How do you feel about illegal game downloads?

Recommended Videos

thiosk

New member
Sep 18, 2008
5,410
0
0
I downloaded dead space. I admit it. I was very skeptical about whether or not it would run on my computer, and I still have bioshock lying, unplayed, on the floor. "Will it run" gives positive results for both. I downloaded deadspace, stuttering speech, stuttering video, bluescreen.... check. Delete. Safe to invest 50 dollars in a new computer. Horay.


Other than that.... do not like game downloading. I own all of my games. Except chrono trigger. Totally hacked the wii to get that to run. VC does not do what they promised, and just try finding a cartridge of that at a reasonable price :)
 

SecretTacoNinja

New member
Jul 8, 2008
2,256
0
0
I download stuff illegally sometimes. It can be the only way to find rare pieces of music and games. I end up buying games and music if I can find them for sale anyway, since I hate computers.

I'm also poor, and I think I'm entitled to rob the fatcats sometimes, unless I like the company in question.
 

jdnoth

New member
Sep 3, 2008
203
0
0
Considering my 8gb memory stick teeming with free psp games... Yeah. I feel pretty fucking good.
 

axia777

New member
Oct 10, 2008
2,895
0
0
jdnoth said:
Considering my 8gb memory stick teeming with free psp games... Yeah. I feel pretty fucking good.
See, there yah go, real honesty. He steals and yet he does not care what we think. At least he says it like it is.
 

sequio

New member
Dec 15, 2007
495
0
0
While there are gray areas for stealing, such as someone starving stealing food, I do not see a need for stealing/pirating regarding games. THEY ARE GAMES. THEY ARE THE EXCESS OF SOCIETY THAT PROVIDE YOU WITH ENTERTAINMENT. Whatever your reason for pirating, simply do NOT pirate and send the company e-mail, phone, or snail mail about your problem with their software. Instead of bitching and stealing, get off your ass and DO SOMETHING that instigates changes to your will.

PS: if game companies saw that their softwares were neither bought NOR pirated, they would shat bricks. you can make it happen.
 

Say Anything

New member
Jan 23, 2008
626
0
0
Jimmyjames said:
No, not really. The layman's way of explaining morals/etchics:

Morals are what you personally consider wrong, and are considered truths or character. ie: it's wrong to murder people. Wrong to steal, wrong to rape a woman...
So we can all assume it's not morally incorrect to rape a man? What a relief.
 

Sewblon

New member
Nov 5, 2008
3,107
0
0
Pirating games is wrong but it is not as Evil or destructive as the defenders of DRM say it is. People shouldn't go to jail for Pirating they should just have to pay for whatever the pirated.
 

John Galt

New member
Dec 29, 2007
1,345
0
0
I download games rather than buying them. I don't care about the effects it has, I save my money and get the game for free. I don't care about legality, that's easy enough to avoid, and as long as there's plenty of people willing to shell out for games, then I suffer no consequences regarding scarcity. It's not ethical, but who cares? It's easy and free.
 

axxis33

New member
Nov 20, 2008
6
0
0
I do download games and I also buy games. I see nothing wrong with downloading a game, ever.

First: When you buy a game, and installs it, and finds out it wasnt really for you (too shallow, no depth etc etc etc) or even that it wont work on your computer, you CANNOT return the game. Why? Because the SEAL has been broken!

Second: Sometimes when you buy games, they are so f*cking hardcoded/protected/buggy that they wont even play after you install it, despite having the orginal, so you are FORCED to use the CRACKED .exe's to even run the game.

Third: If the game I downloaded is bad, I will delete. However if the game is good, I will buy the original.

I see downloading of game more like ... demo's. Sure, it is the full games, but it also gives me more time to see if the game really is for me.

And, if I never intended to buy the game in the first place, can you really call it stealing? (since IF you like it, you support the developers by buying it.)

And for the record, I own over 100 pc games, originals. Oh almost forgot, in SOME countries downloading games/movies/music isnt illegal. (but sharing them might be)(that is the case here in Sweden)
 

GenHellspawn

New member
Jan 1, 2008
1,841
0
0
I think it's ironic that out of all the newer games I've ever pirated, it was because they had retarded DRMs (Spore, Bioshock, ect.). I've bought DRM-free games that I enjoyed after I pirated them too.
 

axxis33

New member
Nov 20, 2008
6
0
0
zhoomout said:
axxis33 said:
And, if I never intended to buy the game in the first place, can you really call it stealing? (since IF you like it, you support the developers by buying it.)
Yes:

a) For the reason I mentioned in my previous post.

b) If you take a cake out of a shop without paying for it and you realise you don't like the jam, you have still stolen it.
Flawed argument. It is NOT the same thing.

Remember, in SOME countries it is NOT illegal to download games/movies/music (but sharing them might be) LIKE IN SWEDEN, where I live. So, if it isnt illegal, then it isnt stealing.

It would be nice if you read my whole post, if you did, you would see what I meant! Here:
"...since IF you like it, you support the developers by buying it...."
 

Laniara

New member
Sep 10, 2008
8
0
0
I love all the brainwashed idiots that think piracy is "theft", sure, thats the law, but the law is antiquated, inadequate for the 21st century, and all these companies are making huge profit from inferior quality product while you continue to fall for their trap.
Let me quickly work through some of the big misconceptions in the arguments against piracy
1)People who WORK on the game are paid develpers, they earn a wage for their work just like you and I, its very very rare in todays market for a dev to earn royalty from a game they made, and even then its on top of their salary, so even if not a single copy of the game sells, the people that did WORK on it got paid. The people you are ripping off when you pirate a game is the publisher, a group of fat investors who do nothing but lend their money to a project then reap the rewards, and I shed no tears for these people, they couldnt care less about games, entertainment or YOU, so why should you care about them?
2)The word theft may be catchy and the souless lawyers who brainwashed you into believing you can steal something non physical certainly smile when you are stupid enough to believe it. Copyright exists so that company B doesnt profit form all the work done by company A without sharing said profit, it exists so that IP owners have control over how their IP is used, but it should never extend to the non profit consumer and thats where I draw the line. You can not steal something that doesnt have a physical form.
3) Piracy leads to lower quality games. Totally untrue, some of the biggest companies on earth that have all the money in the world release the worst games ever made, while some indi or small developers make great quality product without the benefit of huge incomes. I believe in supporting what you love, so I vote with my wallet, when I believe a developer is doing a great job and their publishing company isnt including intrusive, needlessly complex protection on their media, I buy the game, I cant say I have personally pirated any games because most arent worth the HD space they take and those that are I have paid for.
4)If you dont want to pay for it you shouldnt play it. Well come on now, you never lent a game to a friend? never borrowed a music CD? photocopied a textbook?
Bittorrent and other systems like it are big sharing networks, they are the equivalent of a very large group of friends exchanging things, if you like it so much, youd buy it, buy its sequels, purchase merchandize and support work from the same developers in the future. If its crap like 99.9% of the games released now days, why should you pay full price for the privilege of finding out?
5) DRM, SecuROM, etc are needed for the publishers to protect their IP because of ruthless pirates. It takes a pirate 30 seconds to crack any kind of security known to men, they exist to prevent the unexperienced user from easly copying the game from a friend, to appeal to the fears of those who believe downloading a crack for their game is a one way road to malware street. We are a sucker generation, the man can stick it to us all day and we say thank you sir may I have another? people willingly accept companies, governments and anyone in authority getting away with things our parents would not have let slide without an uprising.
6)When you copy something you are stealing someones "work". Let me tell you something, when you do a job you get paid for it, you dont continue to get paid for it after the fact forever and then 100 years after your death. How would this logic translate if applied to anything else?
Lets see, say im a doctor and I save your life, now am I entiled to charge you a fee for the rest of your life since you are living as a product of my labour?
Say im a furniture maker and I make you a chair, must you pay a fee every time you sit on it?
Artists need to be paid for their work, once, if they want more money they should sell merchandize, tour and do concerts, get paid for live screenings/performances.

Support the companies you love, buy product from the developers that are doing a good job, donate to the indi developers who make worthwhile product, the rest, pirate it.
You should never support a company that isnt giving you what you the quality you demand, vote with your wallet and dont let anyone bully you into believing you are a thief for downloading data you wont profit from.

There are real thieves out there, people who copy DVDs and sell them for profit, those are the bad guys, the one ripping off the consumer for profit, not the joe gamer who doesnt want to pay $100 for the latest game with maybe 7 hours of gameplay before they delete it.
 

axxis33

New member
Nov 20, 2008
6
0
0
zhoomout said:
axxis33 said:
zhoomout said:
axxis33 said:
And, if I never intended to buy the game in the first place, can you really call it stealing? (since IF you like it, you support the developers by buying it.)
Yes:

a) For the reason I mentioned in my previous post.

b) If you take a cake out of a shop without paying for it and you realise you don't like the jam, you have still stolen it.
Flawed argument. It is NOT the same thing.

Remember, in SOME countries it is NOT illegal to download games/movies/music (but sharing them might be) LIKE IN SWEDEN, where I live. So, if it isnt illegal, then it isnt stealing.

It would be nice if you read my whole post, if you did, you would see what I meant! Here:
"...since IF you like it, you support the developers by buying it...."
Actually its still technically stealing because not all branches of stealing are necessarily against the law. Plus, our government made it legal to be able to detain suspected terrorists for a ridiculous number of days. Just because it is legal, doesn't make it fair.

I still don't understand that last arguement, you may need to spell it out for me. If you like the game, you will buy it after pirating it, correct? Then you've still stolen it before you've bought it. And what if you didn't like the game? You stole it then didn't buy it? That's even worse.
If I didnt like the game, then it gets deleted... just like you would do with a FREE DEMO. Ever heard of Spellcross? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spellcross A great game by a polish publisher. I got hold of it as a download (I had never ever heard of it before).. and to get a legit copy, I had to order the game from the developers directly.

So, did I steal anything? in my opinion, no. Why? Because I bought it.
 

Wicky_42

New member
Sep 15, 2008
2,468
0
0
I bought Bioshock, played through it and then uninstalled it. No replay value in it what so ever. What a waste of £35. So along comes Spore, a game I had high hopes for, but which I heard had bad DRM on it, so I dl it, play through it in a couple of days, mess around with the editor, and get thoroughly board with it. It's long gone now, and would have been a waste of a further £40 if I hadn't done so. Similar story with Doom 3 (though of course, not with the DRM issue, lol).

On the flip side, I borrowed a mates' Russian copy of Rome TW, and loved it enough to get the sequel and sink weeks into both games.

I just don't want to be saddled with games that I pay full price for but only entertain for a few hours. I can do far better than that for £40; heck, that's get me 20 quality dvds on Amazon, given the right sale :D Guess I'm following the 'try it first, buy the sequel' approach there, but it's saved me a fair ton of cash, which is always an issue for a student.
 

Mechalemmiwinks

New member
Aug 27, 2008
92
0
0
There's no gigantic gaming company with infinite money, hiring peons to chisel code into cds and chortling to themselves as they whip babies and burn puppies because you're supplying them money by buying their games.

I go to the store. I buy a game. I just paid a retailer, who paid a corporation, who paid a developer to make the game. If the game sucks, I use the magical power of remembering the series and the developer to aid me in further purchasing decisions. I do not get on the internet and take the product of their efforts without asking permission.

Do you know that you don't own your credit card or your bank card? Your routes to your money and your ability to access your money belong to banks. There are assets invested, moved around, and fundamentally broken down into big, shiny pools of numbers that somehow mean you're entitled to access the funds.

Why does that matter? Because money, in this state, is considered virtual property. Property that exists only because we agree that it does. People with the rights to the production of the games we love and hate are as entitled to getting paid for their products as you are entitled to withdraw your funds from your bank.

If the bank doesn't give you your money, does that mean they stole it? Under the justification of seizure of virtual property, I suppose it doesn't. I can use the same money I buy games with to buy groceries or pay my electric bill. Money is money. You have no right to tell any company what their product is worth, other than by refusing to interact with their product(s).