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I have to say...I'm somewhat regretful I made this post about THG, now I wish I made it strictly about piracy!!

I don't care whether you buy games or not, I care whether you steal them. Some of you seem to really take it personally that I feel piracy is a bad thing...I'm surprised that while some of you attack my opinion on piracy none of you have tried to claim that it isn't hurting the industry, which just adds fuel to argument that you guys don't give a #$%$ and that's the real reason why you steal...

Wrong. I can honestly tell you that when I download pirated games that it doesn't hurt the industry. If its a game that I download to try before buying then its likely a game I never would have bought without actually trying it first. Demos generally suck and don't provide a good insight into the game.

I honestly don't care if you think its stealing or if you think I'm unethical for doing it. I buy games that I feel are good and am therefore supporting, not hurting the gaming industry. There's the alternative of never downloading games but then I would also buy far less than I currently do. So in other words, guys like me HELP the industry not hurt it since my downloads are converted to purchases if the game is worthy of such.

In response to the DRM argument. I would argue that DRM hurts more than it helps the game industry. I will never download or buy Bioshock based on the fiasco they caused in order to "prevent" piracy. Hell, I won't even pirate it because I don't want to waste my time with a game who's publisher is more concerned about making a few extra bucks than providing good customer service.

Man, you just don't get it. Everybody agrees that it's hurting the industry, so why debate it? The real debate is what to do about it and obviously most here agree that DRM is not the solution. While I don't agree with those who download to try, that's not even the big area where piracy hurts the gaming industry. We can sit here and debate the ethics or morals of such practices, but like DRM doing so just takes the focus off the real issue.

Unfortunatly I think many in the gaming industry feel the same way. They don't care if people want to buy their product, instead focusing more on how many want to steal it. What would you prefer if you were a game developer, selling 1,000,000 copies of a game and have 1,000,000 more pirated or selling 100,000 copies and only 50,000 pirated?

im not stealing if i download a game..... check out the definition of theft...http://www.swarb.co.uk/acts/1968TheftAct.shtml

1) its a copy so im not depriving anyone of it, also i dont keep them permanently i go out and buy them if there good, or delete them if bad.
2) i do not gain anything (well apart from whether or not the game is good enough for my hard earned cash)

im doing the industry a favor by only buying games that deserve to be bought, im filtering out the crap and keeping the innovative and original publishers in the game(no pun intended), survival of the strongest.

EDIT

theres one other thing i would like to say in regards to DRM...

because of DRM i can no longer buy a PC game then get a refund when its not good.

I recently got a new PC (basically in order to play Crysis) with Vista. I was getting a little bored so I decided to install an older game I have: Rainbow Six Lockdown (pretty bad game in itself). This game is protected by the infamous Starforce copy protection, which I had forgotten; it's not on the box. After installing, Vista will detect the driver that was installed and decide it is not compatible or some such and refers you to the Starforce website.

Uninstalling the game leaves the driver behind which will be detected every time you boot Vista. So this copy protection comes back to haunt you in the future and keeps you dependent on the continued existence of the CP company to maintain it. I downloaded the removal program from Starforce, which seems to have worked; but otherwise I'd probably have had to resort to a registry edit to get rid of it.

That's why I absolutely detest copy protection.

I hate to have to put DVD's in my drive for absolutely no other reason than copy protection. When hard drives were about the same size as CDs, data usually wasn't copied completely to HD, but these days everything is always copied to your HD.

I don't normally pirate games, but I made an exception for CoD4. It costs 58 euros in my regular game store. Crysis (and most other new games) costs 45. That's a whopping 28.8% difference in price. Why is that? For CoD4's lengthy single player campaign? I don't play games online anymore and I refuse to pay premium plus for a game with one of the shortest SP campaigns ever.

Have you checked the reactions around your post? Apparently there's quite some people not agreeing that particular point. I think most if not all of them are just trying to justify their behavior, which is getting something for free that they know the creators are trying to sell. That is the dilemma and by just getting it without paying for it they are screwing the demand and supply system. If people think that the game is too expensive then don't buy it, but don't play it either! No demand? prices will go down, or games will become better so that people want to spend that kind of money on their games.

This is indeed the crux of the matter. On the one hand I fully agree with you here, purplerat. Business logic dictates to go for the big sale regardless of how many will pirate the game.

However, that system is instable in the long run if you do that unchecked. As we are seeing around us (and in this topic) you see two groups, people that want to pay for it, and people that don't want to pay for it or only if it is really really good (in my mind that is the same thing as not wanting to pay for it because what is good and what is not is a very subjective thing, and moreover, by knowing that it is available for free the actual customer value of it goes down significantly, it becomes like shareware and we all know how commercially succesful that is). So even people that do want to pay for it upfront start rebelling because others are just playing the same thing for free. At this moment industry is responding by keeping prices up or increasing them even and trying to get more bucks out of the people that remain willing to pay for it. How long will that go on if they do not uphold appearances to try and battle piracy? And is anyone in the industry caring about how fair that is to the people that are still willing to pay for it?

And that is my biggest concern...what is going on now in the PC gaming business is making honest people not care anymore and switch over to pirating themselves. It makes me sad (not that those here boasting on their piracy will give a damn..). Industry is in part to blame for this, for wanting to sell stuf that they cannot properly market but then again who can if people refuse to play by the rules? We either need new rules or we need enforcement of current rules. Anything in between just does not fly.

Greetings!

There are pirates (organizations or individuals), the ones with financial motives to break the law, and then there are home based freeloaders, and those will give any excuse for downloading stuff.
Pirates are already geneally regarded as nocive, the surge in freeloading activities since the boom of broadband make them even worse.
Both pirates and freeloaders are parasites of the system. They parasite the content creators made, the work publishers did and the paying customers effort.
Both classes need to be dealt with.

And what is your proposal on how to deal with them? Try to be practical please, (for instance) give some thought as to how you can prosecute or prohibit pirates in a cost effective way without bothering legit customers.

Greetings!

Pirates must be dealt through law enforcement agencies and courts, as the current situation.
Freeloaders rely on broadband for their activities, the three-strike policy being equationated in France, UK and Australia seem to be the best approach. Unlike some reports suggest, ISPs do not need to inspect every packet, instead they can rely on tips from copyright holders to strike its users.

In the end, pirates and freeloaders will always exist but the impact of their activities will diminish.

do what the canadian songwriter's association wants.. charge every canadian an extra 5$ a month because some ppl download, but everyone is guilty! no need for prosecution!

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleN [...] hub=Canada

of course, the songwriters will probably get squat and the money will go to the big businesses.

Flakes - are you a lawyer? Thought not.

You're wrong, by the way.

you dont say how so.

In the UK, downloading copyrighted software/movies/music is a CIVIL offence and NOT a criminal offence.

SELLING pirated things is a criminal offence.

And it is not theft under UK law, as theft is defined in UK law thusly:

The Theft Act 1968 Section1 (1) states that a person is guilty of theft if: he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.

As you are not depriving anyone of anything when you copy a game, it is NOT theft.

Anyway....

DRM only really affects legitimate consumers. *They* are the ones that will hit Bioshocks install limit etc.

When I bought X3:Reunion, the starforce virus contained on the software would not allow my legit copy to run - I had to download a cracked executable to run it!!

The same has happened with a really old game from my collection I tried to play, protected by Securom, although I forget the name of the game now. Again, a cracked EXE was needed to get it to run.

And yet, as a pirate, you just download the game, copy the EXE, and run it. Its actually simpler than owning it!! DRM *ONLY* hurts legit customers.


EVERY game and film and album released WILL get pirated to some extent. DRM DOES NOT prevent this. These companies may as well not fill their games with DRM, saving them Securom/Safedisc/Starforce licensing costs, reducing support issues, and then control the multiplayer aspects of their games and patch delivery with a serial.

This is what Stardock do, with games like Sins of a Solar Empire, and it works well. They treat piracy almost like free advertising, a demo of their game being put out there. The number of people that want the patch (for new units or bug fixes) or the multiplayer features and end up buying it would surprise you