Dissapointed with TH's attitude about game piracy

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I think piracy is great. Besides, Pirates are cool. ARRRRG!!!
And it's not like it's a new problem either:

I bought the demo of doom many years ago for around 20$. Years down the line, I was lended the full version with the extra episodes and last 2 guns. After finishing all of them, I realized that the first episode was the best one. I don't think I've ever really played the other ones since.
I stopped using idkfa and iddqd, tried ultra-violence and finished the first episode again, I had a blast.

Another game I pirated was quake1. I got the demo in the PC Gamer mag, it was great. Later on I downloaded the full version on my 28.8 modem. It was alright. But I had already bought quake2 by that time.
Later on, I found a legit copy of quake1 for sale at the value village for 2$. Awesome! Now I have the music tracks XD
and more recently, I bought the ID superpack off steam. So I actually have legit 2 copies of it now.

Another pirated game was Warcraft 3.
It sucked.
I played it a handful of times and man.... it REALLY SUCKS.
The campaigns were good. But try a custom games and you'll notice..... IT SUCKS!
The only reason I don't have a grudge against blizzard is because I didn't pay for it. Their older games were all super awesome.
I bought starcraft 1 and brood wars, legit. as soon as they came out.
And now I'm using a copy I downloaded off the internet. Why? It's easier! Having to crawl underneath my desk to put a cd in everytime I want to play a round of a game IMHO is rediculous. Piracy is easy. Install the program, crack it, wait a couple months for your virus definitions to find the trojan assosiaced with it, and there you have it. Fully functionnal and convenient. DRM is what's gonna kill PC gaming if it just keeps getting in the way. Steam is the only real alternative from what I can tell. No CD's required, no need to safeguard your cd keys or anything. Demos available. If a game has no interactive demos for it then it deserves to be pirated. Whether its good or it sucks.

The bottom line really is:
There are no great games that I have pirated without eventually buying a copy.
 


And so is the argument that it is like stealing someone's car.

It is nothing like that at all.

I'm not saying piracy is good and happy and there is nothing wrong with it. I support indie devs such as Introversion. I support those who release decent games without stupid DRM, like Stardock.

Thinking about it, I've actually bought EVERY game released by those two companies.


PIRACY IS NOT STEALING. (at least here in the UK). As long as I am not distributing copied software for profit, it is not a criminal offence.

Those people that seem to think piracy is equivalent to armed robbery scare me to be honest. If you had your way, I get the feeling that all infractions - from murder to dropping litter - would be considered equal and carry the death penalty, because that's the scale of parallel you are drawing when you say "stealing a car is the same as copying a game".

As for "their hard earned money going down the drain", pirates fall into two groups.

a) Downloading to "trial" a game, these will pay for the game if it is good. Revenue is only lost if the game is crap, in which case it doesn't deserve money anyway.

b) Downloading to play a game with no intention of ever paying for it. These people usually wouldn't buy the game anyway, if they couldn't pirate it they just wouldn't play it. You cannot count these as lost sales.

Xbox360 games are, if anything, even easier to copy than PC games - you even get full online functionality!!

Given that, you can't say that piracy is killing PC games, when piracy is not limited to PCs and the PC game market is still healthy.
 
Flakes, Darkstar...

Look, the point that I'm trying to make is that by downloading software, a pirate is breaking copyright law. Yes, you are both 100% right in that pirating software does not constitute "theft" in the common-law sense. Copyright, patents and to some degree trademark laws were enacted to close the legal loophole and protect IP. When you say that it is not "theft" or "stealing" (I'm not even sure about a legal definition for the latter), you are making an irrelevant argument.

Trust me, with the penalties that exist for copyright violation, you would much rather be prosecuted for theft.

Oh, and the bit about Queen Anne - I was, of course, being facetious. I doubt she had anything to do with the law other than to rubber-stamp it.

One thing that I have a hard time reconciling is the claims made by some posters here that 1) they don't want to spend money on crummy games and thus their piracy is justified and 2) they will pay for games that they have already played. So, you're too cheap to risk paying for a game that might not be good, but you will pay for a game that you are done with? I just seems illogical to me. I mean, if I were a person that did not care about other people's intellectual property, the future of PC gaming, or the law, I would never pay for any games that I could pirate. What could possibly be the upside? (Quick edit - I just re-read one of Flakes' posts above - he mentions guilt and a desire to play the games online as a motivating factor. I guess I can buy that, although at least with the guilt part, I suppose that we must just have different thresholds.)

Oh, and I agree with everyone that the current DRM implementation is terrible. I've mentioned a few reasons for this in the past, but the big one is the creation of a non-transferable license, which bugs the crap out of me. In every other area of licensing, if the license in non-transferable, the licensor must make this explicitly clear.
 


NONE of those winedrinkers paid for the wine, but were told how much it was worth.

Likewise, few of my games were paid for, yet I know how much they were worth.

Wine can vary wildly in price, each brand doesn't continually become cheaper. PC games start at $50 and decline over time.

That article suggests that I would be happier with a pirated game if it were expensive, not that I would be happier if I actually paid for it.
 
While there's no shortage of material for this thread, I figured I'd throw a couple more logs on the fire and see what happens. Here are two contrasting links.

Michael Fitch of THQ talks about why Iron Lore Studios shut down and how rampant piracy contributed to the closing:
http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=42663

A column from the LA Times that discusses how economists and politicians are beginning to rethink copyright law while debating the same question Darkstar and I debated: is piracy really stealing? (yes, it is :non: )
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-healey18feb18,0,5092348.story
 
er hate to point this out, but that first article you posted Rob explains how DRM destroyed the games chances not piracy.

would it of been so hard for them to put in a dialog at game crash just to say "You are not running a legal copy of this game" instead they made it look like a crash thats a very newbie mistake, even i know that you should put dialogs in its basic Interface design.

now let me put this forward if this game didnt have the DRM and didnt crash then the pirates would have reported this therefore leading people to buy it therefore helping sales, instead of diminishing them.

i havnt read the second article yet, i will be back :)
 
i think the problem with the second article is that there are no figures that anyone can relate to, and you cant compare Console sales to PC sales, generally PC games are for the older generation and the consoles for the younger generation since theres more kids with consoles the sales are going to do better on the console.

there is no real answer to this although governments will come up with one for us im sure, there are several types of people included in these arguments.

hardcore gamer - looks at reviews and forums, probably got good hardware, and will know there stuff, and make logical desicions on what game to buy.

average joe - buys games based off advertising, doesnt have alot of money, can only afford a few games.

half pirate - someone who downloads the games before deciding where to put there money, probably will report problems they encounter in the game(relate to first article rob posted), this will warn others.

pirate - they download the game, they will never pay for it and generally play online with hacked servers, these people will never buy the game.

from these types of people can you honestly tell me that you are loosing sales from pirates? a true pirate would find away past the system it always has happend and always will. so no more sales lost there.

the half pirate(i would put myself in here), these are the hardest people to please and there the ones you want to aim at, this is where you are going to get good publicity or bad publicity and as stated in robs first article for small developers, word of mouth is your biggest ally... in this section you are more likely to loose sales if you put DRM in your games because they will cause problems like this:

One of the copy-protection routines was keyed off the quest system, for example. You could start the game just fine, but when the quest triggered, it would do a security check, and dump you out if you had a pirated copy.
Click to expand...

these problems will be percieved as game bugs. Ultimatly this setion of people influence the sale of a particular game the most, if its good it will receive the recognition it deserves if its bad it wont sell... you should aim games with these people in mind as they are also most likley to buy the game aswell.


average joe - will go out and buy games based on advertising in the stores, this means that independant developers loose sales here, the avgerage joe isnt likley to look at online reviews and comments. small companies loose out here.

Hardcore gamer - mostly influenced by reviews and forums, which means they will see things that half pirates/pirates have wrote and made comments about. this is the section that small developers are most likley to make the most amount of sales on, but there sales will be influencened by what the pirates say about the game.

so is DRM good? no its not the right way to go about this, it damages sales more than anything.

so should games have no DRM at all? well no i would love the return of the cd key, and would like to see online distro systems offer the user the chance to have the disk and box sent to them.

is the industry viewing this in the wrong light? YES, they should use the pirate distro system to there advantage, if they limited a game to say 1hour play then after that time it required a cd Key i would happily buy the key from them, since im not being cheated by a demo. also if it were distro over newsgroups i wouldnt be limited in my nd speed like i am with Steam or have to pay like in fileplanet(then they give you 200Kb).
 
I'm getting tired of quoting people so I'm not going to bother, those who have read through this thread will know who I'm referring to.
Piracy is changing the landscape of PC gaming. Piracy is hurting the the industry. Piracy has and, as long as it keeps happening like it is, will keep shutting down the little guys. The reason that we have DRM is because of piracy...This is not a chicken and egg debate.
What you guys(those who support piracy) are doing is adding fuel to a fire that's out of control. How many people in 1st world countries download games just to buy them later on?...It makes little difference whether you buy the game after you've downloaded it, if you're in support of piracy. You guys can't dispute that people download games to avoid paying for them.
You should stop trying to justify your own actions and start saying what you're really in support of.
Here, I'll do it for you - I support people who don't want to pay for the games that they play. I love it that there are people who still pay for games, so that cheap asses like me can keep playing for free. I justify this to those that frown upon me by telling them that I buy the good games(cough, cough, Bu&*sh%^, cough). I even come go on to forums and try to convince other people of my BS.

Please people stop lying to yourself and us. Piracy is wrong, period; it makes no difference whether it's law yet or not. Although I wish it was law so that I could rat you guys out...lol

I really glad that more people against piracy have posted. I was starting to get discouraged.

As for your last post Flakes...piracy, imo, was the main contributing factor Iron Lore closed it's doors. You must have read that article with your pirate glasses on.
 


this pic is just for him,

02032008040on2.jpg


thats my game draw, which doesnt include games ive bought off steam.

Iron Lore closed its door because it failed to implement very basic HCI design considerations which lead to its demise, it forgot to take into account pirates and there opinions and how it would influence sales, this was there mistake they are simply trying to blame someone else. - if you cant see that im sorry.
 
every game should use some form of game registration / acknowledgement / logging in like in MMORPG..

mmorpg cannot be pirated
 
Wow... this is pretty much just lame. I know the frustration with drm.As a small business, I know the frustrations of trying to make money and people making the dumb decision... This is why I have a full wish list of games to buy lined up on newegg right now and 2 major titles coming with my system and another directly after. That's 150 bucks on top of the 700 or so i'll be spending on my system... I havn't been into pc gaming or any gaming for a few years now... but when I was playing before, cracked/copied/'stolen', games were a very minor threat... now with some of the comments from the guy on COD4... This is just pathetic... I remember almost every video card back in the day came with a game as incentive to buy... now they are few and far between. It is sad. But i can say i've done my part by buying every game i've wanted to play that would run as tested or demo'd on my system.
 
I want to see piracy stopped... and I will put up with DRM to see that goal accomplished.

All these arguments about try before you buy, hassle with CD's etc are complete rubbish... read the reviews to see if a game is any good. Console owners have to change their discs etc and how much of a hardship is that really!? The same people complaining about the cost of games don't seem to find it too hard to justify a new gfx card every year strangely...

Whatever they do, they need to stop this massive piracy problem on the PC... it is surely damaging the industry and dimming the lights on pc gaming's future.

Do whatever you want with DRM developers. As long as you don't compromise the security of my machine I have no problem jumping through a hoop now and again to see others unable to play the game in question without paying for it. The choice should be - buy the game with DRM and play it, or simply don't buy and don't play it at all.
 
I think nVidia and ATi need to team up with the developers to provide a standard for protecting against pc game piracy at the hardware level. Internet activation procedures in tandem with unique graphics card GPU serial numbers / gfx bios writes etc before you can play a game... I don't care if this takes up a few minutes of my time before I play a new title... I am just sick to death of the wares kiddies stealing games, coming up with x number of rubbish excuses for it, and then puffing out their chests on here with reasons why we should just accept the status quo i.e. they keep leeching while the ever diminishing pool of legit users support the industry and reward the developers.
 
Just need to point out to those who asked why you would re-install Windows, you dont always have a choice in the matter... I need to reinstall XP at least once a year. Also its worth mentioning that poorly written software shouldnt be encouraged so as far as Im concerned pirate on so the companys that make subpar software need to rethink theyre strategy... personally though... I dont play games to begin with...
 
Piracy is wrong and it no doubt hurts developers.

That doesn't make it theft or criminal. I don't know about the US definition, but it is NOT theft or stealing under UK law.

DRM is wrong and no doubt hurts developers.

It doesn't stop the software pirates. It causes bad publicity. It inconveniences legitimate users (Windows Vista being a prime example). There really is no point in it.

I don't know what the solution is, but I do know it is NOT to make inaccurate comparisons such as "oh its the same as stealing a car". That is so flawed it achieves nothing.

Personally I'd like to see all games released on Steam or similar. EA Link was good but the new version (EA Downloader) means you lose your game after a couple of months - bad.

Online activation/serial checks work, until you start to go to the lengths of Windows Vista, which is an abject failure, and so intrusive MS can only get away with it as they have no real competition.

Starforce, Securom, Safedisk, Tages, etc are all utterly pointless and a waste of developers time and money, and an inconvenience for legitimate users when they break down.

In summary, we need to stop piracy, but DRM doesn't work and is bad. Comparing piracy to theft or stealing is not helpful.
 
For crying out loud, who cares whether it's illegal or not! It's wrong! You can't call yourself a gamer if you steal your games, period. I don't care what the legal definition is, it's still stealing!!

You guys aren't going to change any of our minds (those of us that are against the piracy of PC games) by telling us that it's not a crime.

On another note, I'm writing a short essay on this topic and I plan on posting some of it here. I'd love to hear what you guys think...and yes that includes all of you.
 
I agree its wrong, but that doesn't make stealing magically cover it, any more than it makes piracy murder!

You twist words and ideas to fit your argument, this lends no weight to your argument, and in fact gives others fault to find.

Weren't the first words of my post "Piracy is wrong" in big bold letters?!

Isn't it also wrong for companies to put intrusive DRM/Activation (see my previous comments on issues I had with Vista...) on their products, harming legitimate users? (for example, MS forcing me to do a reinstall and lose data...)

I'm against Piracy and I think it is wrong. BUT that DOES NOT make it a crime, or make it stealing, or make it murder.

I'm also not in agreement that this, and only this, is killing PC gaming - Xbox 360 piracy is rife, and pirated games have full online functionality.
 
If you take something which you do not own, and which was not given to you by someone who had purchased it, what is that called? From the very first idea, to the day a game gets printed, developers do not, and would not, ever agree to have someone download their game for free. Who hold the rights to video game software? The argument that piracy is not stealing is ludicrous. Like I said before, it matters not whether your plan to buy after playing, if the game if it good. It only matters that you are taking copyrighted material without permission. That my friend, is called stealing.
 
it was given to me by someone who purchased it, otherwise where did they get the game from? are you saying the developers put them on pirate sites?

and btw your not allowed to give a friend a game you bought, thats breaking copyright infractions, so is watching a movie in a shared property your breaking that rule which says not for public viewing..

infact if you have ever leant a dvd to a friend, sat and watched a movie(dvd vhs) with more than just you... you have broken the law.
 
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