Torrents and piracy

tjosborne

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just to be clear, im not wanting to pirate any games. im just curious as to how all the games get on these sites. all i see on forums like this is a huge dislike in piracy because its ruining pc gaming. but, and i may be wrong, dont the legitimate buyers have to upload the games to make these sites work? i just dont understand it. then everybody gets pissed off because some of the better games dont come to pc, or the drm is horrible. if they are uploaded by the purchasers, i dont get the point. you pay, and others play free? and then pc is no longer its own platform, just a machine for half-assed ports. just curiosity, i just dont get it.
 

rpg_poser

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I think HexIT could answer your question better, but there are groups who hack/crack games for the challenge and/or to make money by selling the pirated games at a price lower the shelf prices. These groups either have members willing to seed torrents or pass off digital images to others who can. Sometimes the hacks/cracks are distributed as separate downloads.
This has been going on ever since a game was put on a floppy disk. Some of the groups (like Team17?, poor example?, IDK) have been around for many years.

TLDR - for some money and a challenge.
 

mercer95

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one person will buy the game and then "crack" it, then they upload it to torrent sites like thepiratebay etc. then when people download the game they are also uploading the game to other people. i have pirated a few games in the past but for example i downloaded Skyrim to see how well my computer would run it and it ran it fine so i bought the game within 20mins, it really isn't worth pirating games you don't get any support, updates and cant play multiplayer. with the exception of old games that you cant find anywhere like diablo 1.
 
There's groups of people that work at cracking games. Why? I don't know. I think they are probably sponsored by torrent sites.

Once cracked, they get uploaded on torrent sites, and those sites make tons of cash from all the hits they get. Seriously, Pirate Bay makes a boat load of cash. Pirating - or at least distributing pirated content - is a business. Their business is to provide excellent service (ie: free, easy to aquire content) and in return they make money off the millions of page hits and advertisements.
 
Pirating software has been around much longer than torrents. They were spread by BBS's, usenet, and FTP long before torrents. Early on in the PC industry I believe most hacking was done just as a hobby - to see if it could be done. Today, I see it as more of a cost savings (read as free) software becaus epeople are too lazy to work for the money needed to purchase the game.
 
That's not at all a fair assesement Hawkeye. The vast majority of pirating happens in places like India and China where the average wage is completely pathetic compared to our minimum wage in western countries. On top of that the games/software are rarely any cheaper if not more expensive in some cases. Saying they're too lazy to work for the money needed when some people work 10 hour days for $5 USD is just wrong.

As for people that can afford the software, then yeah they pirate probably because they can in many cases. That is bad, obviously.

Anyway the issue is huge. I wrote a pretty big blog post on it and referenced a very very well written (and loooong) article about it. If anyone's interested my blog is linked in my profile.
 


Sorry, I was gneralizing about the USA, not foreign countries. Most pirates I know make a good sum of money. If they can afford to build a $2000.00+ gaming rig surely $50 isn't too much for a game.
 
Whether or not they can afford it, does that give them the right to steal it? I find on the front page articles, there are a lot of people that feel they have a right to play any game released, and if they can't afford it, they feel that gives them the right to steal it.

I don't see how people can think that way. If they can't afford it, get a new hobby (or sport) to play.
 

mercer95

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but why should some people loose out on entertainment because they are not as wealthy as you?? and i wouldn't say that its stealing, more like duplicating.
 
video games are a luxury, having a PC powerful enough to play the said games is also a luxury. Not all people can afford luxury, but it does not mean they don't want to experience luxury, everybody does. So, how can you experience luxury without paying for it? You have your answer in the title of this thread.

Piracy is a criminal act, the funny part is that many people don't realize and see it as petty thievery or not at all. But the same concept of luxury can be applied to a lot of commodities - expensive watches, handbags, cars, houses, jewelry, etc. The problem is that out of the things I listed, all those are material things, if you steal them, the authorities have proof of you owning it in physical space.
Video Games are software, they only exist as information stored on some medium, so technically, the software is non-physical entity, which leads some people to not consider stealing software the same as stealing a car. But fact of the matter is software is still property, even if virtual or informational only, and it's still theft.

The whole concept of software/video game piracy is so rampant is because the authorities have trouble establishing the fact that you actually stole it reliably. Say you steal a car, they catch you in that car, the proof is undeniable. But with software it's tricky. First of all, you can erase the software from your harddrive and then overwrite the data on top, at that point there will be no proof that you ever had the stolen property. Another intricacy that I'm not sure how it will stand up in court is this - pirated software is technically already altered software, plus it's distributed from a place that is not associated with the legal software owner. Basically speaking, if a person is to go on a torrent site and download cracked software, if brought up in court they can say in their defense "I downloaded the software from the internet (the service I paid for) free of charge, there was no note stating that I have to pay for it" It's true that such statement goes out the window once you install the software and click Agree on the EULA screen. So, maybe this is a bit convoluted but I hope it makes sense to some as to where I was going with this idea. Again, I'm not a lawyer, if there's been rulings on such thing, I'd appreciate somebody informing me.

Interesting thing I find is the following, say a TV series airs on public television. There are websites that record those episodes and put them up for download for free. I mean, ok the episode aired, you paid for your TV to watch it, why should you not be able to record it to watch at a later time? I know that the TV companies have gone after people who downloaded these recorded episodes to watch because they were unable to make the time to watch it during the time it was airing. I find that baffling.

 


Why do you feel entitled to play a game you can't afford? You don't need the game to survive, it doesn't even give a positive influence on your life. It is entertainment and there are plenty of other forms of entertainment out there that is a lot cheaper. You don't need to spend money for entertainment. Though the reality is, video games are pretty cheap. $50 for 100+ hours of entertainment in many cases amounts to 50 cents and hour.

You stealing it, or as you say, duplicating it, takes money from those who created the game. That means they have to cut corners in production of their games in order to make money. If all the thieves would stop stealing and buy the software, more of these games would not be riddled with bugs or would have more content. More games would also be available on the PC instead of being catered to consoles.

In my country, I'm certainly not wealthy. I don't go out and steal high performance cars because I feel that since I am not wealthy enough to buy one, I deserve to steal it. I live without it and get what I can afford.
 

mercer95

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personally i can afford to buy games and i do buy games but only because it makes for a better experience, you have company's such as EA and blizzard that squeeze every penny out of you with DLC's and in game content. i agree that you don't need games or entertainment to survive but hey it makes life a lot better and enjoyable, entertainment is what separates us humans from apes. and yes the are other forms of entertainment but why should people be restricted!?

as for "You stealing it, or as you say, duplicating it, takes money from those who created the game." your wrong, if people who cannot afford a game pirate it, what difference does it make to the developers? at the end of the day the developers are still selling the same amount of copy's, it just so happens that other people have got a limited version of the game, many a time a have pirated, a game played it and decided that i wanted more so i bought it. so in a way pirating helps the developers.

here is a song by one of my favorite artist hopefully after viewing a few of his videos you might come around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MtZGB5dWLE
 


There are plenty of people that steal, who could afford it. Just because some people steal because they truely can't afford it, many other steal because they can, and find a way to justify it.

If they can't afford it, there are probably more important things for them to do, and they wouldn't have a computer able to play it anyways.
 


The further in I've read that article, the more pirates piss me off and anger me.
 


Yeah, and the thing is they mostly hurt PC gaming compared to consoles which is extra bad for us - and also kind of ridiculous. I mean so many PC vs Console arguments end up with "consoles are cheaper for the same experience", yet apparently these cheap asses can afford to buy all their games while PC gamers, spending many times more on their PC than a console, can't be arsed to make a purchase.

Bleh.
 

heero yuy

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i buy a game
then pirate it
why?
cause drm always messes with me if i install it without any form of drm removing stuff
strange drm is there to stop pirates
yet... the only people who have a problem with drm are the people who actualy buy the game
why dont the companys realise that their drm does nothing and just focus on better games instead of anti legal user software?