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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Another Look At Piracy

Kasz216 on 08 May 2010
Onyxmeth said:
vlad321 said:
Almi said:
 

so, whats the value of your "physical goods"?... only a small percentage of the price are for the actual material of let's say a jeans. you basically pay transport, the retailer and the brandname.oh and 1% for the chinese workers.

when buying a game you at least pay the actual "workers" like 50% of your price.

 

When I give you my jeans, can I use my jeans still? There's your value.

A good example with physical goods like clothing is knockoff merchandise/imitation goods. It's a big problem in large, urban US cities. There's lost value for the real manufacturer in the ability for consumers to acquire a fake NFL jersey from a black market dealer for $10-20 instead of the $60-80 it costs to buy a legal, officially licensed one. Women's purses/bags are also popular knockoff items.

The only real issue with that is... it's only illegal if someone sells it.

If I make my own NFL jersey for myself... there isn't anything they can do about it. (Unless the NFL thinks I am profiting from my NFL Jersey.)

Personal Use items aren't covered via copyright.  When your downloading a pirated game, you are technically creating that copy yourself.


This is actually why IP laws had to be created in the first place.

If you'll notice, international trade treaties always exclude counterfit items being seized when "it's reasonable they are using the items for personal use."

Here is the big one infact.

http://www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/us-counterfeit.482/



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vlad321 on 08 May 2010
Kasz216 said:
Onyxmeth said:
vlad321 said:
Almi said:
 

so, whats the value of your "physical goods"?... only a small percentage of the price are for the actual material of let's say a jeans. you basically pay transport, the retailer and the brandname.oh and 1% for the chinese workers.

when buying a game you at least pay the actual "workers" like 50% of your price.

 

When I give you my jeans, can I use my jeans still? There's your value.

A good example with physical goods like clothing is knockoff merchandise/imitation goods. It's a big problem in large, urban US cities. There's lost value for the real manufacturer in the ability for consumers to acquire a fake NFL jersey from a black market dealer for $10-20 instead of the $60-80 it costs to buy a legal, officially licensed one. Women's purses/bags are also popular knockoff items.

The only real issue with that is... it's only illegal if someone sells it.

If I make my own NFL jersey for myself... there isn't anything they can do about it. (Unless the NFL thinks I am profiting from my NFL Jersey.)

Personal Use items aren't covered via copyright.  When your downloading a pirated game, you are technically creating that copy yourself.


This is actually why IP laws had to be created in the first place.

If you'll notice, international trade treaties always exclude counterfit items being seized when "it's reasonable they are using the items for personal use."

Here is the big one infact.

http://www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/us-counterfeit.482/

Oh man the ACTA, that's one horeendous agreement if I ever saw one. There was a draft up on Wiki Leaks before and it was just fucked up beyond belief in what it would do. That was a year ago so maybe now it's changed and I like that they are releasing the full document . I'd like to see how that flies with some European countries, my guess is not too well at all.



Tag(thx fkusumot) - "Yet again I completely fail to see your point..."

HD vs Wii, PC vs HD: http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=93374

Why Regenerating Health is a crap game mechanic: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=3986420

gamrReview's broken review scores: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=4170835

 

vlad321 on 08 May 2010

Oh man I love Cracked:

http://www.cracked.com/article_18513_5-insane-file-sharing-panics-from-before-internet.html

The funniest part is that it's true.



Tag(thx fkusumot) - "Yet again I completely fail to see your point..."

HD vs Wii, PC vs HD: http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=93374

Why Regenerating Health is a crap game mechanic: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=3986420

gamrReview's broken review scores: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=4170835

 

GlingGling on 08 May 2010

The internet is serious business...

... but seriously, everyone knows piracy is "wrong". Those who do it have their "reasons".

If *all* games had great demos then piracy would be less of a problem. For the people that can actually afford to buy (see 1st vs 3rd world economies) trying before buying is a very important. Because value isn't always obvious, I should say rarely even.



1337 Gamer on 08 May 2010

You bring up good points.



I mostly play RTS and Moba style games now adays as well as ALOT of benchmarking. I do play other games however such as the witcher 3 and Crysis 3, and recently Ashes of the Singularity. I love gaming on the cutting edge and refuse to accept any compromises. Proud member of the Glorious PC Gaming Master Race. Long Live SHIO!!!! 

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Slimebeast on 08 May 2010
vlad321 said:

From the guys who are doing the 5 game indie pack:

http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy

 

PC game piracy

Does this also apply to PC (Windows/Mac/Linux) gamers? Many PC game developers find that about 90% of their users are running pirated copies -- does this mean that piracy is killing PC games? Let's try our alternative explanation, and see if these statistics are possible even if only 20% of worldwide PC gamers are pirates. The average PC gamer worldwide only buys about three games a year, and plays them for a long time [4]. I buy many more than that, and you probably do too, but again, we are not average gamers! On the other hand, game pirates might download a new game every few days, for a total of about 125 games a year. Given these numbers, games would see 90% piracy rates even though only 20% of gamers are pirates.

Are these numbers accurate? The NPD recently conducted an anonymous survey showing that only 4% of PC gamers in the US admit to pirating games [5], a number that is comparable to XBox 360 piracy statistics [6] . However, since piracy is inversely proportionate to per-capita GDP, we can expect piracy rates to increase dramatically in places like Russia, China and India, driving up the world-wide average. Let's say to 20%.

This means that if all pirates would otherwise buy as many games as the average consumer, then game developers would be losing 20% of their revenue to piracy.

This article fails right there. Only 20% of PC gamers are pirates world wide? Ridiculous.

I make $45,000 a year after taxes and I still pirate everything I can on PC. So do my friends and everyone I've known. I've only bought 1.7 PC games per year on average since I started playing on the PC in 1995.



Akvod on 08 May 2010
vlad321 said:
Akvod said:
vlad321 said:
Akvod said:

 

And then he got shot.

Did you play the game?

I am sorry you are right, he got buldgeoned by his son. In the end his ideas got everyone dead. Maybe you should think a little more before posting things that might bite you in the ass.

? I wasn't adressing anything else from your post, only being bewildered that you will make such a mistake. To be honest, in the back of my mind, I thought you didn't play the game, but only read a Wikipedia entry.

Also, one can argue that it was precisely because Ryan went AGAINST his ideals, or of making an exception to things such as religion and drugs, of non-interference, that Fontaine actually had a business going, and gained power.

There's another aspect of the simple reality of there being a lower class. SOMEBODY has to flip burgers, or take out the trash. And if it's a free market, most likely those people will not be getting paid a lot, and thus they will become parasites (whether or not you believe they're in the wrong or not. Ryan feels that these people "betrayed" him), and Fontaine can start using populism.

Anyway, please don't be rude, you're only biting yourself in the ass by creating hostility unnecessarily.



Akvod on 08 May 2010


Ail on 08 May 2010
vlad321 said:
Onyxmeth said:
vlad321 said:
 

That is also a wrong analogy. Because the pirated versions are far superior than the retail version in this day and age. By quality, the guys on the street would be selling a far better pair of jeans than the guys in the businesses.

Irrelevant and totally anecdotal. Pirated copies of games have many disadvantages same as they have advantages. Saying they are all far superior is false. Different problems present themselves across different platforms. Also there's no standard of quality in regards to knockoff clothing either. Some can be of similar quality to the real thing, and some of it can be utter crap.

I don't see how it's anecdotal at all. You don't have securom or starfroce. You don't have limited installations or internet requirements. All you get is the game and you can do with it whatever you want without having to put up with anything. Also, pirate copies are not worse than the source material, they never are. In the off chance they are whatever group cracked them gains some pretty bad reputation, and most of the grouops that crack the games are just looking for good reputation. For just about every game, the pirated copy is a superior product than the original.

Maybe if games still came with things liek cloth maps, or thick manuals which have dozens of pages of story or little figurines. Those days however are long gone, and as it stands the pirate copies of a game are always better than the one from the store. In your analogy, the pirates take the merchandise and make it better, then give it away for free.

All it comes down to is that physical and digital goods can't be compared at all.

so pirated Starcraft 2 will provide full battlenet features , including tpurnaments, ladders and skill matching ?

I don't think so...

Stop taking anecdotal examples and making a rule out of them..



PS3-Xbox360 gap : 1.5 millions and going up in PS3 favor !

PS3-Wii gap : 20 millions and going down !

vlad321 on 08 May 2010
Ail said:
vlad321 said:
Onyxmeth said:
vlad321 said:
 

That is also a wrong analogy. Because the pirated versions are far superior than the retail version in this day and age. By quality, the guys on the street would be selling a far better pair of jeans than the guys in the businesses.

Irrelevant and totally anecdotal. Pirated copies of games have many disadvantages same as they have advantages. Saying they are all far superior is false. Different problems present themselves across different platforms. Also there's no standard of quality in regards to knockoff clothing either. Some can be of similar quality to the real thing, and some of it can be utter crap.

I don't see how it's anecdotal at all. You don't have securom or starfroce. You don't have limited installations or internet requirements. All you get is the game and you can do with it whatever you want without having to put up with anything. Also, pirate copies are not worse than the source material, they never are. In the off chance they are whatever group cracked them gains some pretty bad reputation, and most of the grouops that crack the games are just looking for good reputation. For just about every game, the pirated copy is a superior product than the original.

Maybe if games still came with things liek cloth maps, or thick manuals which have dozens of pages of story or little figurines. Those days however are long gone, and as it stands the pirate copies of a game are always better than the one from the store. In your analogy, the pirates take the merchandise and make it better, then give it away for free.

All it comes down to is that physical and digital goods can't be compared at all.

so pirated Starcraft 2 will provide full battlenet features , including tpurnaments, ladders and skill matching ?

I don't think so...

Stop taking anecdotal examples and making a rule out of them..

Given time they probably will have LAN. Pirate copies of MW2 come with a console. The people get what they want on PC given time.



Tag(thx fkusumot) - "Yet again I completely fail to see your point..."

HD vs Wii, PC vs HD: http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=93374

Why Regenerating Health is a crap game mechanic: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=3986420

gamrReview's broken review scores: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=4170835