I love it. Piracy has given me access to a lot of music I would have never found in any of the record stores in my town, let me get nostalgic with iso files of old playstation games, and enjoy a few PC classics like Dawn of War and Starcraft.
Poll: Your feelings of game pirating.
- Thread starter auronvi
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Yes I see where you're coming from, I just wanted to see how you really stood on it. I had gotten into an argument with someone in person about this (a heated one) and when I said this they snapped and said "Then you just don't fucking get the game, it's not theirs so it's not yours!" which ...makes no sense because they DID put it out and it's just impossible to give the developers the cash.kampori said:
I mean I contradict this by owning genesis games by dead developers but I'm a bit mental in the face and like to have my cartridges. But in some cases, I can't find the game and it's a matter of me wanting to test the game out (much like when I said PC games with no demos warrant a pirate just for the sake of testing, because it's not fair to the consumer if you offer no means to see if your PC can support it) .
Heh, piracy is for cheap skates like myself. It's just so hard to justify buying something when a better easier to get copy is a 30 min download away. Though I will do redbox movies on my way home from work just because it's convenient and only a dollar to rent a movie. Games I buy for some reason... Movies and music not so much lol
This is about where I stand. I mean, I can go and buy Lunar for playstation on ebay for like 40 bucks where the developer will get no cut of it. So I download it, patch it to work on my PSP and voila! I have a portable version of Lunar...ragestreet said:
Not my fault the developers are now making a remake of it.. for PSP no less LOL >.<
I really want to buy a TB hard drive and just go nuts on PS1 ISOs.
I only download old games you can't get anywhere anymore. If I ever downloaded a new game (which is highly unlikely due to my shitty connection) I would buy it after I thought I liked it. Seeing as how getting a demo for games these days is the same chance of going to the moon.
It's amazing how developers, publishers, suppliers and distributors simply refuse to admit that games are OVERPRICED. I personally don't pirate and as a result simply go without games a lot - they're just too overpriced. $110 for a 360 game? One that costs half that overseas? One that I will play for a few hours and then forget about? Not worth it to me.
Steam is starting to fix this issue, but developers and publishers will always find something to whine about, like second hand games. Other things are sold second hand too you know! Car companies don't complain about used car sales!
Steam is starting to fix this issue, but developers and publishers will always find something to whine about, like second hand games. Other things are sold second hand too you know! Car companies don't complain about used car sales!
Speaking of the PSP the day that someone invents a way to play old PS2 games on it is the day I will jump for joy until the whole needs-2-analog-sticks-to-play-properly thing kicks in.auronvi said:
Hey, all the games I've pirated I've already owned or now own. Don't you dare look at me that way! >XDLordNue said:
This is how I feel and act about piracy. I get a lot of movies, music, and video games for free, but I also buy an above average amount of games (I'd say average is 1 a month), and I go to the theatres frequently. I also am a decent supporter of Bluray, owning a good collection myself.auronvi said:
Sure, I am restricted by how much money I make and can spend, but even if I made more I wouldn't buy more or download less. There just isn't that much that I feel like owning a permanent copy of high quality material (downloaded movies are never blu ray quality).
It's not a question of right and wrong, legal or illegal (two completely different subjects, that have absolutely nothing to do with each other when it comes to non-human issues, like copyright). It's called capitalism, a system based on spending as little as possible, and getting maximum product and profit. A system based on exploiting the weak and stupid.
In this case, you are the stupid, who are paying $30-$80 for pressed plastic that cost pennies to produce, and dollars to ship. And you do this because you think you are supporting the people who created the product, when really so much of that money is going to the big companies who publish it.
Your heroes are being exploited, and you are supported the injustice. Some say, "but at least some of it goes to them", yes, but by the time they get enough money to live for a year, the massive companies have gotten exponentially stronger. I won't support that.
Until there is some sort of mini revolution, and a proper union is set in place, I'll keep my spending to a minimum.
I don't have a moral problem with piracy simply because I have done it when I didn't have money to buy the games; if I wasn't going to spend any money on the game anyway, copying it wouldn't have affected the sales in any way. Now that I can afford to pay for the games, I don't see why I should pirate them. If people could think like that (and I'm realistic enough to understand that they don't, by the way), piracy wouldn't be a huge problem, because the only people pirating a game would be the ones who wouldn't spend any money on it anyway.
EDIT: Expanding on the line of thinking from the last paragraph, if I were a developer, I wouldn't mind people *who can't pay for my game* (and I have to stress that) downloading it. More people playing my game is always a good thing, right?
But one thing I know: every time I read that "the (game-movie-music) industry lost X million dollars due to piracy", I always trasnslate that to the more accurate "the (game-movie-music) industry only made Y million dollars due to piracy". That, combined to the fact that they call their own customers pirates (by installing abusive DRM), makes it very difficult for me to be sorry for them...
EDIT: And I totally agree with the post below. I think it's just a question of everybody adjusting to a new paradigm, because what we call "piracy" today is an inevitable consequence of the technological progress. We will simply have to adapt to it rather than fight it.
EDIT: Expanding on the line of thinking from the last paragraph, if I were a developer, I wouldn't mind people *who can't pay for my game* (and I have to stress that) downloading it. More people playing my game is always a good thing, right?
But one thing I know: every time I read that "the (game-movie-music) industry lost X million dollars due to piracy", I always trasnslate that to the more accurate "the (game-movie-music) industry only made Y million dollars due to piracy". That, combined to the fact that they call their own customers pirates (by installing abusive DRM), makes it very difficult for me to be sorry for them...
EDIT: And I totally agree with the post below. I think it's just a question of everybody adjusting to a new paradigm, because what we call "piracy" today is an inevitable consequence of the technological progress. We will simply have to adapt to it rather than fight it.
"Piracy" is not going anywhere, nor will it be deterred by a couple 'example' prosecutions. These "offenses" should not be policed with federal dollars from any government and it should be up to the content creators to re-evaluate their business practices in order to protect their "property." Downloading is NOT stealing, it's reproducing. If you could "reproduce" your television set, and give it to a neighbor, or reproduce fifty of them and leave them on your front lawn for whomever to come by and take one, you would NOT be prosecuted; you would only be in-the-wrong if you sold them. When you download, you're not taking something from a store shelf; you're not TAKING them from anywhere. File-sharing is just that, "Sharing." When you download something, you're not TAKING it; it's being GIVEN to you... either directly or indirectly.
I believe we're about 5-10 years away from a Paradigm shift in copyright laws and entertainment business models. Organizations like the RIAA and MPAA (and their international equivalents) are having to resort to law enforcement to retain profit levels they are "used" to. That's never a good thing. When you have to have people continually prosecuted to protect your profit-margin, you need to seriously re-evaluate your business model. You cannot rely on threatening your consumer base in order to maintain your bottom-line; you need to adapt and push forward.
Currently you're seeing gamers being "herded" away from PC to console due to the considerably lower piracy-rates for console games and the console's ability to be "self-policing" with their respective online services being able to "detect" piracy in their titles. This is resulting in an overall lower quality of product (see MW2 and other Console->PC Ports) and changing the shape of the face of PC gaming as a whole.
It seems that direct-distribution by smaller developers and digital distribution overall are causing people to be more apt to opening their wallets; though the only service that seems to have been able to execute this model close-to-properly would be Valve's "Steam" service. I am a Steam member and have purchased games during their famous gangbuster-type sales (some of which I haven't even downloaded and installed yet). Ironically enough, I remember Steam being blasted (no pun intended) in the early days for their business model and the idea of having a background service constantly connected to a game company that could potentially monitor your system for whatever reason... though this back in the days where 1GB of RAM was a lot, and most of the complaining was made by PC-Xenophobic people concerned about anyone knowing anything about anything on their computer. Ironically enough, those same people today have open ports on their routers to allow for open torrent access... but I digress.
"Piracy" I believe is a misnomer... I see it more as, "Entertainment-Socialism." It's not so much "stealing" as it is anti-capitalistic. Though if you want to go down that road, this is really just the ultimate sense of free-market economics in where the consumer has found a method of altering the mechanics of product consumption. I don't think prosecution of consumers is going to do anything other than create a monolithic court case of "Us V. Them" in an all out war of producer and consumer. Adaptation in this world-state is paramount and unless content creators can get... well... creative in the way they interact with their consumer, the market will collapse inward on itself in an implosion of unprecedented consequences. If things go as is, we're going to see a sort of "third-world" of entertainment creation facilitated by the likes of YouTube and Facebook games where the consumers become the creators and every profit margin is micro-transactional or advertising-based.
I personally believe, in the era that we live in, that the role of the "publisher" or "producer" is going to go away soon, and that's going to cause quite a panic. These "creative content middlemen/companies" are the sole reason that instead of changing the business model, they are using law enforcement to preserve their standard of living. They are the "suits," the "fat-cats," and the most adverse to a change in the industry; they consequently are usually the consistently highest paid individuals/organizations in the entertainment food chain. I really think more entertainment is going to go to a "Developer -> Distributor -> Consumer" model rather than the current "Developer -> Producer -> Publisher -> Distributor -> Consumer" model that is currently in place (though that's an admittedly gross simplification of the process).
The fundamental truth of it all is that SOMETHING will change, and soon. The "Pirate Bay's" of the world aren't going anywhere, people will still have their iPhones boot up with Pineapples on their screen, and people will still use their TIVO's to fast-forward through all the commercials.
I believe we're about 5-10 years away from a Paradigm shift in copyright laws and entertainment business models. Organizations like the RIAA and MPAA (and their international equivalents) are having to resort to law enforcement to retain profit levels they are "used" to. That's never a good thing. When you have to have people continually prosecuted to protect your profit-margin, you need to seriously re-evaluate your business model. You cannot rely on threatening your consumer base in order to maintain your bottom-line; you need to adapt and push forward.
Currently you're seeing gamers being "herded" away from PC to console due to the considerably lower piracy-rates for console games and the console's ability to be "self-policing" with their respective online services being able to "detect" piracy in their titles. This is resulting in an overall lower quality of product (see MW2 and other Console->PC Ports) and changing the shape of the face of PC gaming as a whole.
It seems that direct-distribution by smaller developers and digital distribution overall are causing people to be more apt to opening their wallets; though the only service that seems to have been able to execute this model close-to-properly would be Valve's "Steam" service. I am a Steam member and have purchased games during their famous gangbuster-type sales (some of which I haven't even downloaded and installed yet). Ironically enough, I remember Steam being blasted (no pun intended) in the early days for their business model and the idea of having a background service constantly connected to a game company that could potentially monitor your system for whatever reason... though this back in the days where 1GB of RAM was a lot, and most of the complaining was made by PC-Xenophobic people concerned about anyone knowing anything about anything on their computer. Ironically enough, those same people today have open ports on their routers to allow for open torrent access... but I digress.
"Piracy" I believe is a misnomer... I see it more as, "Entertainment-Socialism." It's not so much "stealing" as it is anti-capitalistic. Though if you want to go down that road, this is really just the ultimate sense of free-market economics in where the consumer has found a method of altering the mechanics of product consumption. I don't think prosecution of consumers is going to do anything other than create a monolithic court case of "Us V. Them" in an all out war of producer and consumer. Adaptation in this world-state is paramount and unless content creators can get... well... creative in the way they interact with their consumer, the market will collapse inward on itself in an implosion of unprecedented consequences. If things go as is, we're going to see a sort of "third-world" of entertainment creation facilitated by the likes of YouTube and Facebook games where the consumers become the creators and every profit margin is micro-transactional or advertising-based.
I personally believe, in the era that we live in, that the role of the "publisher" or "producer" is going to go away soon, and that's going to cause quite a panic. These "creative content middlemen/companies" are the sole reason that instead of changing the business model, they are using law enforcement to preserve their standard of living. They are the "suits," the "fat-cats," and the most adverse to a change in the industry; they consequently are usually the consistently highest paid individuals/organizations in the entertainment food chain. I really think more entertainment is going to go to a "Developer -> Distributor -> Consumer" model rather than the current "Developer -> Producer -> Publisher -> Distributor -> Consumer" model that is currently in place (though that's an admittedly gross simplification of the process).
The fundamental truth of it all is that SOMETHING will change, and soon. The "Pirate Bay's" of the world aren't going anywhere, people will still have their iPhones boot up with Pineapples on their screen, and people will still use their TIVO's to fast-forward through all the commercials.
I pirated a game once because the Japanese version was far superior to the English version and I had an English patch. I never did play it much and subsequently deleted the game. I concede to being a complete music pirate because I lack the funds currently and listening via Youtube is simply irritating. Frankly downloading music is no different than having a friend upload the CD tracks onto your PC.