ok

be me
live in a third world country
steam does not support your country at all
paypal and amazon and all others payment methods have sanctioned your country
you have to buy steam game with middleman for ×1.5 more price
average download speed for your country is around 100-200 kilobyte with limited bandwidth (usually 10 GB for a month)average price for this internet is 30$."unlimited" bandwidth is 90-100$ but if you use more then 30GB you will get blacklisted by isp and your download speed drop to 30-40 kb
now,will you pirate games?

as for me i buy a specific bundle every month or two.sure it's still expensive for me.my country average salary is about 300-500 $ but i can still afford that.Also,no AAA titles for me.don't have enough time and "system requirements "!!

My justification for pirating games is when the game is impossible (or near-impossible) to get by any legal means.

For example government ban, company went out of business, discontinued games due to licensing rights expired, discontinued console (like how do you play old NES game when you can't buy a real NES console + cartridges anymore?).

Interesting tube discussing about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfZv_lPwBFI

I always try a game before buying it, not my fault games no longer offer trials like the used to do long time ago. How many games that looked awesome and had huge hype turned out the be horrible, games that were 40-50$. Maybe you can afford to throw away an amount like that on a shit game that you wont play more than 10 minutes, I don't.

I don't think there's anything morally wrong about pirating digital material. As to why, I just think the whole process is fucked up. There's "special exceptions" for digital items, and rules that would simply not hold if you tried to transfer them into the physical world.

Like, let's say I'm a baker and I want to bake a loaf of bread. I invest materials (for argument's sake we'll count both the foodstuffs used to make the bread and the ovens, mixers, bowls, etc. used in the process) and time. I produce a finite product and sell it for a price that I feel is worth the time and materials that I put into it. If I want to make more bread, I have to reinvest my time and some of the materials. Now let's say I decided to make video games for a living instead. I invest materials and time. I produce a product that can be reproduced infinitely at no additional cost to me, and I'm allowed to sell these copies INFINITELY without putting in any further investment. So while baker me is off in another dimension making more bread, I'm taking a nap and still making money from my game sales. To me, that screams bullshit.

Imagine if I had a machine that could make bread infinitely, without investing any time or materials. Now imagine I'm still selling bread instead of giving it to the homeless dude down the street. Would you be OK with that? I wouldn't.

Then on top of that is the fact that we have millionaires, and even billionaires in the ENTERTAINMENT industry. My perfect world would have no money at all, but short of that, we'd live in a world where the amount of money you had was tied to your usefulness to society. The entertainment industry is not useful. It's not necessary. So to me, the fact that it can make you a millionaire is abhorrent. So if piracy hurts sales, I say good.

Personally, I think the government should drop antipiracy laws. It shouldn't be their place to tell me I can't copy a file. Let entertainers use DRM (which eventually gets cracked) or a donationware model, or good old fashioned guilt to get their money. Or take the Gaben approach and offer some kind of service to make people want to buy from you.

Ok. What if buy a game with a stupid DRM and want to play without it, so I download it?
What if a game, which i bought, is unplayable because of some patch or something like that? I have bioshock on steam, I needed to pirate it, because with latest patch game couldn't run. Also GTA San Andreas on steam, pirate version have higher fps and music cut from steam version.
Some games you can't buy today, or you can buy used copy in stupidly high price from another country(sometimes even 100€ for used game) Is this ok?

Publishers need to lower the prices for all their fn games, people are not stupid and will think better before they pirate. I believe if they set lower prices -50% wiil make more money with less marketing in mind.

No game worth 60€, it's ridiculous, i can eat for 10 days and i prefer it from a console port :)

I have friend who love games and he'd really love if he could buy games on steam, but he simply doesn't have money, neither job or rich parents, his parents are just too strict that if he asks them for money especially for spending on game, probably he'll get killed, so what should he do? rob a bank? not play games at all just because of you? you must learn to understand some people aren't rich like you, I'm just like you, I really dislike when somebody plays pirated game, especially my friend, but he doesn't have money what should he do, you must learn to understand people.

Lets be fair here most people pirate games because they dont know what the game will be like and if its a good game then people accually do buy them, but if its something shit like oh idk ASSASSINS CREED UNITY then they aint gonna buy it and prob just play the pirate version or removie it. pirating games is like a demo and its there for us to get a feel of the game and decide if its worth our money or not.

After spending a lot of money on games,i own 569 games on steam alon,and i use origin and uplay aswell,heres what i get,non existant support from steam,i needed them once and guy told me its their policy not to help.After that i havent bought a game from steam directly and i probably never will,unless im gonna get smth i really want for 1$.What i also get,are broken,unfinished,cutted in half(or more parts)games.So is piracy ok?I think its justifiable,maybe after hitting their wallets devs and publishers will learn to respect their customers.

I do what I want.

It's theft. Stop trying to take the moral high ground, you have none.

Piracy is...as i know,its recongnized as both as a game demo and extra copy,but also at same time a trap for users(cause some piracy sites has viruses and such you know),unoriginal content(a.k.a modified cause some copies are modified and give a different feeling),disrespect to devs(snice you do not buy the game but it depends on how it was good/bad) and so on. Remember Hotline Miami devs? They updated pirated copies of the game because they wanted to share it and they said it was sad that players didn't liked the bugged(pirated)version. This resulted in a boost of sales for this game,as users got happy hearing this good deed by those devs. DRM is used for...keeping the sales up,perventing potential players using em for free,protecting games and to pervent leaks of it. Thats why people call DRM and piracy bad. Both are different things. If a game is DRM free,that means it will be not only played without problems,but also pirated easier.
And the last thing: Due to this,Steam has a rule of no discussion of piracy of any sort(even as a joke),ranging from words like pirated copies,torrented,and other pirat-y things. Yes,ban is pernament. It may sound harsh,but thats a rule.

Think with me, I want to play Fallout 4, but in Brazil the price is R$ 249.99 and this is 1/3 of the minimum wage, if the game does not get cheaper, I will not buy, but I will play.

there is proverb here that greedy one pays double price.
just think what price would you pay if you pirate game ;)
regarding poll i just quote what Gabe Newell said:

Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable. Most DRM solutions diminish the value of the product by either directly restricting a customers use or by creating uncertainty.

Our goal is to create greater service value than pirates, and this has been successful enough for us that piracy is basically a non-issue for our company. For example, prior to entering the Russian market, we were told that Russia was a waste of time because everyone would pirate our products. Russia is now about to become our largest market in Europe.

I used to pirate a lof of games when I was younger ( a teenager) I keep doing it now, but is less common and usually if I rlly like the game i end up buying it to support a videogame that I like and because i think that they (the devs) deserve it.
What I dont support is the overprices AAA videogames that are a let down in the majority of the cases. Companies like EA, Ubisoft, Activision, etc that are only creating games in order to milk their consumers make me sick. ( besides their overpriced videogames that look all alike coughcallofdutycoughcoughassassinscreedcough..)

Game publishers are fucking greedy these days. Games become expensive, not everyone can afford 60 euro for new game. Also most pirates are teenagers from poor families. Let them enjoy the games. Is way better to download game from torrent than rob some one on the street and buy new game.

I been screwed over with half made titles enough where I just "try" a game. Most games I "try" end up either being deleted or I go out and buy it. Too often companies don't even try to make a good game or it ends up being a horrible console port or who knows what. So frankly I don't trust most game companies so I'll "try" their games out.

Also funny note, I'm an author of a few books (won't say the titles) and saw my books on a pirated site or two. I find it funny and don't care. I figure someone would buy a digital or paperback copy if they liked it so no big deal. My publisher wouldn't be pleased thus why I am keeping quiet about it.

The only thing i see there, is you just think your opinion and the one who shared it is the only one important and you are just here to comfort yourself in your ideals.
That apart, personnaly i don't need to pirate game since, like you said, with all the bundles and sales, there is no need to pirate when you have a bit of money and are a bit patient. If there is a game that just go out and is expensive, i won't buy it even if i want to play, i will just wait for its price to decrease until i can afford it... thoiugh it may be because i already have a lots of game so i don't feel the need to buy new ones when they get release. (but i have a hard time resisting the temptation of the witcher 3 and fallout 4 x.x) Personnaly i can understand some of the points of other who pirate so i give my personal opinion, not like we care anyway :

"It is not theft since the owner still have it" : yeah right, but its still stealing the companies who made the game, even if that is not something that is physical. When you go to the hair cutter, you pay the service, you don't just runaway like "hey you still have the skill to cut hair i didn't steal anything" right ?

"games are like a demo, we can't know if it is good or bad otherwise" : that is half true for me, even if games have reviews, testers and other thing, it will never be the exact same experience as the one you have yourself with your personnal hardware etc But THAT is for people who effectively buy the game after playing it a bit and found it was worth playing. There is people who just download the game, finish it, but will never buy it afterward... I don't see how it could be call a demo.
though as a personnal expericience, sometimes it may be better to pirate some gay to tried it, since some won't even work on your pc so youd buy a game you can't even play or use... in this case it is actually the company that is stealing you...

"i only pirate it if there is no possibility at that moment ( maybe cuz it's night ) to buy the game, next morning i pay the game or donate a bit to the developers". : yeaaaaaah sure, you totally can't wait for the night to pass to play a game... pull yourself together even if you pay it afterward, in the end i don't see the difference with people who pirated as a demo and buy it afterward, looking for excuses just put you in the same basket, i don't say it is right or wrong, just it seems your conscious part don't want to acknowledge that.

"games are too expensive 60€ for a games is too much" : Then you can play cheaper games and / or wait for prices to drop (sales and bundles are your friends !), sure it is expensive, especially in country with small wages... but did the one who created the games did it in your country with the same wages as you ? personnaly id love to drive in ferrari, but since i don't have the money i stick with my rusty car ;) you will probably use the argument of "yeah but it is not a physical copy we don't steal it" but hell, that dont' change the money they put in developping the game.

"its like lending a game to a friend" : there is a not-so-wellmade steam fonction for that i won't debate on that since there is already probable hundreds of topic on it on the net and some on SG :D But when you lend a game to a friend, you can't play it since you don't have it, thats quite different with pirated game wich are massively redistributed.

well i don't have much time and since i am tired i didn't make it too long and probably forget some reasons. most of the previous says were about "pirating is bad duh" but i still think there is exceptoin where we can download pirated game like :

• "companies are bitches who have crappy downloading systems wich is a shame in 2015" Example : my neighbour bought gta 5 rockstar key. Rockstar shitty downloader have atrocious download speed (between 8 kb and 25 kb/s and even with that few data, it paralyse all the internet of his house just to download that...) while he can download everything else at 250 kb/s without trouble. So he downloaded the pirated games due to the company atrocious customer service. Personnaly i think a big games (60 go) wich is probably one of the most wanted in the last years should have been handling beeter than that, they probably have lost customer that way...

• When you buy to play the game but you can't, because original version (drm, crappy downloading etc) make it don't work, downloading a pirate version that works is fine for me

But we also have to state that with steam refund system, now the "demo" reason lost quite of its argument (though i admit its easier to pirate game to see if it work that loosing time in procedure with steam)

I've pirated lots of games years ago..now when i can afford to spend money on games, look at my steam account.. 1200+ games..the pirated games are cut from multiplayer and updates, every time you need to download the new patch or version and apply it or install it like a new game..if you have the money you'll buy and play the games as they are, with all the features..if you dont you need to do lots of shit and pray for the release to be good without viruses :D (in my country the average payment is 200$ and the games are still 50euro...fucking standarts.. )

Unfortunately where I live (Argentina) the taxes for import articles (even digital) and the re-sellers price ( I dont have credit card) I have to paid like 10 times the price of a game , and my economic situation is very bad, so sometimes I play pirated games, but time to time I can afford a game on sale, let's say for example, I play a pirated game, like Skyrim for example, and I really loved, even I finish the game, but on sale I buy the game, and maybe play or maybe not, but if the game is or was good for me, I buy it, but if is another game, like Call Of Duty (Ghost, Advance Warfare) I will never pay 5 bucks for that sh**.

Yes i pirate games to try them out on my mid/lowish end machine. I was ready to pay full price for GTA5 until I discovered that my aging processor can't handle it no matter what settings I use. I deleted it and decided to wait until I get a new CPU.
Also years ago, I didn't have the means to purchase a game (in my country holding an international credit card is like having the blood of the unicorn) so the only way is to pirate. After I figured a way to buy games through steam, I decided to buy the games that I liked through it to support developers and collect achievements too :D .

So no, I don't think that it is an evil thing to do, or rather, it all depends on the intentions of the person pirating the game, if they are willing to buy it if they like it then that is nice otherwise no, pirating is not good.

TBH i used to pirate a lot , but was before knowing all the bundles and the big sales from the major websites, also before start studying I.T. and discovering botnets etc :p (you know, people usually dont do stuff for free, if someone is giving you a crack, it will have some kind of trojan in the 99.9% of the times) BTW im from Spain and you just have to take a look to our job salary... if you compare to the rest of the "Tier 1" of europe you will see why people just pirate stuff.... sad but true T.T

Warez4life

if the dev providing a demo, it might decrease the chance for their game being pirated since some ppl only want to know how good the game is. then on the other side of this piracy, they throw pre-purchase game to the market with discount and gimmick