So what if I pirate games, why should you care?

[LitleWaffle]

No one should care in the slightest, but people love to be moral asshats and spew their opinions onto others.

And before anyone says that they lose money from pirating; they don't, so don't say "Because it directly harms the industry blah blah blah", because it doesn't.

Right because being able to get the game for free can't possibly hurt their ability to sell it.

It does hurt the industry whether you care to admit it or not.

I've said in multiple other posts that it does harm the industry, just not as much as people think.

It seems to me as if you are looking at this from a short-term perspective. Here is my long term one.

It isn't a significant problem right now, as companies can sell good games and make a profit in total. However, if no enforcement is done upon pirating, people will realize that there is little to no consequence in pirating, and the rate of people pirating games will increase.

The sales will drop, the companies will hold themselves back, not spending as much money on games to keep their companies afloat unwilling to take the risk, reducing the quality of the games to be released, making people less willing to pay for them, and further slowly killing the industry.

It's like drinking, a couple here and there isn't too huge of an issue, but going on a large amount of drinks all at once can be lethal.

 

[b3nn3tt]

And before anyone says that they lose money from pirating; they don't, so don't say "Because it directly harms the industry blah blah blah", because it doesn't. It just causes a loss of a sale that may not have even been a sale to begin with.

The fact is, it might have been a sale. If the person would have bought a game if they hadn't pirated it, it's a lost sale

But that's besides the point. Why should pirates have to pay for something that a team has put a lot of time and effort into creating? Regardless of whether or not they would have bought it, they did not buy it, and therefore are getting a product for free that should have cost them money

A think that a lot of the reason that people dislike pirates is the sense of entitlement. Why should anyone get something for free that others have had to pay for, and that a team has spent a lot of time and effort creating?

Playing the devil's advocate here, but they didn't have to pay for it. They could have pirated too.

It comes down to why some people pay and some don't. The people that pay do so because they want to reward the people who put their time and effort into creating something for entertainment. The people that don't pay do so simply because the don't want to pay. If everyone pirated, the games industry would die overnight. There is no way of justifying piracy, and that is why many many people don't do it

True, but your logic is also fairly similar to my prediction of people who pirate. "If so many people buy the game, it won't matter to the industry if I don't."

It is a cycle of morals. The good people buy the games because they love the industry and their products and don't want it to fall apart by so many people pirating. The bad people will pirate making unsubstantial excuses as to why it is okay for them to pirate, such as a lot of people buy games, so just one person to pirate wouldn't hurt the industry, or I don't have the money to buy it, or something else that is completely silly.

It is a moral debate that has already been won, but the final decision has yet to been inflicted upon the sore losers that want everything forever with no sacrifice of their own.

Exactly. It's a sad fact that the people that suffer most from piracy are the people who legitimately buy games. Which ties very nicely back into the title of the thread. We should care because piracy leads to game companies treating everyone as a potential pirate

 

[Levethian]

Hint: "I don't have enough money so I'll pirate the game" is not a valid justification.

Except if you didn't have the money in the first place, you wouldn't have bought the game either:

No money, pirate = developer doesn't make any money from you
No money, don't pirate = developer still doesn't make any money from you


Piracy only hurts when potential customers already inclined to purchase a product decide to pirate it to save money because they are cheap bastards.

Unfortunately "not being able to afford it" is pretty subjective.

What they're actually often saying is:
"I could probably afford it if I saved, made do with less cookies & doughnuts etc, but that's inconvenient".
If you can afford rent, bills, sweets and computers to play games on, you can probably find a way to afford a game. But Piracy is so convenient

 

[Caliostro]

This thread is walking a very thin line...

At any rate, this is a slippery slope of an issue. Honestly, if you CAN honestly buy a game/movie/album/whatever and pirate it instead, that makes you a dick.

You may look at it as big faceless corporations, but those corporations are made of people like you, that worked every day to bring you your product. If people don't buy their stuff, they don't get paid. Now, as cruel as that is, if people aren't buying their product because they don't like it, that's just how it goes. Market version of natural selection. But if they're not buying it because they just want more money for themselves, then that's just bad for everyone involved. They go out of business, and you don't get to enjoy more of it, because they went out of business.

And don't give me the bullshit "I'M JUST ONE PERSON!" crap. A million people are just a million "one person"s. A collective is made of individuals.

I will say two, somewhat controversial things, however:

#1 - Used game sales arguably hurt developers MORE than piracy. Piracy is free, and a person that pirates a game might never had the intent to spend money on it in the first place, while if you buy a game used, you clearly had intention to spend some amount of money on the game. I'm not condoning or excusing piracy by proxy here. I'm simply saying used game sales are, pragmatically, an equal problem for developers.

#2 - If you honestly can't afford to buy the game, and I mean honestly as in "I literally have no money with which to buy it", not "I have the money, but I just wanna use it on something else", then... It's not ok... But they're not really losing anything in the process are they?

Again, not excusing or condoning. Just saying that it's not really a relevant issue in such cases.

sorry for quad post.


don't hate me mods.

Don't worry, happens. I took the liberty of deleting the "extras" while I'm here. Left the original.

Cheers.

 

[PhunkyPhazon]

I see nothing wrong with pirating older games that developers aren't even making money off of anymore, but never anything new.

 

[Pinky]

Because you get paid for your hard work, and I would like to be paid for mine.

 

[ElectrifiedSorcerer]

Well most people think of big companies like Bungie or Treyarch when they talk piracy. I'm not worried about them. I am, however, worried about indie developers. They work really hard and they put out promising stuff that redefines the medium and their existence is threatened by even the slightest knock or bump. So i won't lose sleep over someone pirating CoD. But when I think that guys who made stuff like Meat Boy and Braid might take steady jobs over waiting to see if gamers will like them enough to fork over some money, then I think we're in trouble

 

[imperialwar]

You're committing a crime, im a police officer : yes i should care

 

[Levethian]

Because you get paid for your hard work, and I would like to be paid for mine.

Pirates work?

 

[Grabbin Keelz]

I think it's a terrible shame how anyone who thinks piracy is wrong is labeled as a high ground hater. I do think piracy is wrong and I think it can potentially cause harm to the industry if it hasn't already.

Most of the ridiculous laws we have today are just because people broke them.

 

[johnnnny guitar]

I love how people get so angry over this

 

[Vibhor]

I paid for that stuff, it makes me cringe that someone is getting it for free and with more benefits.
That alone makes me a grouchy bastard.

 

[crop52]

Spoiler

You know what I'm sick of seeing?
People on high horses telling other people to get off their high horses,

 

[Teddy Roosevelt]

Piracy on the 'net does not exist. Copyright infringement does - but it is not stealing, it is COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT.

Piracy is what goes on outside Somalia. Just because a word is misused a fuckton, even by media, doesn't make it okay to misuse as well.

False.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/piracy

Using software without authorization is piracy, which is used in its correct sense.

 

[drisky]

I think it's a terrible shame how anyone who thinks piracy is wrong is labeled as a high ground hater. I do think piracy is wrong and I think it can potentially cause harm to the industry if it hasn't already.

Most of the ridiculous laws we have today are just because people broke them.

Because of your avatar I'm obligated to say this:
"What is that, some kind of moral high ground?"

 

[Xanthious]

I believe "some people" are so put off by the state of the video game industry lately that they couldn't honestly be paid to give a fuck about pirating games from most publishers. "Those people" are of the opinion that it's pretty obvious that most of these publishers are out to get as much of your money as they can while giving you as little content as they can get away with. And when you look at things like DRM that strips you of anything resembling ownership of your game, companies releasing only part of the game and then rationing the remainder off as DLC until you've paid for the game a second time and numerous other examples it's hard to refute this.

"They" think that if the publishers want to try to get as much of my money for as little content as they can get away with the same should hold true when you reverse things. It's only fair afterall. "They" figure "they" should be able to get as much of their content for as little of their money as possible. Turns out "they" are pretty damn good at it.

However, this doesn't hold true for the entire industry. There are good companies out there giving you a quality product without insane amounts of draconian DRM for your money and those people are the types of companies that "they" will typically choose to patron as a result of this. While the greedy publishers that would steal the money from your pocket if given the opportunity simply reap what they sow.

 

[Pinky]

Because you get paid for your hard work, and I would like to be paid for mine.

Pirates work?

nope.
I reject your reality and subject that of the shadow in which "crimes does not pay".

 

[Grabbin Keelz]

I think it's a terrible shame how anyone who thinks piracy is wrong is labeled as a high ground hater. I do think piracy is wrong and I think it can potentially cause harm to the industry if it hasn't already.

Most of the ridiculous laws we have today are just because people broke them.

Because of your avatar I'm obligated to say this:
"What is that, some kind of moral high ground?"

Nah, I'm just a pussy. XD

 

[OblivionFenix]

This whole discussion frankly is ridiculous. Sure sometimes piracy is OK like when a game can't be bought anymore or maybe when a game isn't released in your region and the console is region locked (no-one in their right mind is going to buy a new console for one game) but come on, can anyone really say that they think piracy is fine. Cos if you truly think that, regardless of whether there are ramifications right now, why not have everyone pirate games. If piracy is fine then no one should buy games. Let's see how far the gaming industry lasts then.