Stop the Pirateing. ALL READ

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people wouldn't steal from a store because thats "stealing" but you cant really steal software the same way.

stealing means you take something and the original owner looses it

for example. is someone steals your car, then they have a car and you don't, but this doesn't happen with software it is just copied
 
Some people are saying pirating is going to continue. What is their point, that we should accept pirating and pirates? Yes there will be criminals and murderers in the future too, but does that mean we should sit back and allow them to harm our society? No, this type of behavior is unacceptable and needs to be dealt with.

Do you think it's easy to make a game? That these corporations aren't taking risk or providing a good? If you don't think a game is worth it, then fine don't buy it, but that does not give you any justification to steal it. I don't think a Porsche is worth $100000 or whatever they cost, I'd pay $20,000, but guess what, they are free to set their prices and I'm a criminal if I take it. These companies provide jobs and a good living for a lot of programmers, not to mention marketers and all those people needed to set up a good gaming convention. Gamespot, Tom's games, and all those sites wouldn't be in business without games to talk about! People who pirate do a lot of damage and perhaps the only way to reduce pirating is for us to demand harsher penalties including criminal penalties.

DRM sucks, all copy protection is a hassle, but I don't blame EA for wanting to protect what cost them millions to make. I think one thing they should focus more on is suing people. I don't like more government intervention and regulation, but perhaps the only way is to require or allow software companies to track the downloading of their software on PtP networks and on the internet. The software companies would then sue the hell out of the pirates, probably causing them to go into bankruptcy. Once a few people lose their homes, then pirating will be reduced. It's not worth pirating if you're going to put everything you own at risk.

That will be unpopular I'm sure, but it'll upset the pirates the most and who cares if they get their panties bunched up? What are you going to do, stop buying....oh I forgot you pirate, you don't buy anyway. It's too bad that it might have to come down to that, but oh well, pirates screw it up for all of us. Thank you aholes for bring on DRM and ruining the experience. Thank you aholes for all the copy protection and new crap we'll have to endure in the future. You are a scourge to society, don't even pretend that you're not. Don't like DRM? Blame the pirates.
 


no one is against companies protecting their software. we are against DRM that annoys the legit user while having a success rate of 0%

if the police department had a 0% success rate in reducing crime, would you be happy to see the government spending hundreds of billions of dollars in keeping the police departments around the country running

if the company you worked at came up with a new way to keep unauthorized people from entering by asking you "do you work here!" it will ask you that question 50 times and using voice recondition, you will have to answer yes all 50 times before it would let you in

anyone could answer "yes" and they would be able to get in, regardless if they worked there or not.

would you be happy that your boss added that security system into the work place even though it has a 0% success rate?


and drm is not a result of piracy. some of the first games for the pc had DRM before pc game piracy started because the companies assumed that every pc user was a thief and didn't want to risk it, they struck first and the gaming community pushed back. because theres no logic behind the DRM

it is like saying, all humans have the ability to kill so lets put all the humans in jail before they have the chance to kill someone
 
What is their point, that we should accept pirating and pirates? Yes there will be criminals and murderers in the future too, but does that mean we should sit back and allow them to harm our society? No, this type of behavior is unacceptable and needs to be dealt with.
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Well, since you seem so eager to draw parallels between the situation with piracy and murder (which are not at all similar, but what the hell) lets extend the analogy a bit. DRM seeks to prevent piracy by restricting everyone's use of the product. A good analogy for this is banning the sale of guns to try and prevent murders. Except that doesn't work, criminals will still find ways of getting their hands on guns while law abiding citizens are left gunless.

The situation is the same with DRM. Pirates break the copy protection within days of its release, getting a DRM free game, and the legitimate customers are left with the DRM mess.

I don't think anyone here is saying pirating should be allowed, but DRM is a non-solution that completely misses the point. It's defective by design and doomed to failure. So yes, I blame EA for using overly restrictive DRM. I blame them for it because all it's acheived so far is to piss off a lot of paying customers, without putting a dent in online piracy. I blame them because there are other ways to combat piracy, ways that are actually somewhat effective. I blame them because they don't seem to understand how computers and the internet work, that no matter how difficult you make a DRM scheme it only takes 1 person to crack it and make it available to everyone, and that any DRM can by definition* be cracked. I don't like DRM, and I blame companies like EA for treating it as if it were an effective solution instead of what it really is, a completely ineffective annoyance that targets the wrong people.

*By definition, because in order for your computer to run the game it must be able to work around the DRM, either by passing authentication, decrypting data with a key, verifying a CD-key etc. All of these actions take place in the computer's memory, which makes it available to a cracker wanting to bypass the DRM scheme. The decryption key can be copied out of memory and used to decrypt the game. The game can be disassembled, the authentication function can be found and removed, or altered to automatically authenticate the game without accessing the internet (if 1==1 {authentic=true;}). CD-keys are generated using a mathematical algorithm, that algorithm can be reverese engineered and used to create a key generator. Think of it this way, HD-DVD was cracked inside of a month, despite all the hardware involved being specifically designed from the ground up to make this 'impossible'. Compared to that, a normal PC is an open book.
 
Just thought I would chip in my cents worth on this subject.
I usually torrent movies games and music, sometimes to see if it is much cop before I go out and buy the product and sometimes because I am a selfish Freetard.
I.e: I went to the movies paid for 2 tickets plus food etc and was nearly £19, the movie was $hite, and I wish I had checked it out online beforehand. So now, I generally pirate and if the movie is awesome I go and see it and buy the dvd. Same for games, I generally download a copy and see if I like it then I may buy it, especially as most content is online only and you must have a licenced copy. Example, naughty copy of Frontline Fuels of War, didnt like so erased and saved my cash. Call of Duty 4 again a naughty copy, loved the single player and went out and bought the game to try multiplayer and still loving it. So Piracy is a 2 way street unfortunately I thought "I feel bad about doing this all the time, lets try and go legit", So I beleived the hype and bought Spore. Gutted, I dont like the game, it cost me £40 and its DRM'd to the hilt. Now why didnt I go out and pirate spore like millions of others then I could have seen it was $hite and not bothered wasting my cash.
Game piracy only affects people who have no tech knowledge, most games are cracked etc the day they come out. Developers shouldnt care as most people will buy the game, pirates will always pirate, and even those who pillage from the net go out and buy the game if they want to play online and enjoy it properly.
There is a right in most if not all countries to return a product if you are dissatisifed with it, how many times have any of you got your money back for not liking a film, game, album etc (with the exception of a shop voucher to buy more tat with). Try before you buy is my motto.
 
I think the biggest issue in solving the problem of piracy is that we don't have any solid numbers on how much it actually affects things. It doesn't matter so much how many times a game was pirated (how many downloads), it matters how many sales were lost to those downloads. There are some people that aren't going to buy a game regardless, or, maybe, are like me and generally buy games second-hand (which doesn't increase sales). I wish we had some solid numbers on what percent of pirates would have bought the game if it were A. Unable to be pirated. B. Cheaper.

What I do know, is that DRM is not the way to diminish pirating/increase sales. If you stop 1,000 pirates, but lose 5,000 customers because they read about the invasive DRM and didn't buy the game, what good is that to you? Not only did you lose more sales overall, but you spent a million dollars to license that DRM. Pirating is bad, but so far, DRM has affected the legit consumer VASTLY more than the pirate. One pirate cracks it, all pirates become free from it.
 
In the dozens and dozens of these threads already here, you'll see piracy has been called the end of computer gaming since 1984 or so. It got pretty bad around 1987 when there were software rental stores everywhere like payday loan stores are now.

This got drug out again because someone got a conscience and bought what he'd been "previewing"? I'd assumed it had to do with the (yet another) IP law Bush just signed or something.

As long as SecureROM is around, I'm not buying PC games. I have my PS3 and 360, so I can certainly keep buying games, but they can keep their trashware protection systems that load with their games. This is from the same company that's still in court over the rootkits they created to protect audio CD's.

I think the last PC game I bought was either Witcher or Sins of a Solar Empire. Every announcement seems to validate my decision even more.

Piracy has always been around and it will remain. Draconian measures and punitive protections to make the games less useful to paying customers won't stop it.

I'm so sick of being lied to by corporations and government. They know all this crap, piracy's just an easy excuse and a straw man they can beat up and get fanbois to bandwagon over.
 
games that have demos often have less piracy than games that get released by greedy developers who feel that we shouldn't be allowed to eve look at the game with out giving them money

people hate it because you cant get refunds for software

which means EA could release their own version of the "I am rich" program and screw people over. especially the people who buy games with out looking at reviews first
 


Securom style DRM has nothing to do with stopping piracy. Publishers like EA lose more money from resellers (buy the game, copy it then sell it on Ebay/Amazon etc) then they do pirates. They know if you choose to download the game for free then most likely your not in a position to purchase the game legally, so it's not really a lost sale.
 
No thanks , i only buy games i like on steam and from blizzard. EA can suck a fart out of my ass, i will never buy a game from them RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrr.... pirates live on.
 
You should check out Asian countries like China, they pirate 1000x more then any western nation does, you can find local shops in asian countries that sell bootleg copies of games/movies and even modded console systems.

Every day more gamers are waking up, they will not buy any game that has limited activations or SecuROM, EA developers will blame piracy for bad sales instead of the worthless DRM they keep trying to force on us.






 
This is a funny topic to read. People are so concerned. Really. If PC gaming has been around for 25 years like someone says and the gaming industry hasn't died, then doesn't that mean it's not a big deal? I'm pretty sure that a majority of gamers are legit. Most of the PC gamers I know don't really care about SecuROM. And I already know the solution to piracy. Get them all girlfriends. Isn't it amazing to behold, once people have real lives and real friends, video gaming isn't that important anymore?
 
The problem is not the piraters (the ones downloading the game off the internet) they are regular gamers who more than likely dont know squat about programming a video game. What they need to do, is track down these hackers that are reprogramming the games and cracking the games making it possible for people to download the game in the first place. They are the ones ruining the industry. Look at it in real life, if someone robbed a bank and accidentally dropped a 100 dollar bill on the ground, I wouldnt be surprised if who ever picked that up, just pocketed something free someone else stole. You see? so no one can really blame the piraters, they are being human. Even though I didnt buy the first crysis, I had to go out and buy crysis warhead not only because I loved crysis, but because I wanted to help the business of a game I really enjoyed.
 
Thanks str8ballistik,
You've pretty much just proven the point I made in other threads that one of the main reasons why piracy is such a problem is the number of regular people who see absolutely no problem in what they are doing. It's funny how you self dilute, saying things like "They are the ones ruining the industry" inferring that people who upload software share 100% of the blame while those you download have 0 responsibility. Or how you draw an analogy by saying "Look at it in real life...", as if the video game industry is make belief. But maybe that's how you justify doing what you do while at the same time acknowledging that piracy hurts gaming; it's not real so therefore logic must not apply.
 


No offense, Str8ballistik, but your bank robbery analogy has to be one of the most inane, bizzare and outlandish comparisons to piracy I've read since a guy tried to convince me (and others on the forum) that hackers who cracked games were doing Jesus' work, i.e. multiplying the bread and fish so that the poor, huddled masses can eat.

 
God dude, why are you purposely trying to be a douchebag, My comment like you said, completely agrees with everything you said, and I cant believe I have to explain that what I meant when I said "Look at it in real life" which was look at it in everyday life for every other person on the planet in a scenario everybody at some point in their lives have seen before. I was sure everyone here would understand that, but someone obviously had to be a freakin douche and try to twist it into something which I think is "Illogical". "Its not real so therefore logic must not apply" See this is what a smart person would do, they would understand what you ware talking about and comment accordingly, Video games are real, they are real product which real developers are creating to make a living, no its not right that someone would see this product and pocket it just because it was sitting on the ground because someone stole it and dropped it there, but thats life, there are people who have no morals to live by and drop it back off at the police station as the cliche goes. What the problem needs is a solution that can work. telling people they are the problem because they download according to you, is not a solution. no matter what people are going to act human. Like others have posted here, they can say what they want that they dont pirate but once they are alone and no one is watching they will pirate again. good job you solved nothing. The problem are the people putting the hackers twisting the programs in order for people to download them. I dont know how this doesnt sound logical to you because it sounds pretty logical to me, cut off the head of the snake. Now I hope that since I had to go out of my way and explain a simple comment you will understand it now.
 


Okay, you tell me why those people reprogram it in order for other people to download it. They steal the game and spread it across the internet, I dont understand why you dont have the ability to understand that concept.
 
This is why these analogies are so stupid. First of all how is it part of everyday life that people just stumble upon stolen money or merchandice?This is why these analogies are so stupid. First of all how is it part of everyday life that people just stumble upon stolen money or merchandise? Doesn't happen to me very often. Which leads me to the second part of why your analogy (just like most others to this topic) is stupid. People who pirate games don't just accidentally stumble upon pirated software with no idea that it was pirated. Sure I've found money on the ground with no reasonable idea of where it came from and decided to keep it. But I can't ever recall one single time coming home to find a game on my PC and having no idea how it got there. I have known some rare situations where people do actually end up with pirated software not knowing it's not legit, but I have a hard time believing that such situations make up more than a negligible percentage of game piracy.
If you really want to make an analogy to stolen money, receiving pirated games is more than just innocently finding discarded cash. It's more like watching a theft, knowing full well that the money is stolen and where from and still pocketing the money, if not just flat out taking a payout from the theif to stay quiet. That makes you an accessory after the fact, and most normal people wouldn't do so even if they thought they could get away with it (or at least they would acknowledge they are wrong in doing so).
Going back to the original point I'd made in another thread; making these analogies or trying to use such situations to evaluate piracy is what causes such moral and ethical ambiguity towards the situation. People look at finding a game on a P2P server and try to compare it to finding a twenty on the sidewalk with no one else around, using that moral compass to make their decision as what to do. But it doesn't work because it's not the same. Really there is very little to compare digital piracy to, which is why it takes a little more critical thinking than just trying to compare it to a common situation where we know the correct answer.
 
Okay, you tell me why those people reprogram it in order for other people to download it. They steal the game and spread it across the internet, I dont understand why you dont have the ability to understand that concept.
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Nobody is arguing that those people are guilt free. But you seem to have this childish response that their guilt should somehow vindicate those who download the games, as if there can only be one guilty party.
 


I never said I didn't understand it -- I just wrote that it was inane and outlandish. You don't think the people downloading cracked games bear any responsibility in the issue of piracy whatsoever because, hey, they're human. And I vehemently disagree. It's bad behavior for responsible adults, whether they have disposable income for games or not.

Piracy wouldn't be a problem if people cracked games but didn't have anybody downloading the ill-gotten gains from their torrents by the thousands. My point is, it takes two to tango. Crackers are supplying the "product," and gamers are supplying the "demand." So what's the answer? Don't download cracked games. And don't use "human nature" (i.e. human weakness) as excuse to do it.
 
You know what, I dont want this thread to become an arguement over a stupid analogy I had no idea an analogy would bring this much confrontation...... if you guys really dont like that analogy, then forget it, you dont have to read it, skip over it. The point of the analogy is what I was going for not the actually story; if there werent people supplying it people wouldnt be downloading it. which brings me to my new conclusion now that I've thought about it some more. I would say that pirating is in some ways just like terrorism, that you cant fight it, no matter what, there is always gonna be someone out there who would step up and start hacking games and dispersing them around the internet. BUUT I'm not going to say another analogy because for some reason its not the point of the story that matters to you guys its the story. so I'm just going to say that you cant fight it. I mean people should have the ability to say no, but the vast majority of people are like I said, giving in to their human weakness, and I know that its wrong and it shouldnt be used as an excuse, but theres no consequence to downloading games so why should they stop.
 
I also gotta say, sorry for adding posts after another, I never once said that people downloading the game were not to blame. I was ONLY trying to offer up an opinion on how the problem could be solved. when I said that the people who are posting the software are destroying the industry I'm sorry I didnt have my words articulated correctly. I didnt mean in any way that they were the ONLY ones.
 
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