Dissapointed with TH's attitude about game piracy

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^ How much??? My current bid is -$12
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Wow lol honestly my heart rate went up a second until I noticed the - symbol. I'll part with it for $33 which includes shipping. Not bad considering I paid $53. I'll even include the beta code for the dye kits :sol:
 
^ How much??? My current bid is -$12
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Wow lol honestly my heart rate went up a second until I noticed the - symbol. I'll part with it for $33 which includes shipping. Not bad considering I paid $53. I'll even include the beta code for the dye kits :sol:
 
Yeah it really fries me too when honest, paying customers have the nerve to complain about being treated like criminals.
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I don't hear honest people complaining, only those who wish to defend the act of stealing...OH SNAP!

It's so easy to claim that you're owed something...or that your unethical actions are justified, it seems to be the most used defense. This is what separates "honest" people from the rest.

Because if every single pirate just didn't play the games at all, the industry would be doing way better... oh wait.
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You have got to be kidding me. Sure, if there was not an option to pirate games then ,"pirates" would play less games, but they would also pay for far more games. Sorry but, this, to me, seems like a very simple concept to grasp. Piracy is hurting the PC gaming community, this is the point I am trying to make and this is why I feel so strongly about this issue.
 
You're obviously not listening hard enough. :)

Honest conusomers ARE now beginning to complain about DRM because it is starting to affect enjoyment. Relatively benign checks such as CD keys, disc in drive and online verification don't bother me (and shouldn't really bother anyone who isn't recklessly careless), but when people start having problems getting a game to install because they have a CD drive the publishers don't like, or they can only reinstall the game several times on the same machine, THEN we have a problem. Ultimately, bad DRM will push people towards console games - most people want to be able to spend their free time playing the game, not spending 3 hours trawling the net to get the bloody thing to install.
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Taking the higher road obviously pays off in the end. One can only borrow,steal,pirate use or whatever for only so long before they have to move out of thier parents houses. Someone has to stand up and take responsibility at some point, otherwise, theyre jusr pariahs, living off others. And whats that say of them? Not much. You can argue all you want, but being irresponsible is being just that. I hope those same people dont have "those" photos of their private lives, cause maybe Ill just pirate them, why not? No harm no foul. And, if those people want to take me to court, no big deal, even after theyve been posted on youtube, Ill have "saved" so much money the law suits not a problem. Do unto others.... just remember who youre dealing with. Go on with your mindset, it doesnt matter, and someday, someone will be doing it to you too, and we arent supposed to care? It seems people with the attitude that pirating is ok is seperating from the rest of us, then when it happens to them by people with the same set of ideals, they want to rejoin us. My question : Are you with us or not? Is pirating stealing, demeaning and hurtful? And will you stop doing it? Simple to me, others like to confuse it with semi legaleaze
 


You obviously didn't read my post about the issues I have had with the worst offender for intrusive and broken DRM - Microsoft.

I have 4 legit copies of Windows Vista Ultimate. Laptop and one of my desktops are using Preinstalled Dell OEM copies. These are no issue as they have the certificates in the BIOS and the Install which means they do not need activation.

Another desktop has a legit copy of Vista Ultimate Retail on it. This one is not toooo much of an issue as MS can't argue with me when I change components etc. Its still extremely annoying to have to phone them (and its 20p a minute from a mobile in the UK) and mess about inputting 321142 digit long numbers, persuading them that I am not trying to [strike]Steal[/strike], erm, [strike]Murder[/strike], erm, I mean, Pirate Windows.

The final desktop has Vista Ultimate OEM on it.

Oh the hassle of that machine...

The activation system broke completely on it at one point. It said it was activated on one screen but not another, I assume there was some sort of data corruption. I tried to phone MS and fix it - it had gone into reduced functionality..

I spent over 3 hours on the phone that day. First they decided they wanted me to pay £50 to talk to them as it was technical support (no, its activation, your activation system is broken, intrusive, and gay). Then they decided the system knew I was not a registered system builder and therefore didn't activate. (Sweet I have a PC that can read minds!!!) So I registered as a system builder.

Eventually MS just told me "tough you must have broken it because you must be a [strike]theif[/strike] pirate" Which I can assure you I was not.

A reinstall cured it. Vista activated fine after this. I lost alot of data, all because of MS's broken DRM.

As a legitimate MS customer x4 I have to say I would rather there was no activation BS. I don't give a damn if other people pirate it to be honest, it doesn't affect me.

DRM that affects legitimate users even slightly, even once, is broken and morally wrong. While piracy is morally wrong, it does not cause a direct financial loss to anyone, and is therefore, in my eyes, much less morally wrong than not allowing your customers to use that which they have bought.

The peddlers of DRM infested crap are every bit as evil - and every bit as responsible for killing PC gaming - as the pirates.

And you know what? The whole concept is completely flawed anyway. You are building a digital vault to house your precious content, and protect it from the purchaser, but you have to give the purchaser the key to the vault in order for him to use the content.

Especially with movies, if you can see it, you can pirate it. If you can play a game, you can pirate a game.
 
Facelifter is a Troll or a DRM employee. He is pretending to not hear the voices on this and other forums who have bought a game but have had difficulties getting it to play.

I don't hear honest people complaining, only those who wish to defend the act of stealing...OH SNAP!
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I used to buy pretty much every FPS and RTS that came out. I don't anymore because of DRM. That's hundreds of dollars in lost sales from just me. I went into detail in a post here last week.

I figure Facelifter works for a DRM company and so I hope his company dies.

Falcon688
 
Like I said going barebone naked with no protection would, I think, be the most intelligent path to go. Think about it for a second, for the money they spend on the protection, probably would costs more than the loses from the 'extra' (if there would even be 'extra') pirating and would not break an honost purchase like amdfangirl made. The only thing that should probably remain for online play is key code verification.
 
I know a lot of gamers and if you have read my posts, you will know that I have had the opportunity to talk to dozens every day on this topic. I have met so few people that have had a problem with DRM that it's a non-issue to me. I dislike DRM, some forms more so than others. The fact remains that few people who buy games in a store, ever have a problem with DRM. I would even go as far as to say that it's below 3%. I know that some of you will disagree with me and that's fine. Those who complain always have a louder voice than those who enjoy.

I will never tolerate the excuses that some people make for stealing. I have a passion for this industry and I can clearly see the impact that piracy has had on it, including DRM as we know it today.

I do not work for a DRM company...LOL. I do however, have a vested interest in the gaming industry.
 



That's 3% too many.

Basically, the games companies are screwing over 3% of their legitimate customers.

That's 3% of the people that legitimately hand over their hard earned cash for the game, not being able to play it.

Isn't that just as morally wrong, if not more, than pirating a game? At least pirating a game is not obtaining somebody elses money by deception.
 


Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun. :sol:

But seriously, no it isn't. Their intention wasn't to install DRM to lower their sales numbers. However it is a piraters intention to download a game without rightfully paying for it which is by the counsel of common sense not a nice thing to do intentionally making them the bad guys *gasps for breath*.
 
I, personally, by myself, have purchased no fewer than 10 games that have utterly failed to operate correctly due to the DRM that they came with. I had to hunt through pirate sites for something to crack the DRM just to make my legitimately purchased games work at all. I personally know at least 20 other games who have had similar experiences multiple times and do not personally know a single PC gamer who has never had such an experience.

From my experience 100% of legitimate customers are negatively affected by DRM. Your 3% seems awfully suspect to me.

DRM is counterproductive, harms legitimate customers more than it does the pirates, and makes pirates out of legitimate customers. There is no excuse for it and it must end. It will end too, either by way of gutting their own industry or by way of ending this insanity. One way or the other it will happen. The only question is how long will people put up with it before moving nearly exclusively to consoles or the developers wise up and realize that they are paying tons of money to scuttle their own sales.
 
FaceLifter,

I know your position on piracy, and you know mine if you've read my posts in this topic and elsewhere.

Instead of pounding on the obvious, can you react on the bit below?



I used the term "wasting it" in that quote because it is quite clear that the money invested in the DRM is way more than what they've been able to save with it (and that is on top of all those legitimate customers that have experienced adverse effects from DRM).

In response to your 3% statement, I have no way of verifying that but it may be correct to represent those customers that could not play the game at all on their particular configuration (without being able to correct it, like uninstalling some particular packages) but a far larger group of legit customers is affected by DRM in a less catastrophic way. If those 3% would get their money back without questions asked then I would not be too upset with that figure, but 3% of legitimate customers left hung out to dry, that does upset me (and lots of other consumers).

 
drm is basically an eye for an eye system that will leave the world blind

before there wasnt much drm but game developers were greedy so if 2 or 3 people out of the millions that paid for the game pirated it, they found it unacceptable so they made drm which punished everyone, people tired of the drm, moved to piracy to escape the drm, seeing this, the game developers add even more drm which further pushes their honest customers to pirate the game, this is an endless cycle

drm has always been met with piracy through out history.

when books were first created, they were popular but the governmants decided to drm it by controlling access and adding restrictions

shortly after, pirates and printing presses sprung up all over the place and you started to see pirated books that didnt have all of the government information restrictions.


humans like freedom, when you take the freedom away, people will revolt

drm is taking away freedom because the user is no longer free to choose which device the music can be saved to, which computer can be used to use the content and many other things.

why do people permanently move from many other countries both legally and illegally: to escape the oppression and limitations of their current countries in order to have a less restrictive life

same goes with drm, no one will gladly accept having freedoms taken away
 
Pirates tend not to buy games. So there is no point in making games where your core audience will pirate the games. You go where stardock did with figuring out where the paying customers are and market to them.

DRM can be annoying and if it is done poorly I wont buy the game. I am definitely not a first adopter of any game and almost always wait until the first patch (or 20th patch) is out. I think it says more about the quality of games rather than the issue of piracy.

If you don't like the demo then don't pirate the game. Just simply don't buy it.

I think my requirements for buying games (except budget games)
Multiplayer
User modable levels or maps
30-40 hours of gameplay
easy user interface
Engrossing gameplay or storyline
Few if any gameplay bugs
Well balanced game
 



I also believe the number is significantly higher than 3%, but I just used his number to save arguing about that.

I don't know about where you are, but all the retailers in the UK have a policy of "no refunds on opened software", ironically as part of their fight against piracy.

If the software won't work, it must be something wrong with your computer, and/or you didn't check the recommended specs.

This is also driving piracy as people want to test before they can buy, but leaving that aside, it means that those 3% really have been willingly shafted out of their money by the software companies. Intrusive, broken DRM that stops legitimate customers using the product is much closer to fraud than piracy is to stealing.

Seriously, drop the DRM and sales will go up, and when you get on your soapbox about piracy, people wont see a pot calling a kettle black.

Also, don't go the way of the music industry, counting every pirate copy as a lost sale, as if they are to be believed, they have lost £1,203,981,289,7981,234 in the time it has taken you to read this post, and 2,368,208 people have lost their jobs. (I can only assume at one point the music industry employed every person on the planet twice)
 
Darkstar782 - I live in the UK and have to disagree with your comments.

I was unlucky enough to buy a copy of Viper Racing when it came out. Bloody game kept crashing every few minutes - could barely complete a single lap of a track without a crash to Windows or a complete system lockup.

I took it back to Game, who gave me a full refund - which I promptly spent on Need for Speed 3 which worked fine.

As a result, I still prefer to buy stuff from Game rather than other retailers, so it was a wise move on their part.
 


I've had Game refuse to take back a number of games after they have been opened.....

For example, bought X3:Reunion the day it came out, but the starforce virus contained on the disk would not allow the game to run, as it refused to believe it was a valid copy.

Game simply said I must have tried to pirate it and would not take it back.

Seriously, you are very lucky to have persuaded them to take back an opened PC game. I'm pretty sure their 10 day return thing (or was it 14 days?) no longer applies to opened PC games.
 
I fulling understand that I am only speaking from my personal experience. But that being said, I have managed one of the highest volume EB game's locations in Canada(3+million a year in sales). When I said the number was 3%, I did not mean that 3% of people who bought PC games couldn't get them to run. I simple said that 3% had a (some form of) problem with the DRM.
Here is why I can say this with some confidence: I had a policy about returning open PC games, all a customer had to do was talk to me about it. I had no problem allowing for a refund on any product that the customer wasn't able to enjoy. I honestly believed that if someone would go through the trouble of explaining the problem to me and I wasn't able to talk them through it, they deserved their money back and I would always allow the return...Unless, I thought that I was being lied to, which was rare. Since the company has a policy of not allowing returns on open PC games, my staff would forward all customers to me. I understand that this is a moot point since most retailers will not allow the return on open PC software.

As a side note I really believe the number to be lower than 3%. 😉 I know that not everyone that bought a PC game from my location that had a problem with it came back to my store. I actually attempted to factor this in as best I can.

If you had read my other posts you would have seen that I had suggested a far more effective way to combat DRM. A way the would surely see the end of DRM in no-time flat! I would love to revisit this idea so that we could create a more constructive conversation.

I know I can sound a little over the top of that I'm "pounding on the obvious"(no worries BigMack). I just think that the piracy of computer games is completely intolerable, and as such, we shouldn't stand for it. DRM needs to end but not more than piracy.
 
Most consumers of PC game software are used to the idea that they cannot get their money back. They will either find a crack and fix it themselves, or they will just soak the loss.

In every case for me personally and my friends, we crack it and the problem goes away.

Also keep in mind that we are saying 3% of customers, not 3% of sales. 3% of sales would be a tad low but not completely off kilter. 3% of customers is absurd. To say that such a small percentage of PC gamers have ever been affected by DRM is quite frankly naive. However I do think that it is a modest percentage of games that do have crippling DRM. Most just have slightly annoying DRM.

As far as a solution to the problem, we have a solid working example of a strategy that allows for no DRM. Stardock. Their business model has allowed them 3 high selling PC games out of their 3 biggest projects. Publishers should notice this and catch on.
 



I couldn't have written this post better myself!!

Others have said here that Piracy is killing PC gaming, that is is driving the adoption of consoles.

To these people, I simply say....

What about GTA4 on Xbox360 being freely availible to download significantly in advance of release?

Piracy is NOT a PC problem. It is not driving the publishers to consoles on its own, because there is piracy here too!!

And yeah, most PC gamers will just soak the loss of a broken DRM system these days. Its happened to me. To be honest, if a DRM scheme doesn't allow me to play, I look for a crack, or put it on the shelf to await the release of a crack. Attempting to return it is usually futile.

I have to say that you sound like you were a fair manager FaceLifter, but most are not, and will just stick to the "its company policy, no refunds" garbage (a complete flouting of sales laws when a product is broken)
 
When we compare console piracy vs pc piracy its like comparing mini-golf to F1 racing. In the console field, the reason why it does better is a great population of the consumers are kids under the age of 16. Not to say another great portion of players are 16+ but consider this. Consoles don't get viruses/spyware/crash/need upgrading(you simply buy the next gen console roughly 3~4 years later). Its so simple which is why it gains the market advantage. You simply buy the game pop it in and tada your off to the races. Also take note there are a LOT of people out there that are computer illiterate and nowhere near as knowledgeable as us on the subject. Let alone landing cracks/key gens/ to get a game to work. It's not that the computer industry is doing bad(well maybe I don't know for sure) but it is most certainly not the most popular. And as with anything, the more popular you are the more advertising/support you will get. Example, I honestly cannot think of any other PC game commercial on TV other than WoW, and even then that was a rare site for me.
 
And this

Is why DRM should be illegal. Hell, for that one MS should be considered guilty of fraud, as they are simply preventing you using your paid for music (best not upgrade your MP3 player!!)

What if the people who made Bioshock go out of business and their "5 activations per copy" server goes down? What if Valve decide to replace Steam with Steam2 and you can no longer install your (legally bought) games on new computers, or after windows reinstalls?

I don't think either of those examples will happen, but the MS example is why people are scared of DRM. It is, in my opinion, a MAJOR driving force behind piracy - a pirate copy will never go bad!

I bet all the people that paid MS for that music wish they'd illegally downloaded MP3s now.

Its ironic that the industries keep pushing people to be pirates.
 


I know that piracy is not just a pc problem

Piracy has plaged all formats from the Spectrum to the Xbox 360.. Nintendo Wii, PSP, DS etc

The problem with pc piracy is, its just that much easier to copy as games are already cracked and include the patch when you download it... Xbox 360 for example need to first have it moded with special code... Then download the torrent and burn it in a special way for it to work... Same with Nintendo Wii, PSP's need to be flashed to do it and DS's need a special card.....

Now what one do you think is easier to play with out pay....

Thats it,, the pc..... Now most drm is a real pain, but what we need is something that gives us content which makes us buy it for free, or a small fee such as ea downloader or steam.

I know how each system works, and how to copy games for them but as someone has said before, I buy games because I enjoy them and look after them more...

Generally speaking PC's have always been a developers nightmare with out the piracy crap.. Games take longer to make on the pc as it is that much better at games it needs more innovative and creativity to utilize the latest uber videocard....soundcards, chipsets, processors all change the way the experience.

Once this is done then they work on how the character is controlled and how it interacts with the outside world..

PS3 etc have developement kits and incentives for developers to create games for, where pcs have loads of different engines to choose from each offering different aspects of getting end results and consoles also have the same control pad etc.

PC's have mice, keyboards, sticks, keyboards and soon the OCZ NIA ( google it and youll see what i mean )

All these reasons is why pcs are loosing more and more creative talent as consoles offer a quicker return on costs and pcs pirated games are ready to be downloaded.
 
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