Poll: Question! A Piracy Question!

[Ushiromiya Battler]

Hello, fellow Escapists! After looking at a certain thread about publisher and developers I thought:
Is it wrong to pirate a game, when the developer that created it doesn't exist anymore?

To be honest I don't think it would be that much of a problem, as the game probably wont be buy-able anymore.
Unless you find it on GoG.

(To the mods, I don't think this thread is against the rules, but if it is feel free to lock it.)

 

[Lacsapix]

there is a point to that....
if the developer and the publisher vanished form earth and there is no one to collect the money.
then there isn't really a reason to pay for it, is it(unless you want to support the store and the economy)?
but there are very few cases where the publisher and the developer are both gone (and not swallowed by bigger company's, not that I can think of).

 

[Spandexpanda]

I don't think so, but then again my attitude towards piracy has always been fairly lax. Some games, especially old ones, are excellent examples of their genres - in some cases, the best in their genres- and as such deserve to be played. Their age makes them difficult to find in shops or online retailers, and even when found, their low prices make me doubt whether or not anyone but the seller is getting any money at all. If the company is closed down, they cant make money from you buying the game, so there's no point in buying.

 

[viranimus]

It takes an extensive amount of research to validate this, because its not quite as simple as doing a wikipedia search and seeing that dev team X and publisher Y no longer exist. In many cases when a company goes belly up they sell their assets to diminish the overall loss, so the key thing is identifing who owns the copywrite of the property.

In many cases youll find that a game propertys copywrite is owned by a company that doesnt even make games.

 

[Giest4life]

I see that you are new to the Escapist forums, so i just wanted to let you know that Piracy is not a big topic here. Not that Piracy is not a valid discussion topic, it's just that there is almost always infringement of the Forum Rules when various people discuss piracy.

OT: Piracy is sometimes acceptable, such as in third world countries where there is no way in hell you can purchase a game in the country because of import restrictions or political instability.

 

[Sir Ollie]

If you can't buy it then why not.

 

[Grey Walker]

I believe that when that happens it reaches the state of Abandonware, and is free to download legally.

I believe some of the Monkey Island games fall into this category.

If i want to play some obscure retro game that's on a system that is no longer manufactured, then it only makes sense to download an emulator to play it.

I fall under the idea of: If I cannot pay the developer/publisher for the game, then it's alright to download.

The area can be a little gray, but that's my rule of thumb for the issue.

 

[flamedance58]

I think if that's the case then it's fine.
Like for games like Privateer which is really hard to find in hard copy how else are you going to get it? Same applies to games that might only come out in japan and in japanese only :/ Like seriously there's hundreds of handheld and computer games that thousands of millions of people probably wanted but you can't even get them physically or digitally w/o pirating it.

So if Company A that made Game X has ceast to exist and no one has the rights to it then why not?

 

[BabySinclair]

If no one owns the rights to the game anymore and it cannot be found via, steam, gog, or local store, I would be hard pressed to make an argument against someone who pirates it. Mind you this is a very specific and uncommon criteria and usually companies that die off sell the rights to others so it rarely shows up except for possibly indie games or games from smaller companies that never sold well.

 

[Wintermoot]

I don,t see why not! (if they REALLY wanted your money they should re-print it or release it on Steam)

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

It's illegal, but that illegality is another example of copyright law overstepping its bounds. If we accept that copyright law only exists to allow the creator of a product to profit off of it during his or her lifetime, I fail to see how anyone can justify punishing someone for pirating a copy once the copyright creator can no longer take those profits of it. It shouldn't be possible to sell copyright, let alone to have it survive longer than its creator. Current US copyright law extends 75 years past the death of the creator, and that tends to get extended every time Mickey Mouse is set to go into the public domain. It's absolutely ridiculous.

 

[Ushiromiya Battler]

It's illegal, but that illegality is another example of copyright law overstepping its bounds. If we accept that copyright law only exists to allow the creator of a product to profit off of it during his or her lifetime, I fail to see how anyone can justify punishing someone for pirating a copy once the copyright creator can no longer take those profits of it. It shouldn't be possible to sell copyright, let alone to have it survive longer than its creator. Current US copyright law extends 75 years past the death of the creator, and that tends to get extended every time Mickey Mouse is set to go into the public domain. It's absolutely ridiculous.

Wow, didn't know that!

Learning something new everyday!

I see there are lot of stuff I should have looked up before making the thread.

 

[Lungo]

The problem is that a game aren't just a disk in a box. There is many layers to it now a days.
Who owns the right to the game? Who owns the IP? Who have they sold it to?

Lets say company (company A) makes a game (The Game). They sell it and earns on it and it is popular. Shortly after Company A goes bankrupt/dies/whatever. Now they sell off everything to pay off their debs, among those things sold are the rights for The Game, this includes all the rights for profits and the IP. Then comes Company B who buys it, because they like the game and want to make a sequel.

Now Company A no longer exists. So by what many now thinks that it would be okay to pirate it, since the company no longer exists to make a profit. Lets go back to the example.

Now Company B who bought the rights for The Game, saw it as a good business to buy the finish product, so they can support it and develop a sequel. In the meantime they are depending on the profit from The Game to get them though the development process to the sequel.

Now in the meantime people believes has become that the owner of The Game are no more and it therefore are free. They pirate it and shares it at will and the sales declines.
Now from Company B's point of view, they see that the profit disappears and interest in The Game declining, so they chancels the development of the sequel and eventual stops supporting The Game.


Can you see what you just did now? This are just one example on how things like this works. Just because the company there made it are here no more, then there are still someone out there owning the product and still need to make money on it since they pay for it.
It doesn't matter of it are an other game developer or if it is a game retailer branch who bought it, there are some one out there, who owns the rights for it. Nothing are up for grabs!

And those copyright laws someone started to mention, they are only based on private creations, like music, from some artist who didn't sell a given record though a studio. If there is a company involved, then it is a completely different chase.

So [TL;DR] Pirating are always illegal and will always damage someone down the line. It may even be yourself!

 

[zad1212]

With music you have bought, I say you should be able to pirate it because of the stupid DRM on music these days.

 

[Grospoliner]

If its publisher no longer exists and the title becomes public domain then there is no legal backing for piracy claims. In effect it becomes abandon-ware. Of course if the studio sells its rights to someone else then it is still piracy.