Piracy Megathread: Do you object to piracy, and if so, why? - Page 2

I never said my objections were based on morals, nor am I trying to force my morals on others. I think what you're doing and advocating is damaging to the gaming industry. Then again I'm not one to go around complaining about the poor state of PC gaming or DRM.

From an econ standpoint, (Having taken Econ this past year at my U) piracy is a sunk cost. What is a sunk cost? Its something that already will take some of your economic profict once you start producing that product.

I agree that most pirates do not download and then go pay to play if the game is good. This holds true for singleplayer. Not so for multiplayer.

Multiplayer level piracy steps up from simple .iso burning and crack installation. It steps up to actually finding a working CD key that's not in use. Yes there are keygens widely available but the point is that multiplayer pirating takes more time. (This is where anti-piracy protection actually works, to an extent). So this is where (if the game is good) a pirate will go and purchase the game. (I'm talking average level pirate not pirate provider).

To specify there are maybe three pirate levels.

Leecher Pirate: Only goes to download, doesn't even seed because it affects his download rate. Once the torrent is dled then he's done.
Leechers also can transfer between software savvy leechers who can work with various file extensions to further their piracy and unskilled leechers who only download in a file format that they are familiar with.
This level of pirate makes up the majority, and so this pirate is unfamiliar with the process of multiplayer pirating and therefore must actually go buy the game if he wants to play multiplayer.

Mid-Level Pirate: Possibly a member of exclusive torrent members only sites, may contribute to uploading actual torrents but mainly differs by having a decent upload/download ratio which means he seeds even after download is done. Has the ability to go through with multiplayer pirating but may or may not because of time consumption.

Provider Pirate: This is the pirate that actually provides the material, be it Cam screens of premiere movies, advanced copies of games, etc etc. Spends most of his time uploading and providing the material that pirates thrive on.

So what am I saying here? There is a pyramid among pirates, and that affects the amount of buying of actual retail games. Providers will most likely never buy, mid level and leechers will buy dependent on ease of piracy.

Purists say that all piracy is bad (it is), but they target the wrong approach for stopping it. Realize that you can't stop piracy, you just can't. Just like crime will never go away neither will piracy. Mainly because its faceless and impossible to track. ISP's will do what they can to throttle torrents/p2p but the tech savvy will find their way around and the pirate mass will follow. So here we are back to my sunk cost comparison. The pirates who won't pay will never pay, so their actual affect on economic profit is 0$ from the individuals themselves but overall it is thousands of dollars because they provide the lifeblood of piracy to those who would actually pay for the material.

Piracy is a crime of convenience, its like when on Halloween you'd see the house that left a bowl out with a sign that said take one. There are those who would do just that, obey the sign. Others would take some but not all; feeling guilty but not enough to prevent their desire to satisfy their need for candy. And there would be the ones that would see that and dump the whole bowl in their bag and think nothing of it.

So you want to curb piracy, target the top level providers. That's what companies are really (I think) trying to do. For the purists, don't focus on condemning piracy in general, at heart most pirates would never think of shoplifting. Aim for the one that really would, the ones that provide the material, who want to take everything for nothing and have the know how to do so.

And for the developers, pirates are the hardcore consumer. If you make the game good enough, most will come. Sure there will be some who would rather pirate, but I think that most of them, faced with a spectacular game would find it easier to buy. Because in the end all, it is easier to buy (from a time perspective) than it is to pirate. Especially in the era of D2D and other pay download services.

All this aside, not to say pirating provides benefits, but from an economic standpoint piracy dooms games that are sub-par. This is because the amount of copies that would be sold before demand fell is reduced because piracy buys or obtains only one of those copies which then spreads to the pirate community where demand falls sooner than it would if piracy were out of the picture.

And it may seem like i'm contradicting my self when comparing to my second statement, but I'm aiming towards the argument that pirates will pay to play even after downloading because of good extension of a game. Multiplayer content and the like will draw them if the game is good enough.

So if piracy raises peoples' expectations, you're saying that the market wouldn't necessarily have better games in terms of actual quality, but our standards would go down and in turn games would become "better"? I just have difficulty understanding how piracy could simultaneously serve as a means of weeding out the games that aren't amazing, and yet in its absence game quality would somehow improve.

Still better than telling someone who kinda supports the industry to stop supporting it entirely, right?

Actually I would argue the exact opposite, that in fact piracy elevates poor quality games to a more equal level (sales wise) with better games and thus makes it harder to weed them out of the market.

First of all let me define what I mean buy a "poor quality" game. I'm talking about games that you can tell almost no effort beyond just making it install and run was put into it. Perfect examples of these types of games are many of the movie tie-in types. Just because you don't like a game that doesn't mean that it necessarily "suckz", no matter how highly you think of your own opinion. I will never play Halo 3 but I still understand it's a good game. I also don't have to ever play any Tycoon game to know they are all generally bad.

With that said understand that people who pirate tend to be somewhat computer savvy and fairly avid gamers because with either of these why/how would they be pirating games. Pirating isn't some simple thing where you just snap your fingers and *poof* you have a free game. For their efforts they are not going to download games that are obvious crap. They're going after games that are most likely pretty good, although it may come down to personal preference just how good. They're not downloading the real crap ones that they wouldn't ever play anyways.

What it then comes down to is how many games are bought due to piracy - ie people saying "Wow this game I got for free is so good I think I'll pay $50 for almost no reason"- versus how many games are not bought because of piracy because either they don't like it enough or do like it but to quote the movie Idiocracy "Wow you like money too!".

Since I believe more game sales are lost to piracy than gained my conclusion is this: Really bad games will continue to sale at the same rate as they did before because the only people buying them are casual/non gamers and people without the capability of pirating while good games will lose sales due to piracy. This will draw the sales of bad games and good games closer together. Since game producers are not dumb they will realize that a crappy game cost less to make and is less affected by piracy. Good games cost more and are more affected by piracy. So there's actually incentive to making worse games. It's kind of like The Producers; you can make more from a complete bust than you can from a relatively decent success.

umm, maybe you don't understand the definition of FREE? Even if it's only like $5-$10 I doubt you would be buying a pirated copy of "Ratatouille: The Game", nor do I think the person selling these games would even bother to download that title.

I still doubt he's selling Ratatouille.

I don't think that this effects the argument - if there's no trial then skip over the game.

Put it this way; if I go to a car showroom and the salesman won't let me take a test drive, do I;

a) Think "the car is a lemon: avoid"
b) Break in that night and take it for a joyride

Pirating games as a trial is the same as (b). Even if you intend to pay if you like it, you are violating the saleperson's right to determine how their product is sold. And that, to my mind, is morally wrong.

If a publisher doesn't offer a trial, does that not make you suspicious as to the quality of the game?

To reasons that I would pirate a game, one no demo, and second to get a better feel for the game. If I like the game I buy. If I do not I delete the pirated game. I believe that pirating is wrong and I am not impressed by those who will not buy the game or pirate the game before it is released.

Spending $60.00 Canadian for a game that turns out to be not my style of game or is bugging is extremely annoying. (Once owed there is nothing you can do.)

PS Pirating is something that I extremely rarely do.

No, because they're simply not relevant. We were talking about someone who, like myself and many others on these forums, pirates games and pays for the ones that don't suck. We all know some people pirate games and have no intent on buying the game, and some people pirate games INSTEAD of buying the game, but that wasn't what we were even talking about.

The discussion obviously went into whether or not it's alright to pirate a game in order to "preview" it. The group you mentioned wouldn't be doing that, so they wouldn't even need to be mentioned, right? Does that make sense?

I just read the first sentence of your post and felt a horrible sinking feeling deep inside my soul again. We were discussing whether or not it's right for someone to pirate for the sake of making a more informed purchase. Whether or not that's 1% of pirates or 100%, that's irrelevant as we weren't even talking about piracy as a whole, and you chose to come in and give your 2 cents on something that was completely unrelated as if you brought up some sort of an irrefutable argument. Seriously, man, read before you reply. I'm begging you at this point.

If I start talking about taxis and how some of them are yellow, would you butt into the conversation and say "BUT ONLY A SMALL PERCENTAGE OF CARS ARE YELLOW, DID YOU FORGET ABOUT THAT?" Holy ****. This is getting ridiculous purplerat.

You do realize that if you support one company, technically you'd be supporting an industry without necessarily supporting another company. I might buy a blizzard game, and I'm support the PC gaming industry (in creating additional incentive to create quality games for the PC platform), and let EA go out of business. In fact, I think very highly of Blizzard, while I think Flagship Studios is full of some of the most inept developers I've ever seen. I support one, not the other. Get it? Because of all the douchebag companies out there, it's hard to tell who's out to make good games and who's out for a quick buck.

Here's an idea, developers. Be like Blizzard. I've never had the urge nor need to pirate a game from Blizzard, always bought them on release, because they're always amazing and I know I'm getting my money's worth.

Which is the system of any consumer. They either buy it or they don't. That's how business works. What's so hard to understand? Why don't you just imagine that my computer is like one of those consoles they have setup at Gamestop with a full game loaded up on it. You can play it without paying for it, and you might think it was even entertaining enough for that 20 minutes or so you played it, but you really aren't interested in buying it. Does that work for you?

It's entirely subjective I know what I would spend money on, and I know what I wouldn't. No consumer is going to be completely fair, regardless of piracy. Someone might see lame game box art and think "NO THANKS!" even if there's a fully playable demo online that they might totally enjoy. Your system relies on reviews, screenshots, gameplay videos, and box art. Mine relies on my own personal experience of the game. Just a thought, but what if your system just isn't fair for the consumer?

You're arguing against a hypothetical with generalizations. Not sure how else to get that point across.

I get that you object to piracy as a whole, that's fine. But I was talking about whether or not, in a particular circumstance, it would actually be harmful to give the advice RobWright had given instead of, say, telling the pirate to buy the games instead. Instead of actually responding to that particular situation, you keep coming out with responses where you just say essentially that you doubt most pirates do that. That's great, I'm sure that's probably a valid statement, but that's really avoiding the actual discussion. The frequency was not a part of the discussion, only whether or not, in that specific case, if the pirate stopped playing games altogether and got "a new hobby", it would harm the industry. That's it. If you can't understand what it is I've just said, and you have to come in with some more irrelevant facts that everyone's already aware of, then I just don't know what else to tell you.

Also, can we please stop making up statistics? Have enough respect for the people reading your posts to either avoid using statistics, or provide some sort of source to try and back-up whatever point it is you're trying to make.

No, I read your post, which is why I was left wondering why you even posted that. Whether or not you apologize for coming up with "arbitrary" numbers (which are then used at points which would be the foundation of a real argument, if you had one), I don't see a point in using them in the first place. It brings nothing to the conversation. It's just speculation. No, it's not even speculation, you may as well just spin a wheel with random numbers all over and put your finger down somewhere and say "THERE! 12 pirates! If only 1 of them bought the game after pirating it, I think that's still a larger ratio than the real world!" My question is what makes you think that? Surely you have some real numbers to back that up? Or do you just feel it deep down?

Go back a few posts and I already said you weren't addressing my question, and then said:

Pretty clear? If even 1 pirate is supporting the industry by buying even a couple games a year that he pirates, then if every pirate stopped playing games entirely, the industry would have the same number of people not purchase their game, PLUS that 1 pirate also wouldn't buy a couple games a year from pirating. There was some discussion relating to this, you continued to ignore this question, and we all moved on.

Then, llama made a post about why he thought that sort of piracy didn't fly in his eyes because it was like stealing a car from the dealership for a joyride in the middle of the night. So I directly replied to him giving a specific example, and you replied to that specific example going back to why you think most pirates don't do that for some reason. If you have something to add to the general discussion, by all means do so. If you think more pirates steal games than they do try then buy, that's fine too, but don't quote one of my posts and act like you're somehow refuting it when in actuality you're coming into it with no sense of what we're actually talking about.

Here, let me summarize it for you:
Oh Snap: "If there isn't a demo I pirate games"

llama_man: (quoting Oh Snap) "If there isn't a demo, just skip over the game"

Oh Snap: (quote llama_man) "But isn't that bad advice (specific example comparing and contrasting 3 different people, 1 who pirates games without demos to test them out, 1 who relies only on demos to buy games and won't buy games without a demo, and 1 who buys every game, in order to support the idea that someone who pirates games to preview them when there isn't a demo is still more supportive of the industry than someone who takes llama_man's advice)"

purplerat: (quote Oh Snap) "BUT YOU MISSED SOME PEOPLE IN YOUR EXAMPLE, ALSO I THINK A LOT OF PEOPLE PIRATE GAMES JUST CAUSE THEY LIKE FREE STUFF"

Do you see why this is so frustrating?

Like I said I'm not going to get into the whole you said/I said/Llama said discussion. But as to why I think that most people who pirate, whether it's by a slim margin or not... It's pretty simple. People who pirate in the first place usually have two things in common.

1. They have no scruples about illegally obtaining the game in the first place. You've said as much so about both yourself and pirates in general. They already committed the crime by pirating the game, whether or not they later pay for it does make a difference as far as whether or not they are guilty of piracy. So why not just keep the game and save your money?
2. They all ready have a general disdain for the gaming industry. Even if they understand they are damaging the industry or hurting a particular company it’s easy to say “they had it coming”. Even if they pirate a game they like it’s easy to justify not paying as retaliation for all the bad games you’ve wasted money on in the past.
Anyways the whole idea that people will pay for something they already have for free just to support the industry is pretty stupid. If you don’t think so try this: Buy 10 copies of your favorite game and leave them in a box outside of a mall with a note that reads: “FREE TO TRY – IF YOU ENJOY SEND $50 TO (insert address here) ”. Then hold your breath and wait for the money to come. If it doesn’t I guess the game just sucked that bad.

I don't agree that the scenario of having the pirates not buy games is worse than having them possibly buy games. I think there is an assumption being made here that companies make their decisions solely based on sales. Yes, sales is an important part. However, a business responds to many many aspects of a product and market aside from sales.

For an example lets say that a game is put out on the market and sells extremely well. Lets say it's a single player PC game that outsells Halo 3 and has no copy protection. The game is just so damn good that everyone wants to play it and even pirates feel obligated to spend their $50 on it. So effectively 100% of the potential audience is playing the game and paying for it.

X% of people who bought the game tried it via piracy before buying it. When a research group reports these numbers to the executives at the company responsible for the game what do they see? That's right, they see X% of lost sales, whether or not that is real.

How do they respond? Do they simply not worry about that X% and enjoy the money that the 100%-X% is bringing in? Their job is dependent on improving revenue. It might even wound their sense of pride to think that X% of their potential revenue is, in their mind, being denied to them.


The housing market was a mess all around. You had people buying homes as investments. They invested under the assumption that the value would rise at some huge rate. It did not.

So you have people who essentially had stocks that they bought on borrowed money. Why keep paying for a stock that is failing and continues to fail?

Add in a good measure of banks packaging and reselling good loans with risky loans to mitigate risk, and you get a hiccup in the economy. Now let the government step in and prevent all the people and businesses who made bad decisions from suffering and we can all suffer together. Yaye for economic decline!

While I dislike DRM very much it doesn't bother me enough to make me stop playing PC games. Basically aslong as it doesn't directly interfer with gameplay I can live with it. One thing I have noticed lately on this forum is that many of the people screaming the loudest about DRM are the same people who claim to at least sometimes pirate games. The phrase "I want buy or pirate this game" is one often heard from these people. So maybe DRM is having the effect developers had hoped for. If not by technically preventing piracy but by driving away those who would do it. Also keep in mind that if gamers are driven to consoles (which are DRM machines) that wouldn't necessarily hurt game producers. Ben Meyer actually hinted at this synical idea in last weeks Second Take that maybe that's what the gaming industry wants?

Piracy is not all bad, it keeps companies in check also

like when books became popular, many people attempted to control and limit access to books, but pirates developed tools still used today (just more advance) to copy books and mas distrubute it, eventually we got to a point of where you can access just about any book with no problem


if it was not for piracy. only the select elite few would have access to books today


the only thing stopping companies from screwing people over is piracy. if it was not for piracy, you would have much worst DRM and you would have games that that only worked 1 time

but because they see that people can just pirate the content if the companies screw them over too much, they think about some of it before they act.

it you look at major companies, you will see that the government will not allow large companies to merge because that will cause a monopoly and the people will only have 1 source for that item or service so the government doesnt allow it because they know what will happen.

most chemicals that cost thousands for other companies to buy to make medicine with in reality will only cost a few cents to make. but they have a monopoly over that market so they rip people off.

if intel became the only processor maker, then you will suddenly be spending thousands for processors and millions for licenses to develop for that hardware platform, because the other companies will have no choice.

were the only processor maker, so you have a choice. pay us 500 million a year for rights to develop for our platform or go out of business


or if there was only 1 ceo controlling all food production in the country.

pay us $4000 for this item that used to cost 79 cents, or starve to death

thats why the government goes through great lengths to stop monopolies

competition stops companies from screwing people over if there was no piracy, then game makers would find ways to nickel and dime us to a much greater extent but due to other options available, developers will see it this way.

we could screw them over by doing this but that will just cause them to pirate the game and we wont make any money.


piracy improves business models because theres competition over the same content.

companies don't listen to the people but they do listen to their wallets.

a few years ago, there was a pizza shop near my school

they used to charge $1.25 for a beef patty

for no reason (gas prices did not change, or anything) they increased the price to $2 for the beef patty

while on the line i handed them $1.25 as i did not know the price changed

when they told me, $2, i told them out loud that that is a ripoff unless they made it 60% bigger, i will never buy it.

that causes 5 other people on the line to leave (i left also

about 2 weeks later, the price was back down to $1.25

if i had complained but still paid, the price would have never went down.

businesses listen with their wallets not their ears

Razor... you are as always fond of your hyperbole. If there were no piracy, there would be no DRM. Before piracy was common, there was no DRM. Really, where the hell do you get these ideas.

And Purple Rat, could you tell me who these pirate DRM haters are? If you are lumping me with them then you are wrong. In fact, if I were pirating these days, I wouldn't care less about DRM. It would be a total nonissue.

The problem arises with a ethical dilemma. I want to support the video games I love so that more like that are made. On the other hand I don't want to support DRM that goes beyond what I would be willing to put up with.

Sure I could buy the game and then download a pirated copy so as not to worry about the DRM, but I don't believe I should have to do that. Also that would increase piracy statistics and make it easier for others to pirate by downloading from me while I download the rest of the game (bit torrent). I don't want to do that. Also I don't want to support the business decision to bundle the game I want to support with DRM that makes me want to pirate it.

The solution is to just not play it, which just makes me sad. You have no idea how much I was looking forward to spore, but if it ships with this garbage, I won't buy it and I won't play it.

Any occasional pirate that laments DRM does so not because it prevents them from pirating, but because it prevents them from supporting that game without pirating.

I don't even know where you would get the idea that a hardcore pirate would care about DRM. If YOU are happy with the idea of waiting on hold and begging with customer service for another activation when you go to reinstall a game, more power to you. I on the other hand will have none of it.

You don't have to scour these forums too hard to find this type of sentiment. This one is from a few posts up. And no if you are not pirating I do not lump you in with them. There are legit reasons for legit game buyers not to like DRM. I'm just as surprised as you that so many pirates feel the same. But like I said maybe it's proof DRM actually works in some sort of war of attrition. Kill off the segment most likely to steal and you'll only be left with an honest, all paying yet smaller market or have everybody move to consoles. I definetly do not like it but that's the way it looks to me.

And you think you don't have the same issue with consoles? Maybe it's not activation of a single game but if even the smallest thing goes wrong with your console (aka the DRM) you're in the same boat except that you can't play ANY of your games while you wait for it to be fixed.

We have been overcharged for music and movie for ages, i don't feel for the music/movie industry one bit, they have been screwing us over long enough.
It doesn't cost them $20-25 to make a CD/DVD, they could still make a lot of money by making all new releases $10 or less, the industry doesn't want to do that, they want us to continue paying too much for their product.

Artist still make money from concerts and cd sells during it, the movie industry makes a lot of money at the box office so whats really stopping them from lowering the cost of music/movies, that right there would put a big dent in piracy, not this stupid DRM crap that only annoys people who buy it and not the pirate.

I don't object to piracy, when PC game developers don't release a good demo people only have one choice to test it out on their computer, unlike the consoles, PC users cannot go out and rent the game to play/test it to see if they want to buy it or not.

How come RIAA and the other mafia groups don't go after google,MSN,Yahoo like they did Piratebay, could the reason be they have the money and lawyers on hand to fight back?

I was going to actually respond to the above post, but if you can't see the difference between Piratebay and Google then you are truly as dumb as everything you posted above that would seem to imply.

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.

Do I object to piracy? Yes, but only as I define it. If I were to download a game, play it for a short while, dislike it, and delete it - I would not define that as piracy. If were to download it and enjoy it enough to continue playing it - that would meet my definition of piracy. You can test drive and return almost any types of merchandise, including books, sculpture, paintings, and other works of art. We cannot do this with music, movies, and software (at the consumer level). Why? Because these companies have all the leverage and individual consumers have zero. We have no choice but to agree to the EULA.

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

I have never pirated a game by anybody's definition. Despite being in the fortunate position of having the disposable income to buy as many as I please, I only buy 1-2 games/year I'm not willing to shell out $50 for the crap that many game companies are pushing these days. Do I overlook some really excellent titles as a result? I'm sure I do. I generally won't buy a game unless it has a demo; even then I usually appalled at how many bugs remain in a game after it goes gold. EA is especially poor in this regard. I'm also really tired of the lack of additional content for these games. How much effort would it take for them to take a few of the best user-generated maps, clean them up a bit, pay the developers a token sum, and release some new content once in a while?

While I've also never downloaded a movie or MP3s, I have occasionally ripped a CD borrowed from a friend or ripped a DVD I rented. Is this piracy? Absolutely - every bit as much as downloading it. I wonder if most of you who have never pirated a game can say the same thing for music and movies.

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.

While piracy is clearly wrong, it also clearly different from physical theft. The incremental cost of producing another copy of software is nearly zero; therefore, the loss of that copy is also nearly zero. Also, physical theft hurts the local merchants, the places that support your local community and provide livelihoods for your friends and family. Piracy hurts some far off mega-company. It's very much the same as objecting to the local mill dumping chemicals in the river behind your house but not giving two sh!ts about the fact that the Chinese are poisoning their air and water at a truly alarming rate so you can purchase cartloads of cheap crap at Walmart. (Yes, that was tongue-in-cheek, but it does raise a valid point).

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 not defend piracy, but I think I understand why it happens and why it will continue to happen. It seems to me you have two very distinct categories of pirates.

a) Those that just like to get something for nothing and can do so, in this case, with no fear of penalty. I'll call these the "incorrigibles". Not much to be done with these except invent the perfect DRM. I'd like to think this is the smallest category.

b) Those that can't afford or are unwilling to afford the price of a game that they're not sure they'll enjoy. I'll call these the "burn victims". I certainly think that Steam and EA Link could address this group by allowing a trial period for games. Four to eight hours of free game play would go a long way toward reassuring wary buyers. I believe this is by far the larger category.

Oh yeah, one other thing. Since I am licensing intellectual property when I buy a game, I ought to be able to get a new DVD sent to me when my 3 year old snaps mine in half. It ought to cost me about $0.25 plus shipping. No new serial number, just the physical media. I've tried to get this done on at least two occasions. You think I had any luck even after I volunteered to send them my broken media first? No f'n way. Try that with a music CD or a DVD, too. Good luck to ya.

Umm... google is your friend?

the first place i tried was nzone for the demo and the speeds were extremely slow

k i will change it