Because employees get lower bonuses if the game they just finished didn’t reach expected sales, thus hurting their salary.
Unfortunately, because there is no real protection for consumers in this there seems to be a lot of piracy based on this point of view.
Though you can argue your target is the large distribution companies, it is still an illegal act. Performing illegal act doesn’t really put you on strong moral grounds.
I have an interesting thought for some folks. Because EA has violated their own usage agreement which I accepted by installing the game, does that void the agreement? What is the legality of this? Does this mean I can use the product outside of the terms of the usage agreement? If that is so, would that mean I am permitted to use it how I like, such as a means of distributing pirated copies to whoever I like, because it’s not operating without any valid usage agreement?
Being a little silly I know. But what happens when the usage agreement is violated by the software provider anyhow?
Did they violate the usage agreement?
Yes they did.
On the topic of copyright infringement, the owner of Oink was found not guilty, which is a pretty big win for the site’s ex-users. The site has long since been shut down, but has been replaced with a couple other big names out there.
If you don’t know what Oink is, it was one of the biggest private music trackers, which got shut down a while back, and the owner was put on trial.
Meh, if I want to see a movie I will pirate it. Also I have 1284 (Yes I just checked) songs on my iPod right now. Had I purchased these songs from iTunes, I would have paid $1284 (Minus the CDs I have, which I can never find/are always scratched). That is more than the iPod themselves. I don’t pirate because I think that all those major record labels have enough money, and don’t deserve mine, I do it because I get things for free.
I know it’s wrong but still, I would rather have a song that I got for free than a song I had to pay 99 cents for that has all this DRM bullshit or, if it’s not on iTunes, I have to buy an entire album for just one song. Meh, flame me if you want. Free shit is free shit no matter how you put it.
I’m not being sarcastic or anything, and I don’t doubt that they did, but how specifically did they do it?
And this is where it all begins to fall apart and you start hurting whatever it is that you’re stealing (oh excuse me, taking without permission). Good job, not only do you begin to ruin it for the rest of us but for yourself too.
And if you say, “But I do eet because of the unfair way they treat us” then you should learn of the meaning of the words “a vicious circle”. They treat everyone that way (not just you) because you pirate because they do that because you do that… And you ruin it for other people, good effing job asshole.
Just a quick question regarding this point:
What, precisely, is being stolen/taken without permission?
I ALWAYS pirate shit unless it’s for PS3/from Valve.
Fuck you too.
I just bought a pirated version of District 9 and felt horrible when I found it was actually an excellent movie. I then watched The Terminators and felt horrible that I actually bought a REAL version of it.
:lol: :lol: :’(
:’( :’(
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
I only buy a game, if I feel the hours I play it will justify the price. For example, I’ve played well over 200 hours of Team Fortress 2, so the price of the Orange Box was more than fair. However, I was reluctant to buy C&C 3 because I was suspicious EA would screw up. I pirated the game, payed it for a few a hours, and quickly lost interest. I then completely erased the game from my computer and was relieved I didn’t waste money on it.
The point is why buy the box blindly, when you can be sure you’ll like it?
Yes yes, I see the irony. I only didn’t download it because Australia tends to hate anything larger than 500kb with a fiery passion.
It’s amazing how silly both sides of this argument can get.
The people who are pro-piracy have one simple fact to remember: If everybody pirated, no one would bother making it in the first place. Don’t delude yourself into thinking that the software development that people do for free in their spare time will be as good as what you can get from people who are funded. Some of the software coming out for free right now might be as good as what you can pay for, but ultimately those people still have the hope of EVENTUALLY getting paid motivating them (either that people will enjoy the work enough to donate, or that it will get their name out as a developer worth hiring for a different project) Without that motivation eventually good development WILL cease.
For the people who are anti piracy: Stealing software is NOT like stealing a car or other physical product. Making bad arguments like that undermines your entire stance. When you steal a car, you now have a car, and the company you stole from has one less car to sell and make money from. When you steal a copy of a software, you now have that software, and the company still has exactly the same amount of that software that they had before. The company has incurred no loss of product. The only thing they have lost is the person who pirated as a potential paying customer BUT that is only 100% true IF given only the choices of PAYING FOR IT or NOT GETTING IT, the pirate would have actually paid for it.
I pirate. No point in skirting the issue. I pirate GB, GBA, DS, NES, SNES, N64, PSX, the occasional PC game, and eventually I’ll probably pirate Gamecube, Wii and PS2 games.
Simply put, I pirate because I can’t afford the games. I DON’T have the funds for it. And given the choice between paying $15 - $60 per game, I’ll opt to not play the game. Companies get just as much money from me that they would have if I had not pirated, and they have just as much product that they would have had if I hadn’t pirated, so my pirating costs the company NO MONEY.
In fact, one of the first PC games I can remember pirating is Psychonauts. I didn’t even think I’d LIKE the game, but since it wasn’t going to cost me anything I figured I’d try it. I enjoyed it so much I bought a legit second hand copy for myself (though I kept the piracy crack so I could play without the disc inserted) and when it went on sale for $2 on steam I bought it AGAIN. I also make a point of telling anyone I come across (who I think would be even remotely interested in gaming) what a great game it is and how they should go buy a copy themselves. If I had opted for not playing it, instead of pirating it, they would not have made a sale from me at all, and likely not have made the sale for whatever other people I convinced to buy it (I’m pretty sure I managed to convince at least one other person for certain)
Also, if a game does come down to a reasonable price, then I will get it. Steam has been a huge boon for me in this respect, especially with the numerous deals they run throughout the year. I’ve spent a little over $150 since I started using steam and have spent on average about $5 per game.
Now there is one type of pirate that I do find personally detestable, and that is the type of pirate who acts like piracy is actually BETTER than paying for the game, and who, if they hear someone talk about purchasing the game, even on sale, will try to convince that person that they should pirate the game instead of paying for it.
That actually IS stealing from a company as, if successful, you actually HAVE cut into the profit that a company would have been able to make.
I still don’t like pirating. Even if you don’t like the game it looked at least GOOD enough to steal and I would way rather wait for it to go on sale then to steal it and buy it later. I just remember how hard it is to make a game too it spent me an hour to make an extremely small map in source SDK when I first tried so… I kinda feel bad stealing anyones work (and thanks for that recommend Grey cant wait to try it 
Also TF2 is the best
Yes but we’ve already gotten to the point where we all acknowledge it’s not stealing it’s copyright infringement. I’m not saying that you’re stealing trucks but I’m saying that pirating isn’t only hurting a company it hurts everyone else who has to deal with shitty DRM because of people who pirate. The solution? One side stops being such big babies, and if the big corporate boys do it first then you’ll only look like assholes.
A game is being taken/copied without permission, the term when it comes to piratin g is called copyright infringement.
You now have described most pirates.
I am not pro-pirate. I am not anti-pirate either. Claiming that DRM is the fault of pirates is saying that the full-body imaging scanners that can see your naked tuchus is the fault of Osama bin Laden.
Yes, pirating is a problem, but when you start hurting law-abiding people in an attempt to throw a net over the entire infrastructure, then you’re going to get dolphins caught in that metaphorical net. Pirating is bad. DRM is WORSE.
Only occasion I pirate games nowadays is when I think they are ridiculously overpriced.
I used to pirate every game I played ages ago, because before Steam I had to buy retail, and games around here in Brazil are like 5 times their original price. But now that I can buy them at a reasonable price, I really don’t mind paying for them.
But sometimes, like with the COD games, I want a game to see how it looks or maybe to even play it through entirely, but they come up for like $59 on Steam, and to be honest, in my mind they are far from being worth 60 bucks, so I pirate them until the price lowers to something I find worth (like when COD4 went on sale for $25 or something like that).
Sometimes I’ll have replayed the pirated version several times, but when the actual game comes up for a decent price, I’ll buy it just to have it in my Games List, and to know that I did contribute to it’s developers, even if most of the time I won’t ever touch that game again. COD4 was like that for me, 1 year after I had downloaded, played and uninstalled the pirated version, it went on sale for $25, and while that was still an averagely high value, I thought it was worth it so I bought it, but I’ve never ran the game since.
I do buy expensive games when I think they’re worth it, though. I pre-ordered the Orange Box when it came out (hell, I even payed the retail price for it, which was pretty high); I’ve recently pre-ordered BioShock 2; and I also bought Half-Life 2 at a ridiculously high price when it came out. It’s just that when a game like MW2 comes out, I think it’s pretty nice fun and all, but I just don’t think it’s all that impressive, so I’ll play a pirated version while I wait for the price to drop.
Yes, but, you see, pirates aren’t a monolithic organisation; there isn’t a huge group of people who just download games for shits and giggles, they’re real people with their own motivations for pirating games. Some download because the price is too high and they have no money; others pirate because they’re dicks and don’t want to pay for something they don’t have to. Whichever group a particular pirater falls into, the solution with dealing with him is different; if its the former, then you need to negotiate with game companies to bring the price down and make games more affordable. If you’re talking about the latter, then the only real solution is to increase copy protection to the point where its unbreakable or make games so ridiculously large that you can’t possibly download them.