I'm looking to actually do some work in terms of surveying individuals on piracy with some in-depth questions, but for compiling large amounts of data, it's always good to have some pre-determined answers for any of your survey questions. My intentions for doing so are purely my own curiosity, but once I eventually put a survey together, I intend to share it with you folks (the survey itself, and the compiled results). Basically, think of this as a pre-survey survey so I can have a greater understanding of what sorts of questions I should ask, how I should format them, etc.

So, with that in mind, let me ask you guys some questions. I'll just number them, and in your responses if you number them as well that would be helpful. If you could be as detailed as possible, and try to break down your answers into a few points, that would also be helpful.

1. Do you object to piracy? If so, why? Try to determine if your objections are morally based, financially/legally, etc. This is the core question I want to really focus on, so try to think of as many reasons as possible, situational objections, etc.

2. Have you pirated games in the past? If so, how often? How long ago? Did you ever purchase the games?

3. If you said yes to 1, do you consider piracy to be better, the same, or worse than stealing a game from the vendor? Also please focus on details and break down your argument into points as much as possible.

4. If you said no to 1, would you defend piracy? If so, what is your argument in support of piracy? Do you feel that your argument would apply for only a limited number of situations, or is it all encompassing?

I'll be looking to setup an in-depth survey within the next couple of weeks, after which I'll compile all the data into a database and setup a site for displaying the results. As for participants, this will likely just be an online survey, although I'm going to try to get participants from various online communities to participate.

Thanks guys.

I don't like piracy as it drives developers away from the PC as a gaming platform. I've never pirated games in the past, and I don't plan on doing it anytime soon. I would say piracy isn't as bad as stealing the physical copy of the game off the shelf, but I'm pretty sure that'd be the responsibility of the retailer anyways, not the developer.

So do you object to piracy on the basis that it's hurting the developers financially? Or just due to the fact that they'd be developing less PC games? That is to say, if they continued to develop just as many PC games, but were making less margins, would you still find it objectionable?

1. I object to piracy. It's stealing fools! If you can't afford something, tough! I use openoffice on the grounds I don't want to give any more cash to M$ than I already did for Vista Ultimate!

2. Never Pirated a game. Once I did a registry hack to play Diablo2 with a mate, but we had a disk each (2disk game) and were in the same room, I just needed to change the serial key in regedit so we could play each other. Still needed the disk in though. Kinda pirating though I guess? I'd not really thought about it...

3. I consider stealing a copy to be a fraction worse, but not a lot.

1) I object to 'piracy,' which is theft and reselling for profit.
As far as copying, downloading, and cracking games, I am a very active participant.
I don't really see this as a moral issue.
It's true that I've managed to find the money to buy a $2000 computer system, but I'm also a full time student working part time. The ease of use in getting PC games for free is balanced by the fact that, if I couldn't find cracked games, I would spend less time putting off studying. There is a line nowadays that I won't cross, because it directly reduces my ability to be a student: buying games or a console.

As far as the 'piracy' movement is going with games, movies, music, I feel that it's not just one sided. Many gamers feel completely alienated by the rootkits, propaganda, buggy drivers, and invasiveness that is thrust into our lives by the industries for which we have been patrons. Sometimes that youthful anger takes over and we stand up and say "**** you." I haven't bought a CD or Dvd in years.

2) I pirate games all the time. I have so many game Isos on my computer now that I've yet to find the time to install. Many of them (think Gothic 3) make me very glad I didn't waste the money to buy.

I've also bought Morrowind for the Xbox and PC a total of three times. Now I've smartened up and backed up my disks, but I suspect that might be considered 'piracy' nowadays.

3) Downloading games online is dramatically different than stealing from a vendor.
The instore game cost money to package, ship, and stock in the store. Stealing from them hurts both the store and the developer, while also putting you at risk of jail time.
Piracy is done almost entirely by volunteers who are eager to share things. People seed and download all by themselves without any negative intent (except the media companies that upload false torrents, viruses, etc). It's not hard to see how, from the view of serial 'pirate' gamers, releasing cracked games is a kindness done for no other reason than to gratify cheapskates like me.

4) Ideally, everything would be free, and publishers would develop the software for no other reason than entertaining or educating people; think Linux.
However, in a endless profit-driven model, where corporate entities have only one goal: squeeze every penny out of anyone that is dumb enough to buy something, 'piracy' has had positive effects:
1) Lowered the price of games (supply and demand)
2) Made the vast arrays of games out there available for quick plays, without the inconvenience of paying thousands. This facilitates the free spread of culture, and I suspect would improve the quality of products from future designers.

Sorry for the essay. For those anti-piracy lackeys, don't bother flaming me. I probably won't be checking up on this.

Crikey! Do I ever feel like a saint now!

And in reference to your point 4, you work full time and not get paid and try to make a game halfway as good as the likes of HL, GTA, Crysis etc. Oh, and afford food, housing, bills etc.

1) No.
2) No.
3) Stealing from a Vendor directly harms the Vendor. There is multiple Vendors that sell the same item thus creates a competitive arena for my sale. With Games and Movies that is not the case. A lot of the times the Game you may purchase does not live up to what is advertised thus giving the person a feeling of being ripped off.
4) Till there is a general feeling that each game needs to meet a certain standard and a Playable Demo or trial period then expecting others to not to Pirate is being unreasonable. The Gaming Industry needs to reacess the changing nature of the Industry and like the Music Industry must change to meet that changing nature. I don't Pirate but I do download Cracks so I can install the Games onto my Hard Drive so I don't have to switch out my Disks. PC Gaming is different from Console Gaming and needs to be treated differently. Make it easier to buy the game and play it than Pirating the game and Pirating will go down. It's about that easy.

1. Do you object to piracy? If so, why? Try to determine if your objections are morally based, financially/legally, etc. This is the core question I want to really focus on, so try to think of as many reasons as possible, situational objections, etc.

I Do Object to piracy, but i still do it. i dont have alot of money to spend on games, as far as i can see the developer has not lost any money from me because i couldnt afford the game anyway, however if i do come accross a game i like i will generally go out and buy that game.

2. Have you pirated games in the past? If so, how often? How long ago? Did you ever purchase the games?

i have a large LEGAL game collection, i have over 40 games for a PS2, and around 50+ games which i legally bought for my PC, currently i am running two pirate games (C&C3 which im saving up for and Doom 3 after something here peaked my interest)

3. If you said yes to 1, do you consider piracy to be better, the same, or worse than stealing a game from the vendor? Also please focus on details and break down your argument into points as much as possible.

i think this has been covered in many threads within toms, and you will find MANY points made by myself and other forum users.


4. If you said no to 1, would you defend piracy? If so, what is your argument in support of piracy? Do you feel that your argument would apply for only a limited number of situations, or is it all encompassing?


i dont defend piracy, but i also dont view it as wrong, i think in certain situations it can benefit the Game companies, in others it can completly destroy them, one of the reasons i download games however is because i can get the full games and all patches in under 20 min (20MB connection, on newsgroups) now i wish that companies would take advantage of this network and supply games on this network, imagine downloading a game in less than 20 min playing it through for 60 minutes then asking you if you would like to buy the serial to continue playing (i would buy more games like this), it annoys me that Steam seems to max out at 500Kbps on my internet when its capable of 2000Kbps.

off topic.

one of my biggest complaints is the numbers that companies throw around, The most recent being the COD4 fiasco of 70% well that figure had to be blown out of proportion, i was reading on about the Profile hack to max your levels, and it requires you to change your CD-KEY think how many people would of done this and how many legal games would of been reported as pirate games, figures are useless numbers till you look at the picture as a whole.

Howdy all, well to the first point I think most people object to piracy on principle. But that principle is based on "what the man tells us to believe". For example, software piracy doesnt prevent software companies from paying the designers, coders, artists, etc etc, as these are all done on a contract basis and get paid well in advance of the software going on general sale. So they get paid irrespective of whether it sells 1 or 1million copies.

I've been actively designing and coding for years, and I do it because I enjoy the feeling of having my work used by others. Not for the financial gain I may get (which is minimal anyways). If I didnt get paid for it, I'd do it for fun anyway.

It is the distribution side of it that causes the issues here. They have a target to meet and it has nothing to do with the bleeding heart/morality side of things. It is purely and simply down to the bottom line. If they dont sell X-amount of copies then the shareholders will have a hissy and some lowly underpaid lacky will get the boot.

Pirating games for most people is a by product of the ridiculous nanny state we all subscribe to. A designer of a game will get less than 1% of its retail sales cost, so why would it put us guys out of a job? And dont for one second buy into the bull these bigwigs are flooding around that it'll spell an end to the gaming industry - will it indeed <shakes his head in disbelief> Just go online and see for yourselves the gaming community who are creating amazing games for free.....YES I said FREE.

Piracy is a by product of corporate prostitution and the unsuspecting members of the public (the gaming fraternity) are the johns being subjected to forced extortion. Did GTA 4 really cost so much as to warrant a £40 plus price tag??? Or was it that the corporate leeches played on the fact of the unrequited desire of the public to have this game that they would fork out whatever amount to have it. Cue ebay and the £100 price ticket pre-release copies.

I have pirated games in the past, merely due to the fact that I wanted to see if I could crack them.

Theft is theft in the eyes of the law. A strange moral dilema, but, stealing from a shop has to be viewed differently to copying. To compare the two would be doing exactly the type of thing that governments/businesses around the world do to justify the ridiculous prices we have to pay for things.

A shop has to pay a set price for the game, so therefore the distributor has already been paid. To steal from the shop you are just ripping off the vendor and that is not right.

If they set everything at a reasonable price in the first place and explained exactly where the money went to I think you would see a big difference, but they wont because they'd have to justify the thousands % mark up that went to filling the shareholders/fat-cats bank balance.

1. Yes, I object to Piracy for financial reasons. Whenever piracy takes place it encourages the piracy culture. This both increases the perception of lost sales by the company that made it and generally (bit torrent or P2P) makes it even more available to other pirates. Regardless of whether you ever WOULD have bought the game you are harming the industry by pirating it. However, I believe that stopping piracy is pretty much impossible so figuring out why people pirate and what would encourage them to buy is more important than trying to brute force stop piracy.

2. In my poorer college years I did pirate quite a bit, but I also tried to buy games whenever I could. I haven't pirated a game for 3 years now and purchase anything I play.

3. Piracy is a much more minor crime than shoplifting, but probably hurts the industry more (and the vendor less).

4. I defend piracy in so much as I think some people are overly aggressive against it while ignoring the bigger problem and any possible solutions.

I think Info sums it up very nicely there. Good post, that man. Have a banana.

1.) Yes, I object to piracy in most instances. Piracy's financial impact is questionable in my opinion, but I don't think there is any question about its discouraging nature to the developers and executives of game companies. I think it hurts the industry as a whole and find it unfortunate.

2.) Yes, I've installed the occasional obscure or older game at LAN parties. The most recent was probably 8 months ago. I did buy a couple of them, but most of the games I've never seen in a retail outlet or online shop(Granted I didn't search overly hard for most of them).

3.) I'd consider it worse. Shoplifting is accounted for in a business plan by the vendors and is easily countable. Pirating on the other hand is largely uncounted and leaves the damage it does open for interpretation.

It hampers the consumers ability to perform quality control more than anything else in the industry. People say they use it as a form of quality control, but it does the exact opposite. Here is an example.

A developer or publisher sees figures showing X pirated copies of their game and it looks as though they have made a successful(In that it has many users) game, but are not getting paid for it. If they see low sales and low usage the message is clear. They've made a crappy game.

4.) N/A as I said yes to 1

1) No, because people like me who don't earn any money can get stuff for free. And modern society sucks. I want to trade bread for new shooting games. Teenagers who get pregnant should have

2) All my games were bought or given to me.

3) Piracy isn't like stealing from a shop, because you don't get the box and manual and stuff. Also, there could be a whole lot of stuff missing like textures and languages. Pirating software isn't shoplifting in a sense, because it's just making copies of a particular media instead of physically stealing from the shop, although I agree with day12340 that business plans have measures to deal with these situations.


Although on a side note, I've downloaded singles from Limewire of artists that I like, and then go out to buy them. All in all, I have bought more songs than illegally downloaded them. Also, most of it is trance, and compared to 'urban' and 'R&B' *spits* it is still pretty much an underground genre, so songs circulating around help to grab attention of people. For example, I was trawling through some dance music and found out Armin van Buuren's new album Imagine was coming out. I downloaded 'Going Wrong,' and liked it. I decided to look more for his songs and found out that A State of Trance 2007 was out, so I got that. On the first CD, I heard 'One Wish' by Evbointh which I really liked so I bought the single. Turned out that the producer was in fact only 17 years old and just starting out to my suprise. And of course, when he releases more stuff, I'd buy it because I like his style. Although this can't really apply to games since they are more significant in themselves and people wouldn't 'try' a game and then decide to buy it again just to have the same experience. In my opinion, some companies deserve to be pirated (¬.¬ ... William Gates V3) because of their selfish monopoly and disgustingly bloated software. I can't believe I'm even using Vista, but upgrading's a helter-skelter up the bum for me.
So the moral is:

"Extend mp3 preview to whole song, copied games are sinful and pointless, release wild cats with EMP tags into Microsoft HQ"
- Ancient Chinese proverb

Hi everyone I am new to the forums, but I do have my take on piracy. As you all know piracy has been around for a long time. Yes I used to pirate games all the time, now that I see whats happening to the PC platform, I totally disagree and want to apologize to all the gaming vendors out there for my faults. As you all also know when piracy first came about it was on the amiga and commodore 64/128 platforms. It was indeed slow at that time. Then came PCs ect.... Then pirating got worse and worse. As you all know, Grand Theft Auto IV got cracked. Now believe it or not, If the PC platform does get phased out, there will be alot of angry people that will then crack xbox360, PS3, and probably all platforms. To me, those games for the consoles are way over priced and I know people will find a way to crack them. What I am trying to say is cracking games is not just happening to PC games, its happening to all the platforms. It started out slow for amiga, 64/128, PC ect... Now its starting out slow for consoles as well. It will get worse. So in other words, if these gaming vendors think that going to the consoles will stop piracy they are seriously mistaken. I just hope they realize that before its too late. Piracy will get worse.

Yes i do object alot to piracy, because legally (at least in my country) you need to have profit from it, to be called piracy. If you dont thats a diferent ball game.

I didnt make any money in copying it, but yes i got it from a multitude of sources. That were worth the money, i bought. The list isnt huge but there are some. Strangely most of them comes from the same software houses. Means that many games are made, but few are worth it.

First - In software the bussiness rolls in a completely diferent way. As the packaging of the product and the distribuition of the product has a really low value compared to his profit/value games that arent sold, are returned/changed. So i feel hardly guilty for a store that pull huge monthly profits. Really. Worked there, done that, seen it all.

Second - In a developer/software house view. Well, i dont feel guilty. Their bussiness model sucks. You shouldnt use the normal ways of distribuition. Its a bussiness model that WILL crash due to piracy, DRM and above all stupidity. Itunes and other similar companies showned the way. Time to adapt. I wont pay 60€ for a game that i mildly enjoy. But i would pay 5€ for a serial number and a version you can download. Again the problem is bussiness model. So i dont feel sorry for them.

My argument is partially said in the questions before. I wont buy a game that i will enjoy for 30 mins or 1 hour. I call it trying it. Im not going to buy overpriced Hype. I get enough hype from hardware. Dont need that crap from software.
One, i defend piracy, because i only bought games that i got from another ways in the first place.
Two, piracy is human curiosity at its best. So i defend it.


Final Thoughts.

The problem isnt piracy, but the bussiness model. And the more DRM crap they put the more i Negate their product as a consumer. I am no thief, i just dont liek to waste money in crap. Overhyped or not. Dont say piracy will end the PC gaming because honestly the ONLY console that ISNT chipped atm is the PS3, because honestly, the isnt good games for it, and most people look at it as cheap blue ray player. Not as a gaming console.

The rest ? Chip it and copy away !!!!

1. Do you object to piracy? If so, why? Try to determine if your objections are morally based, financially/legally, etc. This is the core question I want to really focus on, so try to think of as many reasons as possible, situational objections, etc.

Yes I object to piracy, based on the fact that I believe it to be unethical, and because it is illeagal (whether it is stealing or copywrite violation or whatever it does not matter to me because it is illeagal)

2. Have you pirated games in the past? If so, how often? How long ago? Did you ever purchase the games?

Yes a few years ago I made a burned copy of a game my friend had, but after awhile I felt guilty so I snaped the burned disc in half and through it in the trash and I ordered the game on line. However other then that I buy all my games.

3. If you said yes to 1, do you consider piracy to be better, the same, or worse than stealing a game from the vendor? Also please focus on details and break down your argument into points as much as possible.

personaly I don't see much difference between piracy and shoplifting, I guess piracy seems to be more socially aceptable, but that in my opinion is a big part of the problem, people just don't understand that it is wrong

4. If you said no to 1, would you defend piracy? If so, what is your argument in support of piracy? Do you feel that your argument would apply for only a limited number of situations, or is it all encompassing?

I would never defend piracy, If you can't afford a game go get a job save your money until you can buy it, gaming is a hobby or passtime not a right. I know that there are bigger problems in the world but I still cannot defend an activity that is against the law.