To anyone who thinks piracy is ok

[Kair]

It only covers 'piracy' in a market economy. I have drawn a little illustration to help you realize the error of limiting infinite resources for profit.

Red bar has the words "free information".

Green bar has the words "costs of producing".

If it has a cost, it isn't free!

There is a difference between cost of production and cost of distribution. Information is special in the way that it has a one-time cost of production and a close-to nothing cost of distribution.

If you read some of "Das Kapital" by Karl Marx he carefully explains the value of commodities and what commodities are, which is relevant here.

I don't recall differentiating them. Russian bearded philosopher or no.

Karl Marx was German.

 

[Hairetos]

It only covers 'piracy' in a market economy. I have drawn a little illustration to help you realize the error of limiting infinite resources for profit.

'Free Information'? I hope you don't mean every game/program/script should be free.

Would you spend hundreds of hours learning C then C++/Java or what have you, then working full time to develop an application only to give it out for (to quote Ned Flanders) NOTHING AT ALL! NOTHING AT ALL! ?

You say everyone would benefit, not the designers and developers who would be living in cardboard boxes. And consider the lack of competition that would all of a sudden exist, there would be no motivation to make a better program than your rivals.

Lol there are a ton of people who do that. Go find the linux community or anyone who affiliates with FOSS.

Hundreds of thousands of lines of code developed, released to the public for free. Happens all the time dude, so don't pretend it doesn't.

It's called 'Open Source' and yes it does have its advantages, but it also has drawbacks. If everything was open source the world of Software would be a disaster. Most people developing Open Source software do it to improve their skills, or to sell themselves to potential employers.

And i'll see your herp and raise you a derp by pointing out that all Linux distributions combined have a tiny amount of the total 'market' share, i'm not saying all Linux distro's are bad, just that retail closed source OS's (e.g. Windows) are used by far more people.

And hey, the big Open Source project; Open Office. Let's be honest, it's vastly inferior to MS Word. Though I admit the post of mine you quoted did omit any reference to Open Source software.

Yes, open source, hence Free and Open Source Software you condescending prick.

"If everything was open source, the world of software would be a disaster."

Doomsayer needs proof here. Open source breeds community involvement and I fail to see how that's a disaster. But go ahead, explain to me how closing off the source code makes software better.

And I'll raise your "derp" with a "fuck off" with the fact that: Linux receives ABYSMAL exposure. It has I think one commercial and does not come pre-packaged on any machines. The common computer user wants to buy a computer, turn it on and make it work. I would also like to point out that Linux usage is on the rise.

Also, Open Office is in no way inferior based on personal use and community reviews I've read. The only issue I have is the weak macroing of Calc.

But I should stop defending Open Source for a moment, because you managed to derail my purpose. My main concern wasn't Open Source Software, but free software. There's a slew of free applications that people write. Hell my computer is comprised of almost entirely free programs: A43, Avast!, Last.Fm, Firefox, ImgBurn, 7-Zip, AutoHotkey, etc.

So don't you even think of telling me that the free software community is small or impotent. There are plenty of free applications developed that trump their costly counterparts.

 

[direkiller]

As for Settlers 7...really? That's your only excuse for buying it, so you can play it offline? If you're on a desktop, why would it not be hooked up to the internet?

1.Not everyone has a stable internet connection
2. Restricted internet
3. Servers go down

Here is a not so hypothetical scenario:
Relic has a always on-line DRM for COH. The school i am at does not allow my computer to speak with there authentication server. I cannot play a game i payed for because of the always online DRM. So yes always online DRM is bad because i am not going to buy any games that have them simply because i cant play them for 3/4 the year(i'm not going to pirate it eather) but it still doesn't change the fact always online DRM is a pain in the ass.

 

[AndyFromMonday]

YEAH! The threat of piracy is WAY overblown! Also:

The game made millions of dollars on consoles whilst it abandoned the very platform that made it popular. The PC was never taken seriously to begin with. Besides, each argument against piracy seems to forget one major thing. Were the pirates in the target audience?

Until the actual numbers are thrown on the table we don't know jack. Whenever piracy is specifically targeted a huge number followed by a flashy title always seems to be the norm to show how horrible these people are and how much they hurt the developers: "4 BILLION DOWNLOADS. MODERN WARFARE 2 HIGHEST PIRATED GAME!" but instead of crunching up the numbers and dividing them into nations and then specifically focusing on the ones coming from targeted states they choose to leave it at that. Ain't that a cookie to crack?


There will ALWAYS be piracy but to call all of them greedy is a mistake. I sure as hell would purchase games more often if I had the money but in this economy I can barely afford to live. Giving that we don't even have an industry here and games are twice as expensive I do pirate games. It's a form of entertainment I feel entitled to because other modern countries have it. Instead, I have to settle with imported, expensive bullshit. Even if an actual industry existed the prices would still be to high. Most pirates are in my position. They're either uni students with not enough money or just struggling.

Also, as greedy as you might think pirates are publishers are no different. They will use every trick in the book to marginalize their profits and they won't give a goddamn about you once you handed over the cash. Hell, through the use of DLC and now with closed networks it's easier than ever before to milk people of their cash. Some pirates are greedy but so are publishers.

I'm sorry for those indie developers if what they wanted was profit. However, in todays world it should be fairly obvious that unless you're under a major publisher or label you're not even getting a taste of the profit pie.

 

[wulfy42]

People like to get stuff for free, and if they can get it for free without having to take risks or without having to actually feel like they stole something, then they'll do it. No matter how many studies you show them, no matter what logic you use, the simple fact is that they want to steal it, and they'll invent a million rationalizations to justify it to themselves. And the end of the day, they know it's theft just as much as we do, and they know they're lying to themselves - but they'll continue to do it anyway.

As I've said, you'll never stop piracy. It would be nice if you could, but that's an impossible dream now. Publishers and studios have to, unfortunately, provide more incentive for people to buy it physically. This is one of the reasons why consoles are becoming more and more popular and why these special edition packs with pewter figures and Night Vision Goggles are being marketed - you can't digitally pirate a physical object, can you?

Pirates will never understand the damage they do, because they aren't creators, they aren't makers. They don't understand, they CANNOT understand, the damage they cause. They can't create a great piece of intellectual property, so they have no idea of the worth of that property. They didn't spend years of their lives, and millions of dollars developing something, so they can't comprehend why it is wrong to steal it.

I don't want to get all Ayn Rand on you (I don't like Rand very much myself), but this really is a contest between the Creators and the Moochers. Pirates are moochers, who fail to understand why IP is important because they can't make any themselves.

Lol.

Seriously tons of "creators" pirate games. I can understand why people pirate games to try them out and I have created games myself. Many people create free games for people to play all the time. I don't think it's right to pirate a game, play it all the way through (or more then a few hours) and then not purchase it, but I also don't think it's that horrid if you don't have the money to pay for it.

If you do have the money and you don't pay for it if you like it...that is wrong. It happens I'm sure, but I also think only a few of the people that do that would have bought the game in the first place.

Many people create things without expecting anything in return. I've spent thousands of hours creating free games for people to enjoy. I've worked with others on projects that included hundreds of thousands of hours all for a free game for other people. Nobody making the game got paid a cent ever.

Piracy isn't bad unless it starts seriously hurting the sale of good games. I've seen no evidence at all that new good games are selling less (in fact they are currently breaking records in sales). If games start selling less and less each year that would be something to worry about but it's not true. Starcraft II for instance broke all kinds of records. Fall out NV has sold just fine. Minecraft and Torchlight both sold a ton etc etc.

Good games are selling fine. Plants vs Zombies has sold a gazillion copies. It can be easily pirated. Obviously that has not caused the game to fail.

I see no evidence at all that people pirating games has hurt the gaming industry. The only people hurt are the makers of bad games and I say good riddance to them.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Your mind is also enveloped in the market economy. As a capitalist you assume that labour is a privilege and not a duty.

By eliminating a primary incentive for people to do work, no matter how badly you try to rationalize your logic, it's still eliminating an incentive.

This is basic human logic.
People very well might continue to create information, but you will rarely ever see innovation or brand new information without incentive.
I would have liked to think that the last 250 years of human history was proof enough of that.

 

[randomsix]

i'll see your herp and raise you a derp

+1 Internets.

le gran snip

I don't think I can rebuttle to that. Though now the only real gripe I have with the user deciding to download a offline version isn't because he has access to it everywhere, or because he doesn't need an internet connection, its simply because he has a crappy internet, the same kind that I use, and believes that it is right to rip off a publisher and the developer of the game because of this. That's just greedy to me.

I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to say here, so bear with me if I misunderstand.

You say that it is wrong for a consumer to rip off a producer in order to have access to a game without internet connection. I agree with this, but it is complicated by the fact that the producer is ripping off the consumer at the same time by creating a product that requires superfluous peripherals (internet where it is not used for the game, in this case) and will not work without them.

 

[soljarka]

 

[Korolev]

And at the end of the day, it's also due to a bizarre sense of entitlement. For some reason, people actually believe they have a right to see films and play games for cheap.

That's nonsense. Games are not a right. Neither are films. They aren't made by the government, and none of your tax dollars went to making the games. I don't know what your smoking, but it must be pretty powerful stuff if it made you believe you have a "right" to play ME2 or Call of Duty Black Ops for free. You don't have such a right.

Video games are made by private companies, with their own money. They put a LOT OF WORK into their games, they take enormous risks, and it's THEIR PRODUCT. At the end of the day, THEY MADE IT, IT IS THEIRS. They have a right to charge XYZ for it, and you also have a right to say that it's too expensive. They have a right to put it out at a price they want, you have a right to refuse to pay that price, but you DON'T have a right to steal it.

You can say "but surely they owe it to their fans to make it cheap! THEY OWE ME!" - no they don't. Not from a legal sense, not from a moral sense. When you buy a game, you are buying that game. Once the transaction is done, you don't have the right to demand anything from them. I mean, how would you like it if you made lemonade, and you sold lemonade for, say, $1.00 for 500ml. Say you decide to raise the price to $1.50 for 500ml, and someone said, "HEY, I'm a fan of your lemonade and I DEMAND you lower the price, or I'm gonna steal it!". How would you feel? What right does that person have to demand you, the maker, to lower or raise the price?

I've met a lot of pirates, I'm friends with some of them. You will not believe the stupid BS excuses they make for themselves. They always say "I'm just trying it to see if I like it, I'll buy it if I do", but then they never actually do it. When you raise that point they are curiously silent. Then there are those who say "it doesn't cost them that much to manufacture it, why can't they sell it cheaper". Of course, they don't factor in costs like staff wages, the time and effort necessary to make it, the development cost, they associated marketing and distribution costs, they QA costs, the publisher costs, etc. It's like saying "hell, this expensive drug can be manufactured for a fraction of the price they're selling it", without taking into account the ENORMOUS, MULTIBILLION DOLLAR costs associated with developing and researching it in the first place.

Just because a blank DVD is cheap, is not an excuse to pirate a game. There's more to making a game than copying it to a DVD or CD. The true cost of producing games is in the millions - those people would like to get paid for the efforts. It's only fair.

 

[BakaSmurf]

I pirate games. But not in the way one would expect, you see, if a game I'm interested in is available on the PC, I'll download it illegally, if I like it, I then legally purchase the game. But only if I like it, for example, I didn't purchase Civilization V after pirating it, because it was painfully dissapointing, it was obvious they half-assed it. However, I did purchase Fallout: New Vegas, Cryostasis, and STALKER: Clear Sky after playing them and experiencing their awesomeness.

Basically, if I want to support the developers for taking the time to make a great game, I will. If I want to say 'fuck you' to a developer for half-assing the game and releasing it either half-finished or with and overall lackluster feel to it, like Firaxis did with Civ V (Seriously guys, what the fuck were you thinking with that!? Were you on goddamn crack when you were developing that!? What the fuck!?) I won't buy it afterwords.

I also download the game if I've already buyed it, but want to play it right now, for example, I just ordered Fable 3, it's going to take 30 DAYS for it to arrive, if it was available, I'd download a pirated version to play while waiting.

Also, just a little bit of interesting information, pirates aren't getting their games for free, the internet costs money, and downloading things adds to the original cost, especially when it's a big download. So you're still paying, just a little bit less.

 

[Kair]

Your mind is also enveloped in the market economy. As a capitalist you assume that labour is a privilege and not a duty.

By eliminating a primary incentive for people to do work, no matter how badly you try to rationalize your logic, it's still eliminating an incentive.

This is basic human logic.
People very well might continue to create information, but you will rarely ever see innovation or brand new information without incentive.
I would have liked to think that the last 250 years of human history was proof enough of that.

Even though you completely misunderstood, I would like to suggest that even your off-topic argument is wrong.

An experiment was done on the effects of financial incentives in mental tasks and creativity.

Here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

 

[daavisb]

youre right that its not right to do so. but what to do, when a (new) game costs the third of your monthly sallary? just dont play? or play one game in half a year? remember, you have to buy all the other progz for the pc to work.

 

[MasterOfHisOwnDomain]

@MasterOfHisOwnDomain
I wasn`t talking about indie games. Any artist who works on a project is payed in advance so that is beyond the point.

It's not beyond the point at all. How convenient for you to brush off independent games when it makes your argument more uneasy to swallow. But I still don't understand how you can justify stealing from a big company?

So it's fine for me to walk into an Apple store and steal a couple of their products? They're big enough to cover any losses, right? The guys who designed it, they've already been paid in advance, so it's not like I'm taking anything from their wages.

Do you not realise how utterly ridiculous this is? The world doesn't work on the basis that I should be able to get whatever I want because it's made by big, horrible companies that won't notice, or because they don't make products satisfactory to my requirements anymore, or, and I especially like this one, because I don't have enough money.

 

[Delusibeta]

One of my favorite parts:

For 2009, the most pirated PC game as reported in this article was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The PC version had a staggering 4.1 million downloads via torrents alone compared with an estimated 200,000 - 300,000 actual sales via retail and Steam, demonstrating that the most popular game of 2009 was also the most pirated, and more importantly, that the actual number of downloads for the most popular game is now almost three times as high as in 2008, signalling the rampant growth of piracy.

Your sale figure estimates for MW2 PC are way off, it easily topped a million in the first month, since the playcount regularly hit 200,000-300,000 at any one time during the launch period.

 

[James13v]

Wrong. There is strong evidence to support a notion that monetary incentives do not motivate people to be creative and innovate. Watch this lecture from the Royal Society of Arts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

EDIT: lol, ninja'd by Kair. I was shown this video by one of my lecturers at uni, very good stuff.

 

[Choppaduel]

I pirate games. But not in the way one would expect, you see, if a game I'm interested in is available on the PC, I'll download it illegally, if I like it, I then legally purchase the game. But only if I like it, for example, I didn't purchase Civilization V after pirating it, because it was painfully dissapointing, it was obvious they half-assed it. However, I did purchase Fallout: New Vegas, Cryostasis, and STALKER: Clear Sky after playing them and experiencing their awesomeness.

I do something similar to this. I can't afford to be paying $60 per game and still be able to play all the ones that aren't terrible. Blowing $60 on something like Mafia II only to find out nothings really improved from the fist one means that A) I'm annoyed about my bad investment B) I'm out $60 and can't afford Fallout: New Vegas. (this is just a hypothetical, don't take it literally)

So what I've been doing is downloading the game on or before release, playing it, waiting a year, and buying it on Staem for $25 or less. Unless its a really bad game, in which case I'm not wracked with guilt for not paying for it.

EDIT: 10pts if u can think of clever token for this. Like "reverse pricing" or something

 

[WOPR]

I found an article, its 10 pages long, but is the most in depth look at piracy i have ever seen.
He takes a very unbiased look at it, and i plead to anyone who still pirates games to go read it.

http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html

I only pirated something once
some pothead stole my copy of "Freelancer" and sold it for drugs (also stole my mp2 player but *sigh* getting off track)

ANYWAYS!

My copy was stolen, I didn't have the money for another copy, I was getting flustered, and my "friend" showed me how to pirate things so I grabbed a copy of freelancer to "reimburse" myself

I will admit I "slightly" pirate some games but that's because my friend and I will both pitch in for a game so instead of switching back and forth and back and forth I'll burn myself an image so we can both play it without the constant switching

I don't know how to classify that though because I did pay for the game and so did he :/

but I'm not the person that runs around torrent sites downloading everything there is (like New Vegas...)

newest game we imaged was AvP 2, and it's multiplayer is broken anyway

 

[Korolev]

At to all you "information should be free" folks and open source guys - yes, open source is wonderful. It's nice to see people who put out their work for all to use.

Note that it was also their CHOICE. Realize that maybe some don't want to make the same choice as you, and it's their right to make it NOT open source.

And we're talking about GAMES here people - shiny electronic fun-fun programs. Not clean water, not health care, not education. Games are GAMES. You don't have a right to them. They aren't necessary for a good life. You have no right to demand that they be free.

You can make the argument that Microsoft is stifling innovation, and that if everyone moved to linux or some free distribution then it would be better. As an OS is a pretty important piece of software, which can limit what other developers do, I can sort of see that point.

But you can't apply that argument to Gears of War or Bioshock.

Let me ask you this - a lot of you have jobs, or will have jobs soon. Tell me, why is it okay to not pay software makers for their work, yet for you to demand to be paid for yours?

Information should be free. That's why there's public schools. Software and information are NOT the same thing - one is comprised of the other, but they aren't the same and it's a logical fallacy to say that they are. Knowledge of the structure of DNA, protein folding, reagent properties or gene regulation should be free, and largely is if you can go to a public library or university library. But software is not the same thing as that - it's a constructed piece of code, something that took time and effort to make.

Let me put it to you this way: a magazine contains information. Is it morally right to walk into a store with a portable laptop and scanner, and then manually scan in the information from that magazine? Since you're not taking the paper itself, I suppose you think that it's okay to do that? Would it be morally right of you to walk into a bookstore and they pay the dollar or so it cost for the paper in the book, then walk out demanding that you don't have to pay any more for it, since "information should be free"?

Face it, the excuses for piracy are all ludicrous rationalizations. You steal because you don't want to pay for something you want. You simply don't care about the people who put the time and effort into making the game. You don't value their time or their efforts, yet somehow value the product they made by investing your own time into it. It's downright shameful.

 

[De Ronneman]

Let's get one thing straight: Piracy is wrong.

But please do this little math with me.

I live in Europe. The average new game costs 60 euro, the average cd 17 and the average dvd 20. That's all new release. A beer costs about 1.80. A coke about 1.60.

When I started working at age 16, I made 4.80 an hour. That was a little above minimum. I worked 8 hours a week.

That meant I havd to work:
12.5 hours for a videogame
3.54 hours for a cd
4.16 hours for a dvd
37.5 minutes for a beer
33.3 minutes for a coke.

Now, look at the chart: see how it takes a 16 y/o kid more time to earn a game than to play the campaign. Even a CD only has about an hour of music on it. And the average drink doesn't survive 33 minutes.

Downloading a new release movie costs 20 minutes and I got to keep the money I earned, and spend it on beverages.

I hope I at least made clear why it's popular.