TOGSolid said:
Except piracy IS bad. Just because YOU are a legit purchaser doesn't mean the majority is. The majority of pirates will never buy the game. Not all piracy is a lost sale, but most of it is and that shit needs to stop now.
I have no doubt I am in the minority. However, what other pirates do is irrelevant to me. Yes I am fully aware that piracy overall is a bad thing. But I am not 'everyone else' I am me... The simple fact remains that since I started pirating games while keeping my moral standards I have bought twice, three, or four times as many games as I used to buy before I pirated anything. This isn't my opinion this is fact; I used to buy about 1 game every 2 months - these days depending on the release cycle I am more likely to buy one or two games a month since I have the opportunity to play them through first and decide if they are worth paying for. It's not an excuse or scapegoat for my actions, these are genuine observations, in the past few years alone I have bought 100+ games on Steam and plenty of disk versions too. Whether you believe me or not is your choice, but since I know I am buying much more and supporting more developers that's all that really matters, and my conscience is clear.
So, at least in my case, piracy is not bad. I have no doubt piracy is bad overall but you must understand it isn't really quite as black-and-white as you think.
Woodsey said:
If you want to know whether you want to buy a game or not, read reviews, get recommendations and play demos if available; the rest of us manage it just fine. In 7 years I've made maybe 4 dud purchases, and they're because I didn't research things properly beforehand.
This argument always annoys me a little because it is really very subjective. My tastes happen to be very very picky, and although researching a game and reading reviews helps (I always read reviews
even before I pirate anything) it's often not enough to even make me remotely sure if I will really enjoy a game all the way through (happens all the time, a recent example was reviews and other gamers opinions of Uncharted 2 which let me to believe the game was phenominal; I played it through a few weeks ago and found it underwhelming). I also happen to believe the majority of games released are crap and I am usually unwilling to take risks on my purchases, save for some very rare exceptions where I am almost certain I will love a game.
As for demos, well, there is not only the fact that most games don't seem to get demos anymore (at least on the PC which is my primary platform) but also the fact that demos tell me almost nothing about a game. Combined with reviews that can be useful but only to a certain point; they tell me how games play and how they feel, but they don't tell me if the game is going to take a sharp turn down shitty-street halfway through, which a lot of games do. Or simply become repetitive after a while, the story gets dull, levels become uninteresting, etc. And reviews can't answer any of that for me either because it is mostly just subjective of how we view things.
---
So, how is it really a bad thing if I am buying more games because of it?
Anyway my point is not that piracy is not bad overall; I am aware that it shouldn't exist in the long run because most people don't care and just abuse it. I agree it should be illegal and fines should be given to people who are caught. But at least in some cases in the hands of responsible people who
give a shit it can not only be a useful tool but also fuel even more purchases. Assuming the reader of this believes what I have wrote about how I personally handle piracy, that fact cannot be denied. So you can keep being anti-piracy, but please dont automatically condemn a pirate before finding out a little more information about how they do things.
