Akalabeth said:
So you intentionally ignore every argument, cherrypick what you like and then ***** at me for generalizing the whole discussion and not just you specifically? Wow. There's a tough one right here. How's it up there on that high horse? Weather good? Morality good? Yeah i can see that.
Lets get to the meat then.
Yes people still make games. It proves the industry is still chucking along. Is piracy making a dent in some of the undeserved profits? And please dont give me that usual tripe about how they are a business and exist to make money. People bitched why EA got the golden poop and not bank of america which is a bank thats whole point is money, i hate double standards. They are supposed to deliver Entertainment first, make money second. If nobody buys their shit, they make no money, if they fail to entertain, nobody buys anything and they go under. Its that simple. Now follow my example here because this HAS happened, namely to me.
I bought, oh many years ago, a game called Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising. It cost me 40 Euro. So i was happy, went home with my purchase, install it and expect a nice game, right? Wrong. It crashes, instantly, for no reason. I tried everything, updating drivers and such, reinstalling. Nothing helped. Even a whole system upgrade did nothing. So i go back to the store. And please not i have a right to get my money back if i return a defective product, or any product within 14 days with the reciept. Here's what i got "The game was opened, we do not take that back because you could have used a disk-burning program." Let that sink in, the store, not the publisher, not the developer, refused to return my money. How is bitching at the Developer or Publisher going to work? You know what "glorious" Steam does when you buy a hardcopy game that doesnt work and you complain to them "Please ***** at whoever sold it to you, it wasnt us". You think a publisher doesnt do the same thing? Its not fucking Sim City, its not "server problems" or "mass of disgruntled fans". Its one person who was refused a refund by a store. Ya think EA or whoever gives a shit?
That is a reason people pirate. Oh right, its bullshit. I forgot, wait, is the high horse buckling? Another example then.
Say you have 60 Dollars, 3 games come out, 3 games you are interested in, which do you buy? Well its easy, wait for reviews, right? What if there are no reviews for..i dont know, a week or so. And you are a very impulsive buyer. You just cant wait that one week, it happens. Now you buy the game, say Colonial Marines, or hey, maybe you pre-ordered and got a shitty game thats nothing like what was advertised. But thats not the point. So you cant get first reviews and have to decide on which game will get you the most for the money. Right, Demos! But oh wait, there are no demos, remember the good old days when you had them? I actually do, it was awesome, oh we got cherry-picked scenes, but at least we got a good feel for whats in store for us. So neither works and you really wanna decide but you cant, there are people who just are..fickle, lets look at modern military shooters, eh? So what do they do? Well pirate of course. They just do it to find out which game is worth their hard-earned 60 Bucks. Is that wrong? Well technically yes. But is it wrong on a moral level if you use it to prioritze which of those 3 deserves to be bought? Thats a personal viewpoint, throwing morals at it, wont change it. If morals worked, all those "Lulz because its free"-pirates would have stopped pirating long ago, clearly that aint working.
Again, those are the only 2 reasons i can understand, i dont defend them, but i understand them, i found myself in similar positions so i do not hold it against other people. There is a difference here. I dont beat them over the head with morality because, wanna know a dirty little secret? I used to pirate, alot, for that exact first example i mentioned. I pirated because i was sick of being refused a refund on a legitimate purchase. I pirated to find out if the games actually run on my system. I did that for a long while. Then, oh one day, i bought Fallout New Vegas, because i really wanted to own it. It demanded steam. I loathed steam because..well all my games in one place, kinda risky. But eh, went with it right? Then played the crap out of it, steam sale. I bought games, over steam, wow, impressive right? I have stopped pirating instantly, why? Because the games i now owned are worth more to me than pirating whatever because i dont want to risk losing what i bought. Thats how you both make a customer INTO a pirate and then back into a happy customer.
Are you now going to hold morals against me? Tell me how wrong that was of me and how i should be ashamed? Because here's the funny part, i dont really give a shit. No pirate gives a shit about your morals, how you think yourself somehow above them because you decided to pay. Is it wrong that they essentially steal? Quite frankly, yes. Thats why we got laws. Are they really gonna care about the moral argument? If they did, they wouldnt pirate. Thats the problem here. Everyone and their dog holds morals against pirates, demonizes them, bitches at them. Its not gonna work. That DRM thing of the Game Dev Tycoon guys? Its funny, really it is. But its not gonna work. People will continue to pirate it, they really dont care about the moral argument. I know. I was once one of these "unmoral people". People will continue to pirate for many reasons, some maybe understandable and somewhat legitimate, you wouldnt do it, but at least you can see what drove them to it. Others arent understandable, at all. I do not hold contempt for pirates simply because they pirate, i dont hold contempt for them at all. It is their business, they run risk of getting viruses and other nasties, it will happen eventually. But there are reasonings for it that i can understand, and that i cant understand. A pirate who pirates simply because he can, gains no sympathy from me, i dont understand it, if he can pay for it, why not buy it?
At the end of the day though, pirates will exist. No matter the DRM, no matter if the internet turns off, piracy will continue in some form. Because people are assholes. Some are really big assholes. They pirate because they can, because they want to send a message, because they feel slighted by the system, because..ponies. Thats really it. They simply do, there must not even be a reason for it. But the industry moves on, it still exists and as long as there is even a small part that buys games, it will continue. Its really that simple. As long as there is profit to be made, as long as its "worth it", games will be made, good and bad, they will be pirated, sold to second-hand shops and rebought. The industry wont die from that, so long as not suddenly everyone just pirates. So clearly, there is still enough value in the industry to continue, otherwise, they'd have stopped already, dont you think?
This problem isnt black and white and i refuse to make a anthill into a mountain because some publisher claims they lose money. They still make millions. They still make money of products they did not create. Tell me, who is the pirate here? Who is, morally speaking, the criminal? They drain developers of talent and ressources. They sell games at ridiculous prices, DLC and the like. What does the developer get for all that hard work, 20%? 30% maybe? Probably less. And 20% of 60$ isnt really that much. Sure it adds up over time but at the end of the day, the publisher still gets the most, all they did was be fat and sit around twiddling their thumbs, maybe making a few commercials. But they dont make the game, they dont really..do anything. They are worse than pirates. They do not simply take from someone else, they claim it as their own AND make money off of it.
If all that money went to the developer? If it really went to them, not some greedy rich fuck in some office who has last seen a game when it was in a arcade in the 80s, i'd understand the argument. If not some dumb ass can decide by a whim over which developer to keep and which to axe, then i'd understand. Neither is the case, so i will not side with them in their crusade against windmills because they feel, they should have even more money they do not deserve, or earn.
Kickstarter is a first step. But until things like that are the norm? Yeah im not buying into the "Pirates ruined the industry" bullshit. Its as false now as it was 10 years ago. Also yes, before you get your panties in a twist, i was also generalizing, so dont feel offended. Of course if you think you should be, go right ahead.
