Pirates ruining it for the rest of us.

[Moonlight Butterfly]

I'm sure we have all seen the story on Escapist of The Witcher 2 being pirated 4.5 million times and games companies like Ubisoft saying that PC ports aren't worth it because of the money they lose to piracy.

Shouldn't the legit PC gamers say to the pirates out there that 'Enough is enough'. They are going to ruin our gaming platform with their shenanigans. I personally hate being lumped in with people who steal just because I am a PC gamer.

Please note that I am not talking about second hand sales, I personally think that the consumer should be allowed to treat their own property as just that as long as it doesn't violate the IP and copyright laws. I don't trade in games myself but I can at least see the argument there.

It just surprises me that this subject isn't more discussed among gamers and that pirates and pirating websites are not turned in by actual gamers more often as it is harming what we enjoy.

I guess my discussion value is that 'Do you think gamers should take a bigger responsibility in looking after the integrity of their platform and shunning those that do pirate.'

 

[PanYue]

What can gamers do? Yell at their friends and slap them on the wrist when they blurt out that "They don't wanna pay money for ____ and will pirate it"? Your discussion value is one that has been thrown around many times. I don't think I've ever really seen a true way to stop software piracy as a whole, it's just way too large! That's not to say it's not to be discussed of course. It's always fun to brainstorm and throw ideas around =P

I like to take the optimistic approach to the situation. Some companies still make games primarily for the PC. Not many, but some do. I'm not sure about the big AAA companies and their procedures but some small developers do it. Now I get that is kinda bad, the 'small' developers develop primarily for the PC. But at least it's something.

 

[Kopikatsu]

What can gamers do? Yell at their friends and slap them on the wrist when they blurt out that "They don't wanna pay money for ____ and will pirate it"?

Yes, exactly that. I would also say that you should kick them in the crotch, but apparently that's sexual harassment.

It's an industry-wide issue and should be treated as such. Even though the popular opinion on the Escapist is 'Piracy doesn't matter because ', the fact is that it does matter. Even if pirates wouldn't have bought the games to begin with, that doesn't matter.

Some developers have stopped supporting PC entirely because of piracy, with more following suit. Makes it an issue for everyone.

 

[Handbag1992]

There's no way to stop people pirating games, not until we can create impenetrable, unobtrusive DRM. Then perhaps we can all have a drink from my quiver that dispenses beer.

 

[Phlakes]

Protip: shut down Pirate Bay. You know, have people who can do something about it actually do something about it.

Sure, there'll be massive fucking rage, but that'll blow over eventually.

EDIT: Okay, seriously, people, stop quoting me. I have better things to do with my life than all this-

 

[PanYue]

Yes, exactly that. I would also say that you should kick them in the crotch, but apparently that's sexual harassment.

It's an industry-wide issue and should be treated as such.

I have tried this 'method' before. It seems to always end up with them calling me of being a "goodie-goodie" or something of the like. Then they go on about how they're broke or they can't buy games or some lame excuse. I somehow manage to scramble a few bucks together for a game when I want it. I think the pirates attitude towards piracy as a whole is linked to the fact that the internet makes it look so damn easy.

 

[veloper]

Shouldn't the legit PC gamers say to the pirates out there that 'Enough is enough'. They are going to ruin our gaming platform with their shenanigans. I personally hate being lumped in with people who steal just because I am a PC gamer.

Not really, most of them are just kids i.e. poor people with no money anyway. Maybe they'll grow up to become adult gamers with money to spend. They are the future.

I would never consider them actual fans though, and on fansites known pirates are generally shunned.

Please note that I am not talking about second hand sales, I personally think that the consumer should be allowed to treat their own property as just that as long as it doesn't violate the IP and copyright laws. I don't trade in games myself but I can at least see the argument there.

They do nothing to support for the game designers; same as the pirates don't. As such they can never be considered fans. Should be okay on general gaming forums, but not on fan sites.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Protip: shut down Pirate Bay. You know, have people who can do something about it actually do something about it.

Sure, there'll be massive fucking rage, but that'll blow over eventually.

Apparently The Pirate Bay isn't actually doing anything illegal. The torrent files they keep don't contain any copyrighted material since it's a P2P thing. However, that just means that copyright laws on the internet are woefully inadequate. But I'm sure that you've seen how people flip the fuck out whenever legislation mentions internet anything. (Patrick Leahy: "Let's make illegal streaming a felony instead of a misdemeanor. It's currently difficult to enforce and the fine used as punishment is negligible compared to the profits generated from illegal streaming making it profitable to essentially bribe the law." Internet: "THEY'RE TRYING TO TAKE AWAY OUR RIIIIIIIIGHTS."

Yes, exactly that. I would also say that you should kick them in the crotch, but apparently that's sexual harassment.

It's an industry-wide issue and should be treated as such.

I have tried this 'method' before. It seems to always end up with them calling me of being a "goodie-goodie" or something of the like. Then they go on about how they're broke or they can't buy games or some lame excuse. I somehow manage to scramble a few bucks together for a game when I want it. I think the pirates attitude towards piracy as a whole is linked to the fact that the internet makes it look so damn easy.

I agree. A free game is just a Google away.

If I can't afford a game, then I don't play it. `-` The attitude you mentioned is what put the US into a major recession, actually. Many people took out large loans from the bank that they didn't need, because they wanted a new car or bigger house or whatever.

This can explain it more. It's wrong on one point, though. Federal Reserve isn't private, it's controlled by Congress.
I got off topic, sorry.

Edit: DISCLAIMER. I've only watched about half of that video I posted. Apparently it goes into batshit crazy territory near the end. WATCH AT YOUR OWN RISK.

 

[BoTTeNBReKeR]

Protip: shut down Pirate Bay. You know, have people who can do something about it actually do something about it.

Sure, there'll be massive fucking rage, but that'll blow over eventually.

They tried shutting down the piratebay. Didn't work out. And even IF you somehow manage to shut down the piratebay, people would start using warez or whatever to get their hands on stuff without paying money.

 

[NoNameMcgee]

I think PC gamers need a decent rental option. I think the fact that we can't rent anything is part of the reason there is so much pirating going on. Personally I use piracy as my rental option because theres nothing in its place. If there was a decent, respectable and useful rental option for the PC that had newly released AAA games like the services that consoles get, I'd ditch piracy altogether. I buy games that I want to spend money on and support the developers. Case in point, I have 280 games on my Steam account, + physical copies, and today, my brand new copy of Assassins Creed Revelations arrived. I won't be installing it until I'm checking out the multiplayer though because im still playing my pirated SkidRow version of it. I've probably bought more games than a lot of "legitimate" users on this site who hate pirates, and ironically, part of the reason for that is because I pirated a game first, decided I liked it, and bought it. I genuinely treat piracy like I'd treat real rentals, and I don't think I'm the only one.

To say piracy is unoquivically bad is too black-and-white for my tastes, there are lots of reasons people pirate. I think the lack of rentals for the PC is one of the reasons we have so much piracy going on. Because lets face it, a lot of games are shit, yet they get heralded by fanboys and review sites. The only way to really know if a game appeals to you is to actually play through it. and don't say demos, because demos are few and far between, and they are never anywhere near long enough to know anything besides the basic mechanics of a game.

Protip: shut down Pirate Bay. You know, have people who can do something about it actually do something about it.

Sure, there'll be massive fucking rage, but that'll blow over eventually.

Wouldnt do a damn thing, people who know what they're doing use private torrent trackers, or use a site like warez-bb to get rapidshare/megaupload links and download with something like FreeRapid because its almost untraceable. Also, PirateBay disappears = another torrent site appears in its place.

 

[Therumancer]

I'm sure we have all seen the story on Escapist of The Witcher 2 being pirated 4.5 million times and games companies like Ubisoft saying that PC ports aren't worth it because of the money they lose to piracy.

Shouldn't the legit PC gamers say to the pirates out there that 'Enough is enough'. They are going to ruin our gaming platform with their shenanigans. I personally hate being lumped in with people who steal just because I am a PC gamer.

Please note that I am not talking about second hand sales, I personally think that the consumer should be allowed to treat their own property as just that as long as it doesn't violate the IP and copyright laws. I don't trade in games myself but I can at least see the argument there.

It just surprises me that this subject isn't more discussed among gamers and that pirates and pirating websites are not turned in by actual gamers more often as it is harming what we enjoy.

I guess my discussion value is that 'Do you think gamers should take a bigger responsibility in looking after the integrity of their platform and shunning those that do pirate.'

My basic position is that piracy is wrong, but has been there as long as the industry has. Despite piracy gaming has grown into a huge, multi-billion industry.

Pirating might be wrong, but it's not ruining anything for anyone. The issue is mostly in the industry looking at these numbers and thinking "wow, imagine how much taller our mountain of money would be if we had gotten sales from all those copies". The thing is with piracy though is that people will take things for free, that they wouldn't ever pay money for to begin with. Those pirated copies are NOT lost sales in any concrete fashion.

I wouldn't mind seeing piracy stopped, but when it comes to hurting legitimate consumers, or threatening to shut off specific platforms, because the industry is getting butthurt about not getting rich enough, fast enough, is just ridiculous. Piracy is a problem, but it's not a big problem, or anything like a crisis. After all games are still profitable, and ridiculously so, if games were losing money as opposed to simply not making as much money they could be as a result I might show a bit more support.

You'll notice the guys who did "The Witcher 2" which is their most successful game ever, are talking about the pirated copies, but aren't claiming they didn't make money off of it, and I think that's the bottom line and why all the anti-piracy rhetoric is going too far.

 

[Lamp Salesman]

Makes games worth buying, and don't make it a damn hassle to play them.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Why should we bag on the pirates? They're the ones who provide the products without overly punishing 'features' that make playing games a fucking hassle. If I could find the guys cracking these games in real life, I'd give them a hug and a solid chunk out of my wallet to support them, because the publishers sure as hell doesn't.

You want to try and have an impact? Support the developers/publishers that does their best to provide games and products with good service and without flaming hoops to jump through and pirate the hell out of games/products that come with said punishments.

Pirates aren't ruining anything for us. It's the publishers who punish customers who legally bought and paid for the products that are ruining things for us, because there's just no way in hell that kind of treatment from them won't result in the crackin' communities taking it as an insult and a challenge.

There'll always be theft and piracy and some of the pirates are indeed thieves who don't have good reasons for what they're doing, but most of the PC gaming community that I know and interact with does support devs/publishers who are worth it.

If people didn't pirate the games, then developers wouldn't feel the need to try to protect their product. PARADOX.

Also, the developer and even the publisher has little say in whether or not a game gets DRM. Shareholders demand that their investment is protected. Which leads to DRM.

Blame the pirates, not the developers.

Makes games worth buying, and don't make it a damn hassle to play them.

You can't beat 'Free'.

Also, pirates obviously think the game is worth something, otherwise they wouldn't have pirated the game in the first place. By taking the time to download the game and using the space on their computer, they've shown a greater than zero interest and would obviously be willing to pay something.

 

[Irridium]

Honestly, I'd be more inclined to do this if the publishers would stop screwing me over and treating me like shit.

Yes, pirates are asses who are hurting things. But they've never sold me a game, then told me I couldn't play because I can't connect to the internet. Or put install limits on the games, and then tell me to buy it again when I used up those install limits.

It's a fight between a mugger and a robber. And I'm the one that's experiencing the fallout from both these jackasses.

 

[Phlakes]

Protip: shut down Pirate Bay. You know, have people who can do something about it actually do something about it.

Sure, there'll be massive fucking rage, but that'll blow over eventually.

Wouldnt do a damn thing, people who know what they're doing use private torrent trackers, or use a site like warez-bb to get rapidshare/megaupload links and download with something like FreeRapid because its almost untraceable. Also, PirateBay disappears = another torrent site appears in its place.

But the people who don't know what they're doing, which at the very least are maybe half of the frequenters, wouldn't.

The biggest problem for more casual pirates is that they know there's absolutely no chance that there'll be consequences. Once there are, it'll weed a good few of them out.

 

[hannes2]

Why should we bag on the pirates? They're the ones who provide the products without overly punishing 'features' that make playing games a fucking hassle. If I could find the guys cracking these games in real life, I'd give them a hug and a solid chunk out of my wallet to support them, because the publishers sure as hell doesn't.

If there weren´t any pirates, those features probably wouldn´t exist in the first place, so your logic is flawed.

 

[Rasmus Emilsson]

No, pirates aren't ruining anything. The game-companies are, as long as the companies sees us (their customers) as their enemies, they will never get rid of piracy.

One example of this is the god-awful implmentation of DRM, of which Ubisoft has the most obtrusive piece of shit DRM there is. another example of this is when I bought Batman: Arkham City and wanted to play and i had to do this http://i.imgur.com/DZpLM.jpg, coupled with the fact that SecuROM is there too, so the game takes 2-3 minutes to even fucking start.

There isn't any other business in the world that thinks they can treat their customers like shit and then expect to get paid.

 

[Kopikatsu]

-Snip-

-Snip-

I will repeat...

If people didn't pirate the games, then developers wouldn't feel the need to try to protect their product. PARADOX.

Also, the developer and even the publisher has little say in whether or not a game gets DRM. Shareholders demand that their investment is protected. Which leads to DRM.

Blame the pirates, not the developers.

Don't blame the developers for something that's out of their hands.

 

[PanYue]

When the discussion of developers/companies hating their consumers pops up - My mind jumps to Origin. Why does it ALWAYS jump to Origin? XD