Stop the Pirateing. ALL READ

[djcoolmasterx]

azxcvbnm321 you fail to understand the difference between digital information and physical objects. This is not theft of an item, its a replication of it. We are talking of interlectual property theft.

For example, If I person A writes a sentence and person B copies it and writes it down, That is interlectual theft, whereas if person B steals the peice of paper from person A, thats physical theft.

If you could "download" copies of actual physical goods such as a car or LCD TV with ease and without taking anything away from others you would, and you would be lying if you say you wouldn't.

As I was saying, if a game is not worth paying for then its not worth playing, all I am suggesting is that people should be able to establish if the game is worth buying. I believe whole heartedly that if you play a game you should pay for it. I am dismayed at people that never buy the games that they have pirated yet keep on playing.

 

[azxcvbnm321]

Morally there is no difference which is why I use examples interchangeably. You are depriving someone of their livelihood, benefiting from their labor without compensating. There are many types of theft, if you ask someone to work for you and then stiff them, that's also theft of their labor. The bottom line is that it is wrong and reprehensible.

What entitles you to try out the game in full or even in part if the developer doesn't want you to? You have every right not to buy, but the seller has every right to allow or not allow you to try out their wares. Some stores allow you to try their food before you buy, others don't. Do I know how that steak is going to taste or that pasta at the restaurant? By trying on a pair of shoes for 1 minute, do I get the entire experience of how they would perform on the basketball court? Do I know if they'll last for more than a month? You have no right to take software for a "trial run" just as I have no right to "try on" shoes for a week on the basketball courts. There are shoes that fall apart in less than 6 months and are terrible for basketball, I simply don't buy from that company, it still doesn't entitle me to steal the shoes. You have a huge sense of entitlement. How about coming over to my house and cleaning my bathroom so that I can decide if you are worth hiring?

 

[djcoolmasterx]

You miss the point, when you pirate software you are making a duplicate that costs the company nothing to produce and there is no wear to the product as in shoes and the product is not consumed like food.

From your blog it seems you have extremely polarised views and anything I say won't change your mind that things are not just black and white.

 

[dagger]

You miss the point, when you pirate software you are making a duplicate that costs the company nothing to produce and there is no wear to the product as in shoes and the product is not consumed like food.

From your blog it seems you have extremely polarised views and anything I say won't change your mind that things are not just black and white.

Maybe he/she works for one of those companies.

 

[djcoolmasterx]

The vast move from communist China to the US would probably leave people with a very strong belief in private enterprise, hence azxcvbnm321's stance on this issue.

 

[purplerat]

You miss the point, when you pirate software you are making a duplicate that costs the company nothing to produce and there is no wear to the product as in shoes and the product is not consumed like food.

Actually making a duplicate does cause "wear" on the IP by devaluing the legit copies. Each unauthorized copy reduces the total profitability of an IP. What a lot of people overlook is that piracy also devalues the copies that honest users bought. If you spend $50 on a game, the more it is pirated the less valuable your copy becomes. I keep on hearing this argument that DRM is meant to destroy the second hand game market, but it seems to me that piracy does way more damage than DRM (not to mention that DRM's impact on used game sales is a direct cause of piracy itself).
Think about this, say you buy a game play it through and want to sell it. What are you competing with? Well normally you should just be competing with the new game and simply need to price your copy low enough below the new price to make it worth buying used. But with piracy you now have to compete with a free alternative which is essentially the same as what you are selling, not to mention that DRM, which is a response to piracy, makes used copies even less valuable.
You can call it theft or whatever you want but the end result is the same. You take/use something that you didn't pay for which causes damages to the people selling/buying legit copies.

 

[djcoolmasterx]

But if you do as I've said and buy it if you like it and want to play it then there is no problem of devaluation.

Like I have said I'm against outright piracy and that if its worth playing its worth buying.

There are 2 ways to find out if it is worth buying,

Buy it then decide whether or not to take it back, which you have said is wrong with restocking, staff time, devaluation of the product.

or

Pirate it and then decide whether or not you want to buy it, none of the shop's/devs/pubs resources are used this way.

 

[dagger]

But if you do as I've said and buy it if you like it and want to play it then there is no problem of devaluation.

Like I have said I'm against outright piracy and that if its worth playing its worth buying.

There are 2 ways to find out if it is worth buying,

Buy it then decide whether or not to take it back, which you have said is wrong with restocking, staff time, devaluation of the product.

or

Pirate it and then decide whether or not you want to buy it, none of the shop's/devs/pubs resources are used this way.

Isn't that because they don't provide demos anymore? It used to be that a free partial demo was the rule years ago, now, it's the exception. 😛

 

[purplerat]

But if you do as I've said and buy it if you like it and want to play it then there is no problem of devaluation.

I've argued against the "try then buy" stance so many times before that it's not even worth it anymore. The bottom line is that it just doesn't work for so many reasons, not the least of which is just general human nature. You made mention of communism early, which many people will agree sounds like a great idea in theory but could never possibly be implemented in a way that it didn't end up becoming completely corrupt and ultimately unfair. I'm not comparing Piracy to Communism, only that in both ideas may at times seem to work but in reality always end up being negative. The idea that you can sample a product against the wishes of the person selling it and then decide whether or not to pay - seperate from deciding whether or not to continue using - would never work in reality. The end result is always damaging.

 

[djcoolmasterx]

I agree that on a large scale this doesn't work, there will always be people who want something for nothing, But I'd like to believe that there are honest people that just want to avoid dissapointment.

 

[purplerat]

Isn't that because they don't provide demos anymore? It used to be that a free partial demo was the rule years ago, now, it's the exception.

There's several fallacies that always get batted around in piracy debates. One is that the price of video games has risen drastically (or even moderatly) in recent years. That simply is not true. 20 years ago NES games sold for almost the same amount as games do today. Factor in inflation and games today are actually cheaper than they were in the past two decades.
Another fallacy often given as a reason for piracy is the supposed disapearance of demos. At best there may have been slightly more demos available say 5 years ago, but going back much farther than that and you start getting into a time when most people couldn't get a demo even if one was available. Actually if you look back into the 90s many demos had to be purchased at retail stores, albeit for only a few bucks, or with the purchase of a magazine. Even when broadband started to catch on bandwidth was still limited for many users and if you really wanted the type of access you normally have today you would have to pay for it (fileplanet etc).
Today there are probably more demos than every before, and more readily available and cheaper. Some may not come out until after the game is released in order to bank more on those first day sales, but that's up to the consumer to decide whether to buy an untested product or wait.

 

[dagger]

Lol, I was talking more about 2 or 3 years ago, when most games have demos, now, they're very rare.

Starting to provide demos again will do more against piracy than your ranting ever will.

 

[purplerat]

What evidence is there that demos were more prevalent 2-3 years ago? Or that they were more representative than current demos? What I think you might be confusing yourself with is the fact that games that came out 2-3 years ago are more likely to have a demo now than new games do at the moment. Games that are 2-3 years old are also cheaper now than a brand new game today. That doesn’t mean games are more expensive now than they were a couple years ago. Wait a few months or more and you’ll see more demos available for today’s new releases, and those games will be cheaper. Sounds like that would solve a lot of the issues you use for pirating games

 

[purplerat]

Just want to point that regardless of the number of demos available piracy is still a huge problem and there's zero indication that it has anything to do with demos being available. Piracy was a huge issue 2-3 years ago when you claim demos "were available for almost every game". Just going back to the last year big time titles like Bioshock, COD4 and Crysis were all heavily pirated despite having demos.
Even though Spore's Creature Creater was not a true demo it did give some idea of what the game would look and feel like. That didn't stop it from becoming the fastest pirated game of all time.
Where is there an example of two similar games with simliar sales figures, one with a demo one without, where the one without the demo was pirated more?

 

[djcoolmasterx]

I agree, the availability of demos doesn't seem to affect piracy. The rise probably correlates more exponentially increasing broadband speeds and a platteau of ISO sizes because of constraints of DVD's of 4.7GB or 8GB dual layer, Far Cry 2 only weighs in at less than 4GB, COD2(2005) was around that.

 

[doomsdaydave11]

It's time for something new.

How do you think the folks that owned books felt when the printing press was developed and the value of their books plummeted?

They would have destroyed that damn machine if they could have. And the world would probably be hundreds of years behind in terms of general education (and level of innovation).

Remember all the whining about how VHS(beta) and cassette (jeez I don't even remember how to spell that) tapes would destroy the markets for TV and music? Didn't happen as far as I know.

I realize the web is a far greater challenge to intellectual property, but the industry as to embrace new tech and work with it instead of hanging on to old business models.

If people like to download free stuff, give them free stuff. Just make sure it's of high enough quality that you can sell them follow-up items.

Libraries work, don't they? Thay haven't destroyed the market for books.

That's completely besides the point.

1. the books were legitly printed from the printing press. It's not like they took the books from their homes.
2. What do cassette tapes have to do with anything? It's called advancing technology.
3. Libraries work on our tax dollars, and the books are returned... if they're not, there is a fine.

Pirating is stealing, simple as that.

 

[doomsdaydave11]

So maybe we should have game "libraries" where people can check out games for a limited time.

It would be wildly successful, and surely put a dent in piracy.

How supportive do you think the industry would be of that?

GameFly? hello?

 

[djcoolmasterx]

GameFly? hello?

They don't do PC games.

 

[purplerat]

Yes, but console games are starting to be pirated just as much as PC games. Game rentals do not make much of an impact on piracy one way or another. PC games are a completely different beast from console games in terms of the way they are used and I don't see PC game rentals ever really catching on, at least not the way console games have.

 

[razor512]

That's completely besides the point.

1. the books were legitly printed from the printing press. It's not like they took the books from their homes.
2. What do cassette tapes have to do with anything? It's called advancing technology.
3. Libraries work on our tax dollars, and the books are returned... if they're not, there is a fine.

Pirating is stealing, simple as that.

3. Libraries work on our tax dollars, and the books are returned... if they're not, there is a fine.
so do you get fined if you copy down a few pages or if you photocopy some pages from the book?

if you walk into school with with a ipod with a custom paintjob, and a week later, several other students who found it cool. also do a custom paint job. did they steal your ipod?


when you see a store sign and you copy down the info from the sign, did you steal their store sign




stealing is if someone sneaks into your house and takes your tv

pirating/ file sharing is your neighbor noticing that you bought a 50 inch lcd tv and he also goes out to get one

they call them pirates because they cant get money out of them

a pirate wont buy your game no matter what. the best thing the company can do is not give their paying customers a reason to become pirates (aka not burdening them with DRM)

 

[pr2thej]

You can use all the pretty pictures and witty comments you like, it will not make it any less of a criminal offense, therefore it does not really matter what its called.

What does matter is that it kills the industry. Does it make you feel good to know that YOU are killing off your hobby?

 

[djcoolmasterx]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7709298.stm

Oh no the industry is dying.

 

[pr2thej]

"There is no doubt that the games sector is having a fantastic year," says Steve Redmond of the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA), "but these figures overstate that by including games hardware."

I wonder how much of that figure includes subscription fees to WoW, and casual games like the Sims that sell by the bucketload.

I will rephrase though - Piracy kills the Hardcore gaming market (Crysis et al).

 

[Dekasav]

I think the hardcore gaming market is being destroyed more by a lack of playable hardware, especially on PC. We need more cards like the HD 4670, which came out, played the best games at great settings (at low resolutions), and played them well. Integrated GPU's need a kick in the pants, so that they can be good for some gaming. If they are, the number of gamers playing hardcore (Crysis et al) games goes up, and as # of consumers goes up, # of sales can't help but follow.

Piracy won't go away, but making sure your game runs on "standard" hardware will help your sales more than any DRM.

 

[jalek]

Integrated hardware can never match discreet cards. If they do, there's no reason to upgrade. Scratch one source of revenue for game makers, the spiffs they get for pushing things and driving people to upgrade.

Or hadn't all you armchair experts noticed that dynamic? It's been true since the early days, games drive hardware upgrades more than any other software category, and all computer component manufacturers are well aware of it.

I believe nVidia's pulled back support some, at least I haven't noticed their logo as prevalent as it was. ATI probably hasn't much money as they try to keep AMD afloat, and the shrinking margins will impact this sort of thing.