sucked balls big time. I refuse to pay $20-$50 anymore for crap when a couple hours download will tell me if the devs care enough to put out a good game. And as far as piracy goes, guess what... If I hadn't downloaded and tried DD, Sanctum and OMD, i would have only owned Defense Grid.

1 decade ago
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And then there's THIS asshole

1 decade ago
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And then there's THIS asshole Bengineer who posts indiscriminate things without proofs...

1 decade ago
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Care to explain exactly how I'm an asshole? By supporting GOOD game companies? Gee, if you look at my steam profile you'd see I own copies of all the games I mentioned. If I'm an asshole because I refuse to support publishers who care more for a dollar than putting out quality games, guess what... "Hey everyone. Look, I'm an asshole!" You obviously can't read, or maybe it's your comprehension. Or maybe you're just a troll. Let me explain things slowly so you can understand it while you get off the short bus. I wanted to try Defense Grid. I dl'ed it, tried it, liked it, and so I bought it. I wanted to try others in the same genre. So I dl'ed and tried Dungeon Defenders, Sanctum, and Orcs Must Die. Guess what, I liked them, I bought them. A couple others in the genre I dl'ed and tried, they sucked imo, I deleted the game, and didn't buy it. I look at dl'ing as a larger form of demo, where you get to see more than the polished bits that the game companies want you to try. And how many times have we all seen that? <"Hey, Fable 3 is great. I just tried the demo." Get the game. "Holy shit, what a buggy piece of crap this is with a garbage storyline, once you're past the demo part"> Does that sound at all familiar? Ok, how about this one? "X Game was insanely great on the Xbox360/PS3/Wii/whatever. Let's get it on PC. Oh holy crap, how can a game have this many bugs?"

Guess it's time for me to wear my "I'm an asshole" shirt proudly. I'm sure a lot of people here agree with me and need one too.

1 decade ago
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I agree with you all the way lordnerd :)

1 decade ago
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One thing I haven't noticed mentioned is that since the rise of the .torrent file and protocol for its file sharing counterpart, the profits (gross) for all industries alleged affected (games, music, software) have risen dramatically. I have also not seen a single person mention the fact that

1.) Companies pirate products as well.

2.) Companies lie and steal through the use of copyright and patents battles depriving people that ACTUALLY made/created/worked towards a product any income, or are given a significantly less share.

3.) Even though profits have never been higher, consumer rights have never been worse! While in the 1990's if you bought a game or piece of software, you were given free access to it (as long as you wern't using it for commercial purposes), you could mod or change or use YOUR new software as you pleased. Now you can have access to your product arbitrarily terminated (in the case of EA), or are forced to download malware/spyware aka "DRM" that can brick your entire OS or damage your PC.

Ive pirated thousands of dollars of media, software, games, music. I use any free and open source software I can get my hands on, and I wont spend 500 bucks on a piece of software (photoshop anyone?) just to use it twice in a passing fancy. Of the hundreds of games Ive pirated, Ive ended up buying 80% of them AND buying sequels and other games produced by the company that I would have NEVER bought.

Battlefield 2124 I bought after pirating, which due to EA's deal also lead me to buy Mass Effect, which then forced me to pre-order Mass Effect 2, a series I would never have gotten into! Bioshock was pirated, and I ended up buying that and per-ordering Bioshock 2 another series I would never have bought.

Going down my list of steam games, more then 50% of them were originally pirated. Bioshock, boarderlands, terraria, starwars battlefront, brink, dead space, FEAR, etc etc.

You want to stop piracy?

1.) Lower the price of your games.

2.) Remove the often dangerous and draconian DRM, I wanted to buy HAWX 2, but because of the DRM refused to, wont even look at a ubisoft game anymore.

3.)Give us an all inclusive and SECURE system to not only buy, but to store our games in an easy to reach place like steam does. Im not going to buy a game that requires me to use another DRM like steam such as origen (POS that is 50mb are you shitting me?) I use steam, I love steam, and every game should be released on all digital distributes to allow consumers to pick and choose.

4.) STOP MAKING SHITTY GAMES that have no demo or any kind of in game footage. Im sorry "big company here" im not going to spend 60 bucks on a game that gives me only the box art and a small snippet of the story, im not retarded. (inb4 "game reviewers are your friend", bias anyone?)

1 decade ago
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^ WARNING: wise person above me

1 decade ago
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I wholly agree with you. This basically summarizes the idea and reasons behind 'piracy'. Oh, BTW I bought HAWX 2. Regret spending the money. Absolutely SHIT!! The original HAWX is much better.

1 decade ago
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+1

1 decade ago
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+2

1 decade ago
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Best post 2011

1 decade ago
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I've had all these same thoughts as well. Especially those last 4 points. Very few publishers seem to realize this, and Ubisoft just flat out ignores it completely. I accidentally bought one of their Always-online DRM games early this year(the warning was hidden in the fine-print, only reviews I saw were for the console version so they didn't mention the DRM), now I use a crack to play it.

1 decade ago
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Piracy will always be as long as there is humanity (Hey look, I rhymed!) and most ways to help prevent pirates instead interfere with the paying customer. Hell, some pirates actually just pirate games before buying them to see if they're worth the money that the developers set the price tag of. In my opinion, Piracy is good and it's all about points of view. I don't do it personally. The better the game you produce, developers, the more likely people are going to spend money on it. Produce a shit game, and of course sales will plummet.

1 decade ago
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The root of the problem isn't as much the developers themselves, but rather the way (by that the top people) that the company is run. Consider Valve, run by people primarily in their 40s (generalization, suck on it). Little in the way of DRM, sensible response to pirating, and acutally consider the end user.
In contrast, consider Ubisoft, a company sold and resold many times (who even owns them now?). This means that Ubi is being run (board members, president of the company, etc) by investors, not gamers, geeks, or devs. The people in charge are functioning on outdated business models for media utterly irrelevant to modern tech.
In the context of technology, a game can be considered a song. The sale of one album may make an artist (for this metaphor the company) money, but if the artist wants to make loads of money, they need to build a following. They don't build a following by album sales (initially), they do it by RADIO.
If we look at indie devs (Super Meat Boy guys for example), they tend to encourage (or at least ignore) pirating. I've even heard of dev group putting their own games on the Bay for marketing.
The problem is that the companies responsible for distribution don't understand the product. Hardcore gamers end up following a development group, genre, or even a single dev like music fans a band.
QVC doesn't work for games, give us PANDORA (or at least a radio).

1 decade ago
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Thats actually really good. Agreed.

1 decade ago
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+1

1 decade ago
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"functioning on outdated business models"

Definitely agree on this one, which is also applicable to the music industry.
By this time in this current era piracy should already be regularly included in companies' risk management strategies but it isn't. The majority of them still cling to outdated business models or worse, models that inhibit their legit consumers from enjoying their product fully.

1 decade ago
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Hmmm...
One russian writer says like this:
"If everybody can copy of tomatoes (not stealing, just have copy by using any futuristic device), so...
Nobody will buy tomatoes, because everybody will just copy it, it's not stealing. But farmer will abandon his farm, because he can't grows up tomatoes without money. In result - we will have only "indie tomatoes". But you know, that most of indie tomatoes "not good enough" (is like a shit). You can't ever buy AAA tomatoes, because no any professional farmer, who can produce it."
But of course - he sad it only about tomatoes, not about music, games, videos or books.

1 decade ago
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My english not so good, but i think translation not so bad. If something not clear or incorrect i'll try to correct it or explain.

1 decade ago
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Yeah, we get the idea. But the thing is, if you only have shitty tomatoes, people will want the AAA ones too - and will be willing to pay for it.

People usually try to go to the extremes when dealing with this subject ("yeah, no one will write games anymore because they won't get money for it") but the truth is there will always be people buying... and there will always be greedy companies trying to get more profit from what they make and blame it on piracy when they can't.

1 decade ago
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Yeah... It's your opinion.
But, if everybody can copy AAA-tomatoes, who want to pay AAA-price? Everybody will just copy. New AAA-title cost 30-50 bucks, from my point of view - it's better to spent this money for something else. Why a lot of people try to buy from russian steam with russian regional prices (through proxy etc.)? It's forbidden, but nobody want to pay more if he can pay less.

1 decade ago
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And really - i think that Ubisoft with online-only DRM (such as Assassins Creed 2) - sucks. But anyway we need some kinds of DRM or in future we will eat only indie tomatoes

1 decade ago
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Sure people like getting things for free, but a way to amend that analogy would something like this: People will grow tired of tomatoes eventually, even the AAA ones. Then the farmer can offer them Potatoes instead, and then Cabbages and Carrots. You're still going to have people who will want to get it for free, but the people that know the farmer will be willing to pay the money for his crops. It's only the people passing through town that will using their "copying device" to get free things.

1 decade ago
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Doesn't matter will farmer produce tomatoes or potatoes. Anyway almost all people want to copy it all instead of buy.

1 decade ago
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If piracy is something tangible and no longer an issue in the post-apocalyptic future, they will still find bogeymen like the used-games market.

1 decade ago
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Were there any games this year that actually were worth paying more than 1$ for? I know none. Pretty much every game I bought disappointed me, be that a full price or a holyday sale. Why? Quality! Lots of games are boring after an hour or two, completly bugged, or plain stupid in terms of enviroment and gameplay. It's like all those gamedevs have been forced to shit out games, they themselves don't want to play. Because if they did, they'd notice all those bugs and idioticy, they produce. Indie devs are somehow retained the thing every gamedev should have, but it's still not enough. Not enough to buy those games and not to be dissapointed later. And piracy mostly have nothing to do with it. Pirates were always there. But only now publishers became this much afraid of them, because they clearly understand, that their games are so bad, noone will ever think of buying them with an option of getting it for free first.

1 decade ago
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Okay i really cant understand people who say Piracy is for idiots, Piracy is stealing!!!!

Piracy Isn't Stealing pirates just copy digital items and share them .They do not steal something someone else Owns! I don't say it's legal but not stealing!

I don't think anyone is able to steal something siting in their PC and w8ing for the thing they stole to download?

Also Companies don't lose money selling digital products look how all the indie bundles continue to grow and grow

I was a pirate until i got my own credit card 1 year ago when i became 18 years old because of my parents and now i own 300+ games on steam

Piracy will end(for games) when Companies offer More than the Pirates can offer(now its the opposite)For example what the fuck is this restriction to be able to activate a game only on 3 different machines? REALLY????? i payed for the damn game!! And i don't get any notice before buying.Also stop making useless DLC all the time! or at least make the important for the game DLC free.... who is the idiot now? Paying customers or pirates??

Sorry for any grammar or any other mistakes English is not my native language.

1 decade ago
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The way I see it you could use piracy as a test for a game.

Perfect example was when I got tropico 4. I was amped waiting to get it an when I did I played it for 1 day and thought what a waste of money. Too many issues with stupid limits and things. Options that weren't in the game that should have been etc.. On the other hand if I pirated the game first and played it I would find out how bad it was without wasting the money.

This works the other way as well. If you pirated a game first that was really good, you played it for more than a day or 2 and still want to play it then you delete the pirate copy and buy the genuine. Buy doing so you are saying "yes I support your work and I love it!".

The companies just need to offer more for legal versions. Put the $ into dev instead of anti-piracy (which doesn't really work most of the time). I see 2 options (I'll use MW3 as an example):

1) Sell the latest game for $20 instead of $100 - you just increased sales by a ridiculous rate and more people would buy it instead of pirate it because its easier.

2) Offer more to legit players like skinned guns (whereas pirates get plain guns), different characters and clothing for legit players (pirates get one character with no extra clothing), extra gun enhancements so you could have a silencer and a scope on say an M4 like crysis (pirates get the choice of silencer OR scope like cod4 MW).

Even if you combined the options maybe even have the latest game retail for $100 for 2 weeks then drop by $50 every 2 weeks. The game developers would make their over priced sales from people that cant wait and the mass sales from the people that cant afford the big ticket prices.

This is just my opinion and I know many will disagree but I think the majority of people that pirate would agree.

1 decade ago
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Yeah...
Why pirates can't pirate skinned guns or extra clothing?

1 decade ago
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2 words... account validation. Fail = no bonus gear but runs fine, success = bonus gear.

1 decade ago
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Piracy is good, if anything. It's a free advertising of a product. And it's not like most of the people who pirate were going to pay anyway.

1 decade ago
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I've only torrenting a few things, small music soundtracks, but I'm just confused on the matter.

Piracy is good because it allows people to try out games before they buy, useful if you want to see if your PC can run it if it has no demo. Its also useful if your family has little income, alas the pirated game will have no multiplayer so technically, the company may still get a sale afterwards.

Piracy is bad because the company which produced the game loses a potential sale, which means they could lose money, they put a certain amount of money into the game, and don't get it back because of the lost sales.

1 decade ago
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If I could pirate sandwiches, I would.

1 decade ago
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oh god that would be glorious

1 decade ago
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Closed 1 decade ago by Slinden.