Stop the Pirateing. ALL READ

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It was done once before on a semi-large scale by Sega. Anybody else here remember the Sega Channel? It was a premium cable channel which gave access to different Sega Genesis games each month along with demos and trailers. It was actually pretty cool, but like everything else Sega has ever came up with it was about 10-15 years ahead of it's time and failed. Personally I like buying my games, same as with my books so I wouldn't find much use for such a system. But I could see a lot of game companies offer older titles in such a format, probably with a heavy helping of ads mixed in.
 
The games I like to play most, strategy/simulation aren't suited for online play. Unfortunately, pirating hurts these games the most since there really isn't any reason to go online except to get a patch, so the online verification for multiplayer doesn't apply to these games.

I also don't really spend time playing demos, what I do is read up on reviews anytime I want to buy a new game. From reader comments and the review, I can get a good sense of what the game is about and if I'll enjoy it. It's not a perfect system, but it works pretty well. Generally if a lot of other people like it, and the review describes a game that I think will be fun, then most of the time it will be.

Look at what's happening in the PC gaming market. Grand Theft Auto V isn't available yet, who knows when that'll come out. Why? Because it's not that lucrative, especially thanks to pirating. The pirates pretend they're not hurting anyone, but they are.


As for the "virus", no it wouldn't spread. It's more malware than anything else, a program that destroys files of the pirater, targeting the important documents that most people don't back up and REALLY hurt when you lose them. Then it attacks windows to try to make it buggy and formats the drive if there is enough time, that is the person finally figures out that it's taking a long time to "install" and the installation isn't anything like what they've seen before :lol: .

Of course no company can do something like that since it'll open them up to lawsuits. See how legit entities are handcuffed? They can't fight back, so maybe it'll be up to some private citizen "avenger" to extend justice. The Batman of the online world, we all know Batman isn't a squeaky clean hero, he uses tactics just like a criminal would, but he is fighting on the "good" side, just like these people would.


So what is the solution if any to pirating? Would you guys be up for criminal laws against pirating, just like theft? I think the music industry has been too lax in enforcing pirating laws. They should sue the crap out of people who pirate and then that'll instill fear and stop people from pirating. Sure it'll piss off a lot of people, but piraters aren't going to be your best customers. It's a risk that you'll end up hurting some legitimate buyers, but mostly piraters pretend that they buy, but really don't. They buy once in a blue moon, so what if you hurt them.
 
Well most games out there are lacking demo versions. That's one reason why people are pirating games. They want to get the feel for it. If they thought the game was disapointing maybe they wouldn't invest in the game. The opposite can also happen.

It's been proven with the music industry that DRM does not work but I failed to see why they think DRM will work on the gaming industry.

Most games today still deploy some sort of protection on their EXE file which means no-cd crack will be necessary if you dont' like having the CD/DVD spinning up and down all the time.

I'm not sure if you guys have seen the article that was released here on Tomshardware a few days ago about the rise of Console piracy. The fact is any gaming system can be hacked and games can be pirated. This cycle will never end.

Let us all not forget there are plenty of people out there who cannot afford these games and wants a piece of the latest games. I know this reason doesn't justify piracy but it is a reason why people would pirate games.

I think game developers just need to focus more on their method of story telling and the design of the game to attract even the people who pirate their games to think that the game they're playing is worth their money. It's the only way that they can win their customers back.

Piracy is here and it is here to stay. They can try to slow them down but nothing can beat P2P.
 
I will be returning Far Cry 2 which was my most anticipated game this year and its incredibly disappointing.

How can I trust the gaming industry again when they hype it up so much to the point of lying. So from now on I will pirate. I will know what Im buying if I buy it. And if I don't buy it then its deleted.
 


Dude - lets just be honest for a second here.

Im not going to claim that i didnt pirate movies, music and games during my college years, because - well - i most certainly did. But now that ive been working for the last few years ive been taking great pleasure in walking into a game store and purchasing a nice shiny new title; or downloading some great new album/movie onto my iPhone. It makes me feel like im giving back to the community and supporting the creators/developers so that they can continue to produce said goods.

But, and im drawing on past experiences here, people who say that they try and then buy are flat out liars and i just cant take them seriously. If you were too lazy or whatever to buy the game in the first place then by no means are you going to have played, enjoyed and finished the pirated game - and then made the effort to get off your fat ass, mission to the store and purchase the game so that it can sit there on your shelf while you remind yourself of what a great person you are. Just doesnt work like that. The only way i see that working is for the good online multiplayer titles. But where does that leave the single player centric games ( albeit with rubbish multi ).

I go to great lengths to read various reviews by various reviewers; gather all the hype, gossip and rumours floating about the net, or get the demo/beta/trial before actually making the decision to buy the game. Take FC2 for instance - i knew it would recieve mixed reviews as, although not being directly ported from a console, it did suffer from "nerfed for console" syndrome as witnessed by the bland textures and limited originally promised functionality.

DRM or noDRM - its not, and hasnt yet, stopped me from buying the games i want to buy. If it runs out of activations ill make the call or just get an executable from gamecopyworld in all of about 1 minute. DRM is invasive but the developers are just reacting to a vulnerability in there market and are trying to protect there investments in the short term when a game is initially released.

People arent going to change their stance on heavy, committed pirating at the end of the day, and no amount of moaning is going to help that along. They just delude themselves and ramble on about some random crap analogy about lawnmowers and tree fairies so that they can sleep peacefully - and then come to forums and tear into games that they didnt even pay for in the first place ( not directed at everyone here obviously - but its a growing trend )
:kaola:

/Rant off

 
I will be returning Far Cry 2 which was my most anticipated game this year and its incredibly disappointing.

How can I trust the gaming industry again when they hype it up so much to the point of lying. So from now on I will pirate. I will know what Im buying if I buy it. And if I don't buy it then its deleted.
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You could have just waited a day or two before purchasing the game. There was plenty of info on the day of release that this game wasn't living up to the hype. I personally bought the game on release and have been disappointed so far. But I accept that as part of the risk of buying a brand new game without getting a feel for what people were actually saying about it. It's almost funny how people try to act so ignorant as an excuse to pirate a game. But if you can use the internet to pirate a game there's no reason why you can't use the internet to do some research on the game without pirating it. So please stop acting so shocked that a game you bought wasn't all that great.
 
I did read reviews and comments and was concerned by the negative comments, however the reviews themselves were really positive.

If I wanted to pirate I would have rather then buying the game in the first place. I don't like piracy, but its the only way to try before you buy when they don't provide a demo for whatever reason. I don't see why I should have to pay for something when you don't know what you're getting.

"Louis-Pierre Pharand(producer of Far Cry 2): Pretty much everything that looks destructible will be destructible. "

This just isn't true, the much hyped physics engine is poor and heavily scripted, not what I paid for.
 
This just isn't true, the much hyped physics engine is poor and heavily scripted, not what I paid for.
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I bitched about this mightly in another thread, as did many others. My point is that had you waited a week to buy the game you would know this before buying the game and atleast be able to factor that into your decision making.
I'm just sick of this "no demo" excuse just like every other reason for piracy. People act like they are entitled to free gameplay or else they will just steal the whole thing. If a game doesn't have a demo don't buy it. But also don't pirate it and use the lack of a demo as an excuse. If you do pirate it, fine just say you pirated it because you didn't feel like paying for it and don't try to justify what you did any more than that.
 


That, in fact, is your problem. You shouldn't make other people pay for it. Remember, by returning it you're wasting time of the employees at the store you bought it, wasting the company's money (to pay for that employee's time), and possibly reducing their profits as they have to sell it again as an open-box (read: cheaper), even though they paid for it just as much as they paid for the full-price ones (like you bought it). You're not just hurting the game developers, you're hurting your favorite gaming store.

Do your own research, or pay the consequences for your own lack of patience.


 
First of all , when the bring out games again for PC and not for console , i might consider it again,
2nd : software companies laught their ass off ,, because they have more profit sueing someone for pirating games as for selling them games haha , bet u didnt know that :).
I always buy my games if i like them , but i would wanna try them first.
I got tons of original games , but its sad.. some games cannot be bought in my country, and then you dont have much choice left a to d/l a game.
Anyway downloading anything from the internet is legal here , and only illegal if you share and spread what you downloaded, so aint that worried about it.
But thankgod for those that do , often is stumbled upon a game that i wanted to have , but didnt work on my computer, i use win 2k ya know.
i dont wanna think about it that for every game i buy , i have to bring it back to the shop because it didnt work , and those that do work , and i love , i tell all , if you love it , buy it ! , support those companies , so that in the future they may bring out more awesome games
 
That, in fact, is your problem. You shouldn't make other people pay for it. Remember, by returning it you're wasting time of the employees at the store you bought it, wasting the company's money (to pay for that employee's time), and possibly reducing their profits as they have to sell it again as an open-box (read: cheaper), even though they paid for it just as much as they paid for the full-price ones (like you bought it). You're not just hurting the game developers, you're hurting your favorite gaming store.
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I watched gameplay demonstration videos, I did research and read reviews, like I said they were all favourable.

I was simply expressing my desire to exorcise my consumer rights with a product I am dissatisfied with, I had no idea that innocent corporations were being harmed, is there a charity or organisation I can donate to to help in the fight against customer satisfaction?

 
while gameplay videos are sometimes good, what you want to watch are walkthrough videos to get a taste of the gameplay

just watch random ones and not the entire game or it will ruin the story of the game for you

as gameplay videos designed specifically to show off the game will only show the good points of the game and when you actually play through a level, you will find it bland and boring


if companies also want to boost sales then have store actually stock new pc games

in large stores like circuit city and best buy you will only find like 5 pc games and all of them will be games you never herd of before

so if your a pc game developer, you wont get the physical store shoppers because your games wont wind up on the store shelf

and not many people are comfortable with buying games online
 
Razor,

Amongst the many other things you don't seem to have a solid understanding of is capitalism. The dwindling shelf space for PC titles is not the cause of dwindling sales. It's the poor sales that are causing shelf space to be taken away, and part of that is piracy. Best Buy and the likes are in business to make money. If PC games sold better they would certainly stock more (like they do with console titles). The reason "crap-ware" titles seem to take a up such a disporportionate amount of shelf space for PC games is that they are cheaper to stock and sell just about the same as many top tier games. Probably in part because people who want those types of garbage titles do not pirate them where as many gamers do pirate the top tier games.
 
There used to be software rental stores like there are check cashing places now.
There're still places that let you "preview" some titles, but there aren't many games left that are released that would work that way. A consumable CD key nullifies that sort of thing.

I assume GameFly and those sorts must focus on consoles, they'd have the same problem with letting people use PC titles.

As for garbage releases, I have a 36" square box that's followed me from house to house FULL of old software, still in the original boxes, most with the shrink-wrap only cut by the box flap. They were all of the install once, then delete and repackage variety. Some of those didn't run at all, some ran but crashed continually, and some were technically viable, they just weren't quite what was portrayed on the box. The box represents roughly $2000 worth of garbage, which is why it still exists. I think the newest title in it's from like 1998, so nothing's useful today anyway except to remind me why software licensing sucks and that used car salesmen are more trustworthy than software publishers.
 



but wouldn't that cause a chain reaction, making sales even worst?

a few crappy games don't sell well so stores stop stocking pc games, which causes sales to be even worst

you also never see tv ads about pc only games, you generally see all game ads on tv will show a trailer, then at the end a giant xbox 360 logo, then a tiny pc logo at the bottom that requires a HDtv and a magnifying glass to see, that coupled with the games not being available in store will make most people think that the game doesn't even exist for the pc

so the only place likely to have an ad for the pc version of the game, are sites designed for pc gaming or on some sponsored podcast where 90% of the viewers cant even afford the game

it is like making your own company (lets call it Lamborghini, then finding the poorest village on the planet, then sticking your billboard in the middle of it. you wont find many people there that can afford a half million dollar car but you will find a lot of people who know how to steal one )

most pc game developers advertise to the avid pc community, the same people who got burned by bad DRM
 


This is part of the reason why I chose to buy the game in this particular store, the PC section is actually hidden behind a pillar.
 
a few crappy games don't sell well so stores stop stocking pc games, which causes sales to be even worst
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It's not like PC games just disappeared from retail shelves over night en masse. It's a process that started over a decade ago. Stores started seeing that console titles were drastically outselling PC titles so overtime they started to shift more and more shelf space to the more profitable products. Also there has been a shift in the type of PC titles that are most profitable. Casual gamer and crossover titles have also eaten up a lot of the hardcore PC game shelf space because games like the Sims sell a lot better than Crysis. Basically since HL2 there hasn't been a game that in terms of sales that would give retail stores any indication that more shelf space for PC games would be a profitable decision. The two that you might think would have are the Sims, which I mentioned above as actually working against more PC game shelf space, and WoW. The problem with WoW is that despite being the most successful game of all time, only a small percentage of the revenue generated comes from retail sales. Add in that now most top tier games are more easily available via digital distribution upon release, so where's the incentive to increase PC game shelf space.

As for advertising, well that's just as simple as the fact that mainstream ads do not sell PC games. I always get a laugh out of how generic-online-forum-guy thinks he knows more than the developers, publishers and executives when it comes to, well everything involved in making a game. But if there's one group that I can guarantee you know their **** it's the ad people. PC gaming ads are put where PC games will see them, and that's really not TV or other mainstream media. PC gamers tend to be very well informed and usually know about upcoming games long before the normal advertising cycle. Think about it, how many times have you seen an ad anywhere for a game that you didn't already know was coming out months ago? A 30 second TV ad is just pointless when targeting the PC gaming crowd.

I'm not trying to be all gloom and doom about PC gaming. But throwing money at things like more shelf space or extra advertising is only going to do further damage.
 


Every time an idiot like you says something in public, god kills a kitten. Please, think of the kittens.


To everyone else here who apparently are siding with the idiot corporations on this: Piracy is going to exist, it always has and always will. The point of the matter is, with the advent of broadband, its even easier to download a copy of the game, stupid ass DRM stripped and all, than it was to make a copy back in the day from your friends copy of the game. Since you are not going to stop anyone from cracking your **** DRM, you are in essence just deciding to make life harder for those of us that wish to actually purchase your game.

Now, personally, with the lack of quality that is prevalent in the gaming industry and movie industry etc, I've been pirating **** to try it out before I buy it for YEARS. Demos are almost always well-crafted misrepresentations of the games they are released for. I mean, I've played demos for strategy games years ago that had FPS quality graphics that weren't even remotely close to being realistic to what was in the real game, except on the 2 or 3 units they made available to you in the demo, and the games would run flawlessly. Then you'd get the game, bring it home, and on the EXACT SAME SYSTEM the game would crash incessantly, cause lockups, even frag the **** out of your video/sound etc drivers(Dune 2000 anyone?).

More recently, when I've had more money to play russian roulette in the video game store with, I've just been buying the game and then downloading a pirated version anyways. Because, honestly, theres less hassle to cracking the game than dealing with the **** mess the DRM creates. That, and you would be AMAZED at how well a lot of games run when the DRM is removed and nothing else is changed. Hell, back when I got SW: KOTOR I had to download a pirated copy just to get the damned game to LOAD. Its because of this **** that I've decided to stop helping the companies that produce these games and have just stopped purchasing them. Theres a list of games as long as your arm that have been released in the past year that will see no purchase from me, and my video game collection includes well over 100 titles, just for PC, all purchased legally.

The ineffectiveness of DRM is also well demonstrated by Sins of Solar Empire, by far the most stable upon release PC video game I have seen in the last 10 years. Certain systems had issues with certain drivers causing crash issues, which was mostly patched out of the game within a week of release. Guess what other major feature is in sins? NO DRM. Well, no software DRM at any rate, all the DRM they have on the game is that they require you to register a legitimate CD key in order to download updates. When I heard about this, Sins was the first game I've bought, within the last 5 ish years, without ever playing it beforehand. Its from a brand new developer, and a small publisher, had no DRM, and went GOLD. The corporate tards at EA and Ubisoft need to be taken out back of the chemical shed and shot. SOASE sold over 500,000 copies, with no DRM.

I'm so happy with brad wardell(CEO of Stardock, publisher of sins) for shooting the entire stupid reason behind DRM trend in the foot I'm tempted to have a sex change just so I can have his babies >_>.
 
Sins of Solar Empire has some drm but it is completely optional to the user so if their login servers decide to die, the game will still work with no problem

getting programs to run properly is hard enough, why add multiple ways to purposely make it not work.

pirates will pirate games, regardless of there being DRM or not, but adding DRM will only increase the number of people pirating the game because you will force legit customers into pirating the game just to get it to run and at that point, don't expect them to buy another one of your games anymore

 
The issue, I believe, is that games companies have two options to prevent people pirating their games:

1. The stick - hit people with DRM to discourage casual piracy.
(Oh, and this has the secondary benefit of killing the second hand game market. Ka-Ching!)

2. The carrot - give people a good reason to buy the game legally. (See: Stardock/SOASE).

It seems that most gaming companies have looked at how Steam drastically reduced piracy for Valves games and only saw the online activation side of the equation - somehow missing all of the benefits that Steam also introduced, to soften the blow for users.

Securom is a terrible idea which I believe will only help piracy along because it is simply punishing people for purchasing the product, whereas I believe games companies should be looking for ways to provide benefits for those who purchase legally instead.

People shouldn't pirate. But the steps taken to combat it thus far strike me as almost deliberately wrong-headed.
 




Go ahead and return the game, but I didn't realize pirating was part of your "consumer rights".

Don't fool yourself and try to justify it. I bet there are a lot of things that don't fully live up to your expectations.

I wonder if this melon here will be sweet or not, humm, I better steal it so that I can open it and find out. If it is good, I'll go back to the grocery store and pay them...uhh...well it's not perfect so I guess I don't need to pay. Nah, I'll eat it and steal another melon, I only pay for absolutely perfect items. Oh look, this chair isn't as comfortable as I imagined, I guess I can come back and steal it now, whew, I thought I was going to have to pay for it. Boy, I sure am smart, under my system, I never have to pay for anything! Look at all these crappy items, none of them meet my standards. This TV already has a dead pixel, good thing I didn't pay for any of this stuff. Yup, I'm just exercising my consumer right, when greedy corporations make something that meets my standards, I'll buy, but until then, I'll just continue to steal and so will my friends. Humm...I wonder why so many stores are closing, now there's even less stuff for me to try out! This is so unfair, I will have to steal even more until more stores open up and offer me a good selection, I am outraged! No, it can't be because my friends and I are stealing, I mean look at all the useless junk I've stole, I would never have bought all that so how am I hurting anyone by stealing?
 
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