Pirating VS Buying

#101

No. I’m not seeing any conflicts. If you’d like to explain, I’m all ears, but I’m usually pretty good at not taking hypocritical stances, even if it requires making distinctions that others choose not to make.

If there is one thing that I have learned from experience, it is that my tastes are ENTIRELY different than roughly 99.99999999% of the world. There IS no one that consistently gives reviews on the points that matter to me, I might have a website here or there that actually line up with my taste for ONE OR TWO games but for every game they have that lines up with my taste there will be 5-10 more that DON’T.

I’ve never played the demo, so I don’t know how far into the game it plays, but you know what I did try? The version that’s available that used to be free on gametap. That lasted SO long. I got all of 5 seconds into the startup video before having the game crash on me EVERY SINGLE TIME. Funny thing is that the cracked version didn’t have any problems.

Yep, $15 is my limit for a retail game. For a PC game I won’t pay more than about $5 per game. I’ll pay more for a game that packages multiple games, but only if each individual game is under $15(retail) or $5(DL) I don’t see why that’s an unreasonable stance. I got Half Life for $1 and Orange Box for $10, which are unarguably two of the best games of all time, even moreso when you factor in the free mod content that you gain access to.
If you still seem suprised over how this can work, check out my steam gamelist. I actually calculated it out at one point and the average amount I’ve spent on games is under $4 per game.
You see, when you’re on a budget, the first things that get trimmed are entertainment expenses in order to pay for the essentials and necessities. Games are an entertainment, so only about $10 per month gets budgeted towards them. Which means whatever game I get for $10 has to last me an entire month, a game that’s only $5 only has to last about two weeks. Whatever game I get for $20 has to last me for TWO months, and so on. Now tell me seriously, do you know of any game review sites that factor that type of budgeting in? I’ll give you a hint; it’s pretty close to the vicinity of NONE.

Of course, as I said, I’ll be the last person to argue that I have some sort of right to use their services without paying for them. However that doesn’t change the fact that my own illegal use has pretty much no harmful effects on the companies in question, and even some (albeit minor) benefits to said companies.

did you get that backwards? I would think if your steam list was full of multiplayer games it would mean that you paid for those instead of pirating them.

#102

This example is so bad I just can’t think of a proper reply to it.

#103

Well, I think we can all agree that the 4.1 million people that pirated Modern Warfare 2 (plenty of which, surprisingly, was for the XBox 360 version. PS3 version remains untouched though) didn’t stop it from being the best selling game of 2009 (with 4.7 million units sold.)

bscly, Portal>Narbacular Drop
Or to be more precise, Portal>Everything

#104

I don’t pirate computer games anymore, all mine are now real and bought, even quake and doom which i got just to add to my wii homebrew, which doesn’t-
Oh shit…
I GOT SNES/NES/GENISIS/GBA ROMS WITHOUT OWNING THE CARTS THAT THE ROM IMAGES CAME FROM :’(

Crap thought I was clean. Well at least my PC is free from-
Oh crap not again…
PSX ISOs of FFIX…

Well my Digimon World image came from my game which I lost, good thing I backed it up for…
Crap, I sent it to my friend.
But he deleted it.
So all’s well!

I’ve admitted everything now.

My #1 rule is I’ll never pirate from companies I like, that’s Bungie (Although the games that I love from Bungie are now freeware, 7otally awesome), Blizzard and Valve.

EDIT: Is it World of Goo that has a 90% piracy rate due to no DRM on it?

#105

Well considering it was their first game and more of a proof of concept, it was very successful, I bet they would have released a game of similar quality to portal if they had enough time.

Also I pirate single player and buy multiplayer and I don’t see a problem with what I do.

#106

Do you want me to use that “Facepalm” pic-a-thon again? Because I will!

Your problem has been put in bold text.

You now have my respect. :smiley:

#107

People make games to make a living, it’s fair that they get 100% of what they demand for their product, if people want to play it so bad then they’d buy it, if the price tag turns them off then they should save up and buy it.

Actually I’m beginning to see nothing wrong with it myself, but if everyone thought that, then the hard working people behind the product will be made poor.

Piracy actually does make me feel bad, I can honestly say that. If I am accessing media that was pirated and I enjoy it, I tend to feel guilty. ROMs, though, I don’t feel guilty, you can’t buy them online or in shops so what other choice is there if you want to play a classic that has been forgotten?

Since Bungie’s Marathon (Yeah I go on about those games a lot) trilogy was made freeware I play those games more now than ever before, it really puts the Halo story into perspective for players also, free games are great.
But working people made those freegames, they deserve something out of it…For Bungie it was throwing their beloved Marathon into the crowd before M$ took over and locked the games away forever.

Maybe that makes games an art to be appreciated aswell as a media for entertainment and a target for piracy.

#108

I won’t see it as a problem because I pay for multiplayer games (since multiplayer servers cost money for the company)

#109

Don’t computers for producing games, sound commissions for audio (Not all are inhouse) commissioned level designers (Like was DICE do, lol, can’t make levels for their own games), commissioned website creators.

It’s not just the people inside the companies that get paid, there’s outside folk who wish to make a living.

#110

Piracy rates are never represented correctly. Yes it was highly pirated, but 90% is not an accurate number, even if statistics say so.

#111

Okay, I’ll take some random dude on the internet’s word rather than an official statistic done by people that actually know what the hell they’re talking about.
:slight_smile:

#112

Or they’ll use their money for other things.

The way I see it, if someone pirates the game and likes it a lot, then they’ll buy it. If they don’t like it, they’ll delete it. If they like it a lot, they’ll tell friends who will buy it when they otherwise wouldn’t (it’s how I was turned on to some games, to be honest).

So, tell me, what is lost here? Certainly not any revenue stream because there’s no potential gain to begin with.

If a thousand people buy the game and they figure a thousand pirated it, then their revenue stream is $501000 people. It’s voodoo economics to say that there are 2000 customers and that they’ve lost $50,000 to piracy. They never had that $50,000 to begin with. Without pirating, they STILL wouldn’t get that extra 1000 customers. Their revenue stream with piracy: $501000, their revenue stream without piracy: $50*1000.

What am I missing?

I mean, I got 6000 hits to a website of mine last year. I could say that I should’ve got 15000 hits. Does that mean I lost 8000 hits to something? And, if I can say that, then a software company can say, “I would’ve made $18billion but I only made $150million because of piracy. I lost $17.85 billion to piracy! Something must be done!”

C’mon.

#113

You don’t know shit about how statistics work do you? And these official statistics, how do they track duplicate downloads, people passing off the game to their friends, piracy over private channels, direct downloads, etc.

It’s pretty much common knowledge (to any person with half a brain) that piracy numbers are wildly inaccurate because they are near impossible to track.

I believe the piracy rates are incredibly high for that game, but it gets on my nerves when these ‘official statistics’ are pulled up, because they don’t mean shit.

#114

You actually touch on THE key problem that surrounds this whole debate. Companies will claim that every single stolen copy is going to a person who would have actually bought it if they didn’t have the means of piracy through which to obtain the game, while those who pirate have you believe that not even a single person who pirates would have bought a game they pirated if they couldn’t have gotten it through said piracy.

I can tell you right now, both sides of that stance are completely naive… or one side is naive and the other is deliberately exaggerating. Both sides are partially true, but neither one nearly as much as they think. I can tell you from personal experience that not everyone who enjoys a game will pay for it, and yes, having the game for free does often make a person LESS likely to shell out actual money for it, since then they still have the money that can possibly be put towards other games.

I actually used to be more aligned with the piracy side of things until I actually ran into one of the worst of the variety in real life: When I mentioned to my cousin the great deals I got on steam, he actually tried to convince me to just “get the games for free” etc, and that he thinks everyone should pirate. It was only the combination of shock/disbelief over his flippant conviction and that I was actually related to him, and the fact that it was a holiday, that kept me from punching him in the face.

Ultimately, the REAL problem stems from the fact that motivations are only known to the person who takes the actions. There is no way to measure what percentage of the people who pirate do so for what reasons and what they would have done if without ability to pirate. So as a result, each side will assume that the larger percentage consists of the motivations that support their argument. Both will be wrong, and both will get nowhere.

#115

Steam is amazing. It hardly seems like a DRM to me.

#116

Lucky you. One day when I was going to play HL2, lightning destroyed our router and Steam conveniently forgot my password so I couldn’t even start it in offline mode.

Boy was I happy when I couldn’t play games that I owned just because my internet access was demolished. I sure praised DRM that night.

#117

Yep. There are asshats on both sides. And, no, in my (admittedly oversimplified) analogy, not all those 1000 who pirate and like the game a lot would go on to not buy the game, but many will (even if it’s just 1 out of that 1000) and that INCREASES said revenue stream beyond what they currently get.

Without piracy: 100050. With piracy (and my extremely conservative 0.1% example): 100150.

Again, that’s oversimplified and they might get more buyers if there weren’t piracy, but the point is: We don’t know how much is lost to piracy based on the nature of piracy. To claim, “Oh, we lost $1.2 million to piracy last year” is bogus. I don’t know how they arrive at such a figure.

And there will ALWAYS be piracy. Even under protected games like Steam games. I bought Half Life, Half Life 2, Portal, and the two Half Life eps. Let’s say, for some extremely far off reason, I decide I don’t want to be involved in that anymore. In fact, I’m quite willing to give up access to Steam. [COLOR=‘Black’](I’m going to become a hermit and denounce technology altogether!)

So, I give a friend or relative of mine my Steam password and say “Go to town with all the games I bought”. Wouldn’t that be piracy? Valve doesn’t get the revenue from the person I am giving this to.

However, during this time, my friend or relative sees a game through the store on Steam that they want to buy something that I never would get. And they buy it. What then?

#118

actually, I’m pretty sure Valve has no issues with you giving your account to someone else, nor do they have any problems with multiple people using one account. It’s not like they can play any of the online multiplayer stuff together with just one account. It would be kinda stupid to think otherwise since people who buy any other game can have more than one person playing it.

They just don’t want you selling it or stealing it.

#119

Don’t blame Valve or Steam because you failed to remember your password.

#120

It is my understanding that if you do not have access to the internet and your account is not logged in or something of the like then you cannot access what the kids call “offline mode”. Back in my day everything was in offline mode! wrbrbrbrb

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.