Can piracy be a good thing?

[Millennium]

nitekrawler1285 said:

Millennium said:

nitekrawler1285 said:

I'm just curious to how places like Gamefly and Blockbuster can charge you and give away someone's intellectual property but doing so for free is bad.

Because Gamefly and Blockbuster legitimately purchase every copy they rent out, and don't make new ones. They don't steal in the way that pirates do.

 

That doesn't change the fact that developers are "hurt" over less sales, while they(GF BB) make money off someone else's hard work.  Let's buy 20 copies and rent it out thousands of times.  That's SOOO much better than pirating.

If rental copies cost the same as retail copies you'd be right, but they don't.

See, the game makers actually understand this point that you make. If you look at the license that comes with your retail copies of games, you'll see that you're not allowed to rent those out precisely because of what you are saying. Gamefly and Blockbuster and similar outlets pay extra for that privilege, and they pay quite a lot extra. Enough, in fact, to more or less offset the losses the game developer would take due to reduced sales.