What is the Definition of Pirating to You

[Cuddles]

To me it's not paying for a product that you should of bought.
Gaming Companies on the other hand seem to define Pirating as any Product that is downloaded via a File Sharing Program (aka: Bittorrent).

There is a problem with their definition when it comes to me because by their definition I'm a Pirate and a very bad one at that.
I like the Game Boxes and the Library I have. It's a matter of pride for me to walk into my Gaming Office and see the Collection I have built over a period of time. I'm the same way with my movies. I enjoy the fact that I know that these Games will be here 10 to 20 years and will still be pristine. In that respect I download almost every Game I have bought off of Bittorrent. I'm even going back to the older titles I have and downloading those. You know the Games you can't run anymore because of the deep scratches and godges but you keep for memory sake. Yeah, those games.
To me it is just easier (except for the Orange Box but that was just a load once and go so it was OK). My Games remain the same, I don't have to change out disks, etc. My kids can run any game, anytime they want, and I don't have to worry about my "investment" going down the drain. I used to use Game Jackal but Torrented Games are even easier to use than Game Jackal. What's more is once I have the downloaded the Game I just pass it around to my other computers.
There have been a few times when I have started a download before I bought but that's mainly because I couldn't get anyone to take me down to the store. It's kind of a pain in the ass to take me out so sometimes it might be a week or two after a Game comes out before I can get down there. In that case I would say I'm a Pirate but I'm also the guy who buys almost every current PC Game that has came out since I was last down at Best Buy. I'm thinking of going to New Egg and that would mean as soon as I hit purchase I would begin the download.

For the Gaming Corporations though they see millions of Torrents being launched and to them each and every one is a Pirated Copy going to some "jerk who never bought a game in his life". I don't think that's the truth. A lot of PC Gamers are old school Gamers who do use Torrents as a service for what they want. What the Gaming Corporations haven't taken into consideration is many of us have children, we do value the product we buy, and we want to have it years upon years down the road. We want the games to get easier to work with and not harder. What quite a few of these corporations haven't caught on is Torrented Copies do provide that service. Till the Corporations can provide that service I'll probably keep on Pirating by their definition.

I do understand that there is people out there who do steal and because they are getting a "free" product will not nor ever will buy anything that they can get for free but I have to wonder if some of those people who do "Pirate" are people just like me.


So what is your definition of Pirating?
Do you consider anybody who get's a game off of a Torrent a Pirate?
Am I a Pirate of the worst sort or do you consider what I do a legitimate practice or somewhere inbetween?
Do you do something simular or know of someone who does?
What about people who get a game off a Torrent that is no longer supported or can be bought? Is that person a Pirate?

 

[Morton]

Many decades ago there were too many critters belonging to a certain species. They were causing problems. The government decided to reduce their population. After a while it became obvious that the critters did have some positive effect on the environment, but their usefulness to the environment became obvious only after the critters were exterminated. I am sure that on a general level computer game pirates have some usefulness to the PC hardware industry and through them to the gaming industry too, and their usefulness might become obvious if piracy was removed in a wrong way.

 

[purplerat]

To me it's not paying for a product that you should of bought.
Gaming Companies on the other hand seem to define Pirating as any Product that is downloaded via a File Sharing program

I pretty much agree with you there as far as it being not paying for somthing you should have. Not all file sharing is what I would consider piracy. Dated titles, music to some degree, programs you already own or could own for free (I've downloaded programs that my college offered for free because I didn't feel like getting then having to return the CDs). Downloading a game you've bought is not going to get you in trouble with gaming companies. The mistake people make is that they continue to share these files after they've downloaded them which is a whole other situation.
But for game companies I think it's safe for them to assume that every unauthorized download of a game is a pirated one (for newer ones at least, id shouldn't be counting Doom II downloads this way). Let's be honest, if a game like Far Cry 2 is downloaded 100,000 times how many are really not pirated? I doubt it's any number really worth considering. Even 1000 would only make up 1%.
To Morton's point I hardly see hackers, crackers and pirates as becoming an endangered species. I've argued to protect file sharing rights and the rights of individuals to do as they please with data in their own homes in other threads despite my anti-piracy stance. But I don't think the gaming industry viewing unauthorized downloads as being negative to their industry as a faux pas on their end. It seems to me that they actually accept some of it to some degree (do they really have a choice?) so I don't see their stance as something to hit them on.

 

[Morton]

But I don't think the gaming industry viewing unauthorized downloads as being negative to their industry as a faux pas on their end. It seems to me that they actually accept some of it to some degree (do they really have a choice?) so I don't see their stance as something to hit them on.

We might never have any real clue about the whole issue because we would need to know quite exactly what types of costs does development of a game involve. From one viewpoint, it might be sufficient for a game company to get back the money that was spent on developing a game without making any extra profit. Their most valuable resource is the talented and creative programmers, designers and developers, many of whom have really good salaries. If game sales cover the costs of making a game, then the company can afford to start a new project and continue to employ the workers. From another viewpoint, companies want to grow and it's obvious that their profits must be higher than game development costs before there can be any growth.

To be honest, I think PC game piracy is a minor issue as long as it mainly troubles the marketing team and not the developer team at a game company.

 

[purplerat]

We might never have any real clue about the whole issue because we would need to know quite exactly what types of costs does development of a game involve.

Developers know exactly what the cost of developing a game is. It's actually very easy to determine. But obviously they would never release those numbers any more than any other industry would. I can tell you from my own personal work experience that it's often easier to determine the cost to develop a program than it is to make a pizza.

Where piracy hits game companies is not really in the number of sales it takes to cover development costs. Companies can fairly well forecast how many people will initially buy their game and thus set costs accordingly. But the real profit (and remember profit is why games are made, not keeping programmers employed or gamers enjoyed) is made in those secondary sales after costs have been covered and the initial price dropped to entice people who initially wouldn't have bought the game. This is where I think piracy really hits them hard. If a game isn't received all that great those latter buyers will be reluctant to buy and more likely to pirate. But if the game is a success it's likely to be pirated even more heavily and make it into the hands of those secondary customers before they would normally buy it. These are the people who aren’t hardcore pirates, but rather the casual pirates who actually can be convinced or at least persuaded (even if it’s passive like DRM) to buy rather than pirate.