How do you feel about illegal game downloads?

[blarggles]

I tend to download them and try them. Demo's are usually too short or not a great representation of the game, or in some instances demos just do not appear. So hard to judge the final product. So I download the full game, if I like it I will buy it. If it turns out to be rubbish...like spore was it gets deleted after 20 minutes and I have saved myself £35 - £50.

When games cost as much as they do. I don't see it being a typically bad thing. When you buy music, you have normally listened to a few songs before hand. Or the entire CD in the shop, you know exactly what you are buying. Food you usually get the chance to feel, smell taste it before you buy it. You don't go into a restaurant cough up £40 for a steak and then find it is burnt to buggery only to be told its tough you have paid for it now.

The way I look at it I am making sure it is worth me actually spending money on it. If it isn't they would not have got a sale anyway as I just wouldn't buy something without a proper test. If I try it and it turns out to be good, then they may have just gained a sale. A purchase I otherwise would not have made.

 

[Doug]

The 'famous' post on piracy:
http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/post.aspx?postid=303512

And a follow up:
http://forums.galciv2.com/106741

And it should be noted "Sins of a Solar Empire", a stardock 'in-house' game, was at least number 3 on the UK sales charts at one point.

That is a damn good article. Mind you, it really touches only on the business end of the issue, but it's a fascinating read.

Indeed, he does only touch on the business side, if only because he has a pragmatic view .

 

[The_Deleted]

I will DL the occasional movie or album, before, more often than not, paying out for it. But I've never felt the need to DL games.

 

[DYin01]

Yes, I do pirate PC games sometimes. Why? Because it pisses me off that me and my brother can't play a game simultaniously. We both have to buy seperate copies and that's bullshit. Heck, I bought Fallout 3, but it had DRM so me and my brother couldn't play it simultaniously (for what I understood of it, anyway). As a result, he pirated the game, eventhough I bought it! It pisses me off to no end that that's the way it is today. That the security actually puts BUYERS at a disadvantage. I only pirated games I couldn't find in stores years ago but nowadays I do it a lot for PC games because I don't want to 'rent' a game. When I buy it, I want it to be mine.

 

[Ranooth]

I know how to pirate PC games easily, and have done once before. But to be honest, it doesn't feel the same. When you play a pirated game, you feel dirty. DON'T DO IT!

Yeah. i've done it once (did delete it and buy the actual game eventually) but i hated myself for it. Im a gamer, i love games, and i love the game industry for making these games (yes i know some people in the industry are idiots) so i support them and buy their products so that they make more!!

 

[The_Deleted]

Yes, I do pirate PC games sometimes. Why? Because it pisses me off that me and my brother can't play a game simultaniously. We both have to buy seperate copies and that's bullshit. Heck, I bought Fallout 3, but it had DRM so me and my brother couldn't play it simultaniously (for what I understood of it, anyway). As a result, he pirated the game, eventhough I bought it! It pisses me off to no end that that's the way it is today. That the security actually puts BUYERS at a disadvantage. I only pirated games I couldn't find in stores years ago but nowadays I do it a lot for PC games because I don't want to 'rent' a game. When I buy it, I want it to be mine.

Can you not just use a different save file or do you have seperate PC's?

 

[mike1921]

1) Is stealing wrong?
2) Do you consider games to be something you can steal?

1: not always.
2: Depends.
If the game has DRM than pirate the game and NEVER pay for the game.
If the game can be good or awful pirate the game and then pay for it.
If the game is only found on ebay, pirate it (I looked to pirate rise of nations, couldn't, ended up having to go all the way to bestbuy to get it) and pay for it if you get a chance

 

[Da Ork]

Yes it is morally and legally stealing to copy a game however unlike the ads in the cinema would have you believe its not the same as stealing something like a car or a dvd from somewhere. Also it should never be easier to have a pirated copy(games like quake that patch out the cd check and quite often the cdkey check after a few months are awesome)...steam is a damm good example of this. I have bought a lot of games on there simply becuase its easy and keeps them up to date.
I have also pirated my fair share of games when I was in school. Also as to people saying that pirating to try a game is bad...its illegal yes but its not neccasarrily a bad thing for sales. If I had to pay for every game I've tried over the years I probally would have given up and gone and played darts by now...or just been a console gamer as I've never pirated anything for a console (mainly due to the fact you can borrow a game off a mate and try it).
And for anyone saying the demo is a good way to try before you buy just a quick couple of things. Number 1 there isn't always a demo. Number 2 the demo isn't always a good representation (best case I have seen for this lately is space siege. The demo was awesome had some great concepts...they never built anything onto it in the full game other than just more levels to do the same thing over and over). However having said that I've had a rule since I've actually had money to spend (basically didn't have pocket money or anything as a child) that if I can't stop playing a demo to just buy them game.
Also I don't know about others but a few games I have pirated a game found it was alright (or really good in some cases) and bought it and then pre order sequels because I have faith in the company and there design team. (Morrowind -> Oblivion anyone?)

 

[Da Ork]

Can you not just use a different save file or do you have seperate PC's?

I do believe they are talking about playing at the same time...so I imagine seperate PCs.

 

[Akas]

Firstly, Do I like to pirate stuff? Not really. The problem, however, is space: I don't have space for a shelf of video game boxes, and anything extraneous of mine has to be thrown away. I do realize I'm an extreme case (living out of a few pieces of luggage, moving every couple of weeks/months, etc.), but I know of more than a few people that want things simplified: they don't want to have to change cartridges/UMDs/Discs/etc. every time they want to play something else (although I bet space is an issue, given that these guys are college students).

"Oh, but there's the PSN store/Steam/etc." I support these ideas fully, but there are still some problems. The PSN store (only recently accessible by my PSP without needing a PS3) doesn't have that much (compared to the Japanese store) and doesn't update that frequently. And Steam, despite it's awesomeness, also has a limited library and awkward pricing (I believe I heard that the original Deus Ex was still at the original price on it ($40-50) a while ago).

Thirdly, and finally, is that the games I DO pirate are so horribly antiquated that they're either hard to find or ridiculously priced. The last game I "pirated"? Lords of the Realms 2. Before that? The original Magic: the Gathering game. I do realize that people pirate the latest and "greatest" games are scummy, bleeding developers dry, but what other option do I have if I don't want to pay $40 for a dumb ten-year-old (or older, I feel old -_-) game?

Ironically enough, that's why I'm drooling over a DSi when everyone else seems to hate it. SD memory + constantly updated DS store + opportunity to purchase NEW games when they come out? <3

 

[Samurai Goomba]

That's the point. You can't ever prove your position is right, hence why you keep trying to go to extremes and compare piracy with stealing cars. Your position is an opinion, but you keep trying to act like everybody who doesn't agree with you is evil, lazy and wrong. Get over yourself.

I really am going to leave this alone, but I thought I'd at least pick at that one point a bit. And your ideas about IPs are absurd, but I'll let EzraPound sort you out, as it's getting a bit late over here and I have things to do.

You sound like you'd make a good EA employee, though.

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!? IN WHAT WORLD DO YOU LIVE IN THAT STEALING IS NOT BOTH ETHICALLY AND MORALLY WRONG?!? EzraPound actually makes a good argument- she's saying something that makes sense, alongside distinctions and exceptions. I can listen to that, and it's sound logic.

YOU ARE GOING NOWHERE IN YOUR POSTS. You're criticizing me for comparing piracy to theft by giving examples, and you're telling me in the same breath to give you evidence?!?

YES. My position is OPINION. This THREAD is about opinion.

What's wrong with me? I dunno, maybe my mom did some piracy while she was pregnant with me. Stealing is illegal, sure, but the subject here is piracy. I don't feel that they're the same thing. I've said that before.

Not going anywhere? Well, I'm sure not doing much worse than you with my posts. We do seem to be going a bit in circles, though, so I'll try to mix things up a bit this time.

Comparisons don't equate with evidence. There's a difference. Comparisons don't have to be true and accurate, for one thing, while evidence usually is. What I want is some kind of evidence either that morality is an absolute (impossible, but fun to throw out there) or that piracy, and ONLY piracy (proven that it WAS piracy, not bad games themselves) is crippling to the games industry.

But fine, this is about opinion. I don't have a problem with you not liking piracy, it's HOW you don't like it. If you had just said why you don't like piracy, I'd have been fine. Instead, you attacked every single person (not individually, of course) who had ever pirated a game in their lives by calling them lazy and evil (paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it.) A lot of people have since posted with a lot of really interesting perspectives on piracy and why they pirate. Was there any need to lash out at everyone you perceive as "evil" and "wrong?"

I'll finish up with my opinion (yeah, at last) on piracy.

I think that piracy CAN be bad for gaming in general, but there are a lot of other factors that impact the market. I believe this attack on piracy could segway into an attack on the secondhand games industry, and I think that's wrong. I suspect this whole move against piracy is just a push by large gaming companies that want to both have somebody to blame and gain a foothold on destroying the rights of people to own things, using piracy as an excuse to plant malicious/annoying programs in their games.

Besides, piracy of games that are old does NOBODY any harm. No one loses money, nobody gets hurt. Let the kids keep their old SNES emulators, they're not hurting anyone.

That's my opinion over with. I respect your right to have your own opinion, but I just don't agree with it.

 

[bkd69]

For those who feel that piracy==theft, please rate the following thefts on a scale of 1-10, where 1 is stealing a copy of Tom Hanks' private fax number to send him a happy birthday card, and 10 is pushing an old lady down the stairs to take her purse and her social security check:

A) Downloading a Kangaroo ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangaroo_(arcade_game) )ROM to play in MAME

B) Downloading a copy of Renegade Legion: Interceptor ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renegade_Legion:_Interceptor#Computer_Game )

C) Downloading either the DC or the PS1 version of Urban Chaos ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Chaos )

D) Downloading a cracked copy of game that you've purchased so you can install a copy that's free from DRM

E) Making and mounting a disc image so that you can avoid disc checks

F) Downloading a ROM of a GBA cart that you've purchased, to play on a GBA emu on an XBox Classic

G) Downloading Bioshock

 

[Asehujiko]

My policy on pirating is as follows:

Flowchart ahead
Is it possible for me to buy it(world of goo comes to mind)?
If No, pirate. You didn't make the game available for me to buy so me not buying it doesn't change anything at all.
Are buying and playing mutualy exclusive(anything EA rubberstamps their logo on these days)?
If Yes, pirate. I'm not paying you $80(EU prices) just to have SecuROM wave it's dick in my face. Period.
Is there a representative demo(Far Cry 2 aka GTA3.5 with extra fps issues)?
If No, pirate. I don't buy stuff on blind trust in a company alone, no exeptions. If my own version of the demo is good enough to justify the price tag of the game, i'll buy it.

And for the 473506990672598643st time, pirating =/= stealing. We are not deprieving somebody else of their copy of the game. The only thing that ever gets harmed are some "potential profit" numbers existing exclusively in a parralel universe where everybody with a system capable of running the game buys it on launch day and those that don't buy a new system as well. Example: At the time of Crysis's launch, there were less then 10 million computers capable of running the thing, let alone at a decent quality. But somehow it was pirated 60 million times according to the developers.

 

[Xojins]

Pirating is comparable to sneaking into a movie theater; you may not be hurting anyone or taking away anyone's opportunity to see the movie, but it's still wrong. Also, if you get caught, there are consequences (more severe in pirating, but it's the same idea.)

However, with games now being a blossoming art form, should not everyone be able to experience it. I mean, would you get mad at someone for sneaking into the Louvre because they wanted to experience the Mona Lisa and didn't have any money?

 

[DYin01]

Yes, I do pirate PC games sometimes. Why? Because it pisses me off that me and my brother can't play a game simultaniously. We both have to buy seperate copies and that's bullshit. Heck, I bought Fallout 3, but it had DRM so me and my brother couldn't play it simultaniously (for what I understood of it, anyway). As a result, he pirated the game, eventhough I bought it! It pisses me off to no end that that's the way it is today. That the security actually puts BUYERS at a disadvantage. I only pirated games I couldn't find in stores years ago but nowadays I do it a lot for PC games because I don't want to 'rent' a game. When I buy it, I want it to be mine.

Can you not just use a different save file or do you have seperate PC's?

Seperate PCs, and it's a *****. We bought two copies of Spore.. and it's just not worth it.

 

[Nimbus]

OK, how about this: people often say it is OK to download a game if you own a copy of said game. What if you own a copy of that game on another platform?

 

[Bluntknife]

I always buy my games.

But on the rare occasion I feel like playing an old game. ie: worms or theme hospital then I have to torrent it cause you just cant find it in stores anymore.

But on the topic of DRM, things are getting better. Anyone remember star-force? random BSODs and other fun stuff like that. The DRM software seems to be getting less invasive and at least they're telling you what they're installing on your system.
That being said, I dont hate DRM. I understand that devs dont want their stuff being stolen, but there has to be a more elegant way to stop pirates.

 

[SimuLord]

I look at it this way. When a company goes out of its way to make the legitimately obtained product inferior to the pirated version (install-limit DRM, any registration method more complex than "type CD key or direct-download serial into window on your forum account"), then what they have done is create an active disincentive to purchase the game legitimately, and at that point I want to contribute to the piracy statistics to send them a message.

The thing about "if you don't like the DRM, don't buy the game" is that it impacts the publisher at the developer's expense. The publisher can turn to the devs and say "We're not going to greenlight your next project because nobody played your last game." Meanwhile, if a company uses EA as its publisher and the game is pirated out the ass, with hundreds of thousands of illegal copies, then when EA cuts that dev loose the team can shop itself around to more reputable publishers and say "Our game is so good that people wanted to play it, but the DRM we had to consent to made people pirate it", a publisher that is less interested in ultra-restrictive DRM (Stardock, Paradox, Valve, or even 2K Games who tend to use CD-only validation) could say to itself "hey, this developer makes popular games, let's publish it and people will be less likely to pirate because we're not EA or Ubisoft."

In the case of the abovementioned publishers (Stardock et al.), I NEVER, EVER pirate their games under any circumstances. Piracy is an act of war against a publisher I despise, not a means in itself to get "free stuff" (even if that's the net effect of a stolen game.)

 

[Slayer_2]

OK, I've heard some retarded arguments here, from both sides, here are some things I'd like to straighten out:

Pirating is stealing. But these days, pretty much everyone steals something at least once in their life, don't act the innocent white angel unless you're a preist. Shoplifting is common, I've never done it, but many of my friends have. I'm not condoning anything, but laying out facts.

Pirating a $50 game is not like stealling a $50,000+ automobile dumb-asses. In fact, its less harmful to the industry than stealing a Kit-Kat is to Herseys or whoever makes them. That is PHYSICAL, it took labour, time and money to make the hardware as well as the software. When you pirate a game, you don't steal a manual, box, DVD, etc... Get some common sense you twats.

FACT: in some places, games cost an arm and a leg. That shouldn't be a reason for piracy IMHO, but I'm gonna keep my opinions outta this post as much as possible.

There is never a time pirating is lawful. If you lost your game, can't find it in a store easily, too bad. HOWEVER, we are not mindless law-abiding robots. There are some times pirating is ok morally. For me, I don't care much about pirating unless I like the dev team.

I also make indie games as a side-job and if someone pirated my game, I wouldn't care much as I'd probably have to had sold 1000+ copies to get a pirate interested enough to waste time and badwith on my games. Stop crying over big-name companies that don't care about you or your puny existance.

 

[Sayvara]

I have already expressed it in this thread [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.72382].

Short recap:

I despise software piracy for the simple fact that they do not respect the software owner's rights to decide what happens with their property. Everywhere else in life we respect other people's property and do not use/abuse it without asking permission. Piracy however does just that: (ab)use people's property without asking permission.

Granted there are a few software producers out there who demand way more than what is reasonable. They do not have my sympathy for that. Consumer rights are also important and I see no problem for users to bypass certain restrictions in order to be able to use the product in a reasonable manner.

/S