mZuzek said:
Zoombael said:
But you are saying its okay. At the very least you're saying the bad doesnt outweight the good. No real harm done. And you opened a thread titled "in defence of piracy".
The common fallacies of the "pro piracy" faction.
Since no physical goods are stolen, no material damage, no loss, therefore videogames are nothing of value. However, how easy is it to download from a comfy chair. Not even have to physically leave home. Try to casually walk into a car dealer ship, short circuit five cars to your liking and take them home. Or a convinience store, grab 20 packs of cigarettes (and a Playboy while you re at it) walk up to the cashier and tell him/her nonchalantly you dont like a certain physical products producing company and instead of buying you steal their stuff from now on.
Who does that? Not the average, usually lawabiding citizen. You dont need special skills to pirate software, no criminal intent, anybody can do it, do it plenty, anywhere, anytime.
Yes, you can multiply software with little to no effort. But you cant multiply customers, the people who buy products, that number is always finite, digital or not.
The real, long term damage is being done by depreciating videogames. "Nothing of real value". And it shows. To bring down prices rapidly was Valves way to combat piracy. Single handedly it was responsible for the rise of f2p and helped advancing/normalizing MTA. Many gamers are hellbent to squeeze the most "bang out of every buck" and think the epitome of todays competition is to cram as much content as possible into service. It was certainly different back in the days.
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I do think the bad doesn't outweigh the good, that much is true, yeah. It's why this thread is a thing. I think that piracy can have a positive, long-term impact on the industry, and it's because I've seen it with my own eyes and done it with my own hands. If anything I can't see any long-term damage being done by it - the damage of piracy is visibly immediate and short-term. As I've said in the OP, playing certain games for free was mostly what led me to buying a number of consoles and games I would've maybe never bought otherwise, including those games I had originally pirated, so this piracy led to me spending thousands of dollars I wouldn't have given to the industry otherwise. I'm not the only example of this, far from it, but obviously it's the only one I have detailed knowledge of.
Do most pirates do that? I don't know, probably not. And in that case, those people are doing more harm than good, yeah... but they're still doing some good, by spreading awareness and word of mouth. As I said in the OP, while every artist dreams of making a living from their art, the one thing they want most is just for people to be enjoying their product. It means so much... certainly more than money. If there were thousands of people out there who loved my music, even if they only listened to it for free and my life still was as it is now, I'd be feeling a lot better about myself than I do now.
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Your entire argument is still ignoring every single other person impacted outside of just the video game industry.
Even IF the video game industry has been positively impacted (which still, mind you, doesn't make it not theft), what is your counter argument to the impact that for those who do choose to actually purchase the game? They are absolutely impacted in that their choice to not break the law resulted in their bank account going down, whereas the person who spent their money on other things still gets to enjoy the game free of charge. Baffle me as to how that isn't negatively impacting that person (in that their additional income actually means absolutely nothing at all because those who make less can just get the items for free).
You are literally arguing that video games should absolutely be included in welfare because people at a minimum should be entitled to it.
You also haven't given any sort of argument as to a limit. So if piracy is ok (with the mindset that people at a bare minimum deserve video games in life), then how many video games do they deserve for free? Should a person who pirates be able to play 1 new game a month, 3, 5, etc??? I can absolutely assure you as somebody who pays for all games, unless it's $5 games, I can't buy more than a couple a year. So I learn to play with just those games as well as some free to play ones. So what is the limit for a pirate? Or is there no limit? They are entitled to unlimited free games?
