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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Pirates, admit you're thieves

radiantshadow92 said:
oniyide said:

I have a SNES, NES, GENESIS and 32x emulator. I know, "you bastard thats what WiiWare is for" well some of those games arent on WiiWare so whats a guy to do. Pay those insane Ebay prices???


To this day i don't understand why anyone would even play those games. I understand maybe one or two games. But not libraries of games from the old days. Thats just cwwaaaazy. 

I did my emu collection in 98.... The main point for me was actually fanslation... that's how I played FFV and that's how I hoped to play DQ6 (though the project took very long and I didn't follow the end of it).

Good old days of telephone modem downloads at 15 kb/s

That and there were awsome jap games not releasing in EU.



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phinch1 said:

The retailer then gets a smaller audience to sell to, if people know they can get it for free it make it a lot harder for retailers to sell the game, heck they might not even sell it, at the end of the day it is stealing, you have a developers product and you havnt paid for it

Just in case you missed some other guy's answer to this, I regret to inform you that not even nearly all pirates would have bought the game, not at a high price at the very least. Personally when I pirate a game, it's because the interest/price ratio isn't just quite good enough yet. That said, I've so little time and interest in most games these days that I don't even pirate that much. The last two games I pirated (I think ) were because I can't find them anywhere - literally (well, that and the fact that I'm not paying 40€ for a digital copy of a half-a-decade old game I don't even know I'm going to like without first trying it).



Zlejedi said:
SpartenOmega117 said:

I tried pirating once and i was not able to enjoy the game at all. Never pirated again.

While excuses about pirating are funny, this myth is even more rediculus than whatever pirates come with.

And doubly so in the era when half of pc games sell through digital download.


I'm... confused... what's the myth your talking about?  That he pirated a game once then didn't like it?


Truth is, if you pirate something there is a VERY good chance you aren't going to enjoy it as much as if you paid for it yourself... for at least 3 distinct reasons.

 

1) Cognitive Dissonance.  Say someone is given the choice between a blue backpack and a red backpak... and they don't care, they like both backpacks equally, and on a whim, the guy picks Red.   In one year, you will find that the person who picked red will like Red backpacks more, and furthermore will dislike blue backpacks.  Give someone the ability to have any backpack at anytime... this won't happen. 

2) Value.  Paying for something rather then taking it for free (assuming you can pay) shows you value it more.  You make 20 dollars an hour and bought something for 60 bucks?  That was 3 hours of your life right their, what you bought is worth 3 hours of you life.  If you downloaded it?  What's that worth?   Like 10 minutes of your time, off screen, while you did other stuff.  (Or hours if you have a bad internet connection, but you get the point.)

3) With an infinite number of games, most of which aren't going to be great, you'll tend to go more towards trying more new stuff, that's going to probably be less stellar, and focus less on going back and enjoying your favorites.



pezus said:

Pirating>Buying used games

 

That is all


Agreed.

it's the same thing to me. the only difference is that a company that has nothing to do with the devs or producers or whatever puts the money in their pockets.



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phinch1 said:
Zkuq said:
Galaki said:

For those still can't understand,

QFT. I can totally see why people don't like piracy but not liking something doesn't make it any worse than it actually is. If I hit A, does it mean I tried to kill A? No, most likely not. They are both wrong but they aren't the same thing.

Nomad Blue said:
Silver-Tiger said:

No, pirating is NOT stealing:

 

I do not condone piracy, but this whole "Piracy is thief!" is getting on my nerves.

Why isn't it theft?  Is it theft if you walk out of a shop with some CDs/DVDs/Video games that you haven't paid for?

Because when you pirate a game, the retailer will still be able to sell the game and make some money. When you steal a game, the retailer will NOT be able to sell it anymore.


The retailer then gets a smaller audience to sell to, if people know they can get it for free it make it a lot harder for retailers to sell the game, heck they might not even sell it, at the end of the day it is stealing, you have a developers product and you havnt paid for it


That's not actually true.  People are socialized to WANT to consume.  Time and time again when given the choice of paying what they consider a fair price and doing something illegal, people ALWAYS pick the fair price.

Generally economic studies show the vast majority of piracy sales go to people who also consume the most, and likely weren't going to buy the stuff they pirated. 

The only real economic issue of piracy is if it brings down what people see as a fair price.



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phinch1 said:


The retailer then gets a smaller audience to sell to, if people know they can get it for free it make it a lot harder for retailers to sell the game, heck they might not even sell it, at the end of the day it is stealing, you have a developers product and you havnt paid for it

As others have said, it's not that simple.

a) I buy game X, my friend buys game Y. We play them to completion, then exchange them. In the future we'll keep exchanging games as we see fit and lending them to other friends.

b) I buy a used game X from a private that completed it and is no longer interested in it. I now own the game, but none of my money went to the developer.

c) I want to buy a game, but I don't buy it day one. I wait and wait until I can buy it for a few dollars.

In all three cases more people made use of the game than there are physical copies, or only a fraction of the whole price made its way to the developers. And yet you would not say any of those is "theft" or another crime. You could say that if you really love a game then you should buy it so that the authors are compensated and keep making games you can hopefully enjoy.

But then we've moved the point of discussion from "you have to pay price P because otherwise it's like stealing a physical object" to "you have to pay a price P so that artists/authors can keep producing media". That is the whole gist of the copyright / intellectual property conundrum: it's about supporting the arts, not about treating like items what is not an item.

In realistic terms: not every pirated copy means a lost sale. Some of them are used as demos, some of them are  because of DRM, and some of them are of games that the downloader would not have paid for anyway. Yes, there's some people who will use it to not pay developers. Just as some people decide to not pay developers by borrowing games, or by buying them at gamestop, or by reading a book instead until it's discounted to hell.

And we should try to make so that authors find a way to be funded to keep working. But in the era of flawless duplication and distribution of information, then have to make better value propositions. Comparison to item subtraction doesn't cut it.

PS: I'm a developer, I founded a startup and I had to develop a business model so that we're paid enough for the services we grant, even in the face of easy software duplication. Just to say that I walk as I talk.



"All you need in life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure." - Mark Twain

"..." - Gordon Freeman

pezus said:

Pirating>Buying used games

 

That is all


Not actually true.

While piracy has been shown to be negliagble when it comes to sales.


Used markets have been show to increase new sales and be a positive force in the market place.


I mean think about it... where did those used games come from?

People who bought the game new.... why did they buy the game new?  Partially because they knew when they were done with it they could sell it and put that money towards new games.



pezus said:
Kasz216 said:
pezus said:

Pirating>Buying used games

 

That is all


Not actually true.

While piracy has been shown to be negliagble when it comes to sales.


Used markets have been show to increase new sales and be a positive force in the market place.


I mean think about it... where did those used games come from?

People who bought the game new.... why did they buy the game new?  Partially because they knew when they were done with it they could sell it and put that money towards new games.

They could also have bought it used and then sold it, thus not giving the publisher any money.

Except... every used copy needs to have at one time been a new copy at some point.  Making that arguement a silly one.  If someone bought a used game and sold it back... they probably paid little for it, and got little back.

Which meant they wouldn't of bought it new in the firstplace.   Heck said game probably isn't even on the shelves anymore at this point.



Galaki said:
phinch1 said:

The retailer then gets a smaller audience to sell to, if people know they can get it for free it make it a lot harder for retailers to sell the game, heck they might not even sell it, at the end of the day it is stealing, you have a developers product and you havnt paid for it


A download does not equate a sale. Remember that.

But it's exactly what the corps are trying to tell you and many eat it up.


THIS.



updated: 14.01.2012

playing right now: Xenoblade Chronicles

Hype-o-meter, from least to most hyped:  the Last Story, Twisted Metal, Mass Effect 3, Final Fantasy XIII-2, Final Fantasy Versus XIII, Playstation ViTA

bet with Mordred11 that Rage will look better on Xbox 360.

Piracy is not theft. Some people may consider it morally equivilent, but that doesn't make it theft.

 

But really, why pirate when there's Steam? Steam offers a full row of pros that pirated copies lack, and prices are often so low it should be illegal.

Steam needs to be on consoles.



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