Can piracy be a good thing?

[nitekrawler1285]

Millennium said:

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.

I did not realise that they payed more for thier games. thank you very much for pointing out the flaw in my logic.

However, despite people stealing many companies manage to make a profit.  Pirates will steal no matter what.  They operate with a different ethical system.  Given that most companies can create a product that manages to appeal to enough people that don't says to me that they are overshooting the value of the product that they are selling.  

Nintendo makes tons of money despite pirates.  Find your market, don't complain about overshooting the current one. Make different software or sell it at a different price, or both.