Spidery_Yoda wrote:
Yes its disappointed me. And don't be ridiculous i won't leave over something this trivial.
I've been here for years and thought the community was great. Then I post an article about the effects piracy is having on the industry, and want to discuss it with folk and I get this. I hadn't comprehended that the majority of replies would be people actually trying to justify piracy. I was appauled.
Your spelling appauls me.
But seriously, you can't be one-sided on a topic like this. You can't expect to open up a thread on an ongoing debate, then act wounded when not everybody scurries to support your object of championship. The industry has more than pirates to blame for 'poor sales' (*COUGH*).
Explain to me why someone who's never pirated anything has to sit through days of anti-piracy turmoil before they can 'activate a game online' that has no multiplayer component (case in point, Bioshock pre-orderees), when pirates crack the fecker in thirty minutes and manage to run it without the bugs induced by some of the more shady anti-piracy measures? Then one of their buddies goes, 'hey Bob, why don't you just download it?' Bob: 'gee, you can do that? Where?' Yeah. 'Wait, can't we just boycott stuff like this?' Not really. How many gamers have the self-control to not buy that steaming title they've been waiting four years for because it uses an unpopular copy-protection scheme? A publisher like EA is just going to nod sagely and stick 'Breakyourlegs 3.0' on Command & Conquer 5. And I'd say more than that number would just download the little tosser, gas the computer-killing copy-protection parasite, crack it and have a go anyway. Pirates lead, consumers fail. Installation limits! 'Well, they'll be removed eventually.' That's not going to help the rabid upgrader. But with a crack, that's gone! Pirates lead, consumers fail.
From your linked article:
http://www.tweakguides.com/images/Piracy_14.jpgBleh! Easier to just crack the thing, eh?'Wait, just download the demo, and if you like it, buy it!' Megapolished demos (did I mention that the industry once-upon-a-time tried to dress them like retail products?) that hardly represent the full content of the retail versions also serve to sting gamers. You're always going to get people with spare cash hanging around to buy games on the off-hand chance that they're going to be good, but the poorer among gamers are going to take their cynicism to the torrents in short order.
...
Personal case in support of 'piracy':
Of perhaps 90+% of the games I've downloaded in the past with no previous intention of buying, I've acquired retail copies of. The demos didn't convince me, but they did. Seventeen seasons of various TV shows and cartoons now sitting on my shelves were purchased because either torrents or Youtube reintroduced me to them (see avatar).
Unfortunately, a lot of angst is borne against the industry for some reason or another, and it has become a grudge match that neither side will win.
Flaming_Maniac wrote:
max wrote:
I'm just going by the legal definition here. And even if we pretended that copyright could be stolen, when you download a game you don't take anything away. You're making a copy.
Copyright infringement = copying, Stealing = taking away
not that hard
You
take away potential income from the developer.
There's the rub. In most cases, that 'potential income' is insubstantial. These people probably won't buy a developer's product anyway, but at least they might tell some of their friends about it, who will in turn just buy the thing.
If I make a paddle ball in the image of one I see online because I
don't want to give a toy site $15 for it, am I robbing their potential income, or would I
not have bought it anyway?
Last edited by unnamednewbie13 (2008-12-15 21:24:28)
