Poll: Would this be ethical...

[Kotaro]

I would do it in a heartbeat.

 

[Agayek]

The same can be said for most/all MMOs and I don't see bloodthirsty mobs forming to review bomb & scream about how they can't play whenever that happens (and I've seen MMOs that have far less MMO in them than Diablo III does.)

You say that like MMOs should be let off the hook for it too.

If you require your customers to connect to a service you provide, in order to play the game they paid for, you should be held responsible when the user's can't play the game because your service is down. It doesn't matter the genre or game.

Scheduled maintenance I can let go, because they generally alert people before hand and it's usually done in the middle of the night.

Being too cheap to rent some extra servers for the first month on the other hand, not so much. Especially for a company with as much experience dealing with connection floods and whatnot as Blizzard has.

 

[mrdude2010]

Yes. It might even be legal, considering your definition of "personal digital backup copy." You bought the game legally, playing it despite their poor server decisions/ ridiculous DRM is totally ethical. You bought the goddamm game, it's yours to do almost whatever you want ethically.

 

[samaugsch]

Imagine this situation:

You have just purchased Diablo 3 and you're happily playing the game when inexplicably you lose your internet connection. Two hours later, despite your best efforts, the connection is still down and there is no reason to think it will be back up any time soon.

Of course you can no longer play your game even though you really, really want to. Now you have a friend whom you know has downloaded a pirated copy of the game. You could ask this friend to give you a copy to install and play - just so that you can get your Diablo fix until the internet connection comes back.

My question is: Would it be ethical to install and play the pirated copy of the game?

Now remember, I am not asking whether it would be legal to do this, just whether it would be ethical. Also remember that laws are not always ethical.

I wouldn't have even bothered posting a topic about it. I would've gotten the pirated copy without a second thought.

 

[Reaper195]

Legally, there are a few problems. Ethically? It depends on the person. Personally, I don't see a problem. You paid for the game, you can;t play the game normally, so you might as well play the game any way you can. My flatmate spent four hours creating accounts, DLing Origin and spending ages fucking about trying to get ME3 working. Then Origin kept crashing, which usually crashed ME3. So in the end, he pirated the game and never had a problem (And never played multiplayer, since fuck multiplayer).

In the end, if you feel comfortable doing so, fuck what anyone else thinks. If you don't feel comfortable, don't play the game for a while until you can play it smoothly.

 

[GameMaNiAC]

Yep, you bought the game. Your money is theirs. That's where they stop caring about what you do with the game.

 

[Gypsybob]

Is it ethical? No.

The real question is whether or not you care.

 

[Signa]

What I mean, is if that something bothers you so much that you're willing to break the law for a video game, then something needs to change.

Agreed. Both laws and the way the game is designed are in desperate need of change.

OT: As said before, "go nuts." It's no different than the time I opened a crappy game controller I bought and fixed it because it was broken of the box. I knew it was a cheap Chinese-made piece of shit, but I paid for it, so I was going to do what was in my power to fix it so I could use it.