Think about it, Piracy is not stealing (unless you’re a pirate who sails the seas). It is really the uploader sharing their software with you. And did we all learn in kindergarten…? We should all share. It’s nice, and it indeed is.
By the way, I bought almost every game i pirated. You know why, because I wanted to support VALVe. And the ones I didn’t, were bad games anyway.
going back to the ads idea: if it’s used well, it could definitely work. I’m not talking about getting a ‘Coca-cola Gun’ instead of a Gravity Gun, but to put them in subtle ways.
For example, in the first splinter cell your opsat had a small Palm logo… if they get enough brands to lower the price significantly, then they should go for it IMO.
You, and everyone else who makes this argument, is an idiot.
You do realize that torrents are a legitimate for of file transfer that is used just as often for legal purposes as illegal purposes right?
By your definition of a ‘dutchbag’ people who use computers are flipping of developers because software pirates use computers.
It isn’t stealing, it’s copyright infringement and a lot of us know that already.
And if you seriously think of trying to force a “everyone should share” mentality by pirating games I have a better solution for you, make your own country or go to a country that supports that ideology and see how that works for you.
Actually Canada is considered a bit of a hven for piracy because of the way our laws work. Not for long though. News is the EU is going to pressure us into abiding by certain legal rules. While I agree that laws need to be amended, I don’t think it’s right to have such regulations pushed on us by the EU. It’s not really their place.
Note: This post assumes that people would never buy a game that they pirated. If people pirate as an alternative to buying a game and WOULD buy that game if they couldn’t download it, then they’re just dicks. But I don’t think that that’s the majority of people who pirate. Anyway…
You’ve provided a very nice thesis on why the production of fakes and knock-offs is a bad thing, since they devalue the items they’re ripping off. However, when you’re talking about piracy, its an entirely different kettle of fish.
People who buy games, buy them. People who download games would never buy them. The availability of pirated games hasn’t created a whole new way for people to avoid paying for games, its just provided them with a way to play games that they would have never otherwise bought.
The price of a good is driven by the amount people are willing to pay for it. Generally it is set at the highest amount people are willing to pay for it, while at the same time ensuring that people still buy it (because setting it too high will result in nobody buying it, and setting it too low will result in too many people buying it at too low a price). That’s the rule of demand.
Anyway, the reason that piracy doesn’t conform to the rule of demand is that whether or not pirated games were available, the same amount of people buy the game now that would do if piracy was abolished tomorrow, assuming that the amount would not decrease if pirated games were suddenly removed. The reason is because people who don’t buy games now don’t do it because they wont, under any circumstances, ever buy games. Without piracy people just wouldn’t play them at all. Hence, by abolishing piracy, you achieve nothing, since sales don’t increase.
Oh and just by the by, games aren’t getting cheaper. They’re getting more expensive. And people are still turning up in droves to buy them. Go figure, I guess, since according to you piracy is destroying the games industry.
Its completely irrelevant as to the current state of laws. What matters more is their application and how effectively piracy can be tackled. The issue is that piracy doesn’t exist in some monolithic, James Bond-style evil organisation-type entity. They’re everywhere, and until you can effectively prosecute everyone who pirates, then you don’t solve the problem.
The world is rainbows and lollipops.
P.S. Large fallacy in that paragraph too.
Edit: You could not be more wrong.
I’m certainly glad the world isn’t in you hands. You are awful quick to say that countries have no right to their own legal systems to protect the entertainment industry.
What are you talking about? A copy of a game certainly has value, because someone would give money to get in possession of such a copy(some people use piracy to sell multimedia for lower prices illegally).
Explain why the rest was nonsense.
Edit:
Ofcourse, most pirates DO buy a lot of the things they pirated, so this large group does not cause much of a problem for the industry. However, not pirating is a principle for me, as I find the whole idea of it wrong. But that’s where we have different opinions.
This is also the reason I am against piracy. The principles, not the chance of it having negative effects on the industry.
Also yes, games are getting more expensive because the demand growing at a faster rate than the production. It will become cheaper when the demand has reached its peak.
It does not create value. When you buy a game of the black market or where ever it doesn’t magically mean that the files on the disk now have value. Essentially you are paying for a service because it doesn’t transfer the value from the creators of the content to the pirated parties. They don’t gain monetary value simply by having possession of data.
The idea that piracy plays a role in sales numbers is false. The company doesn’t lose money from piracy. You can’t even really argue that it has any relation to the value of the original copy because it doesn’t relate to sales numbers.
When creating a balance sheet for sales profits, and accountant doesn’t create a debt for losses created by piracy. That is NOT how economics work. so it DOES NOT HAVE A VALUE.
When companies pull numbers about how much they’ve lost due to piracy, it always makes me laugh. It’s impossible to calculate those numbers. First, you can’t calculate the number of copies actually downloaded illegally, as many people might already own that product and that the number of people who downloaded it who would actually pay for it is impossible to calculate. The numbers they produce aren’t accurate in the slightest.
How does economics work then? It just seems like everyone here have a few different definitions.
Happy New Year 2010 for Half-Life Fans^_^
Well you know what a balance sheet is right? A tool for tracking the flow of debit and credit within a company…
Well, there is no piracy entry on a balance sheet because there is debit to the company because of copied product.
If someone breaks in to a store cash register and copies all our bills, and leave the bills there is not loss and no debit appears.
The copied bills also have no value, because they aren’t legal tender. Now if someone accepts those bills in exchange for something of real value they take a loss on their balance sheet. because essentially someone just stole from them. This can be repeated until someone cannot get rid of those illegal bills. At that point that party takes a loss and is a victim of a crime.
If you bought a pirated copy of windows and it worked for a while Microsoft doesn’t take a loss and the copy has no value. If you paid for it you take the loss, and when it stops working you are left with something that not only has no value, but no actual function as well.
Just because something is paid for doesn’t mean it has an economical value attached to it.
True, but doesn’t make it morally right to do, and while it is not necessarily a loss, it is someone getting the product who did not purchase it. If they did not purchase it and did indeed want it, they were a potential customer, and potential customers turn into actual customers. Although it is not a loss, chances are the person won’t buy the game, and that is the loss of a potential customer, which is one less person who could buy the game.
Not technically a loss, but it is less profit.
Also, I’m drunk, I may re-phrase this when I’m sober.
Fortunately for companies they don’t have to count potential sales that don’t come through as loss.
You can’t really make potential a factor when considering sales. You can SAY if we do this it will create more sales, but the actual outcome on profit created by such action my not be beneficial. You can’t simply say If we lower price more people will buy the game rather than pirate it. You can’t really say that if you add DRM it will increase sales, and decrease piracy. SPORE is a good example of this. Piracy was made a big deal because sales were low, but so far as piracy rates are concerned it’s about average. Modern Warfare 2 is the fastest selling game this year. It’s also the most pirated. Statistically piracy is just a variable, that is distinct from sales number.
You can argue morality, but it’s not going to make a difference. There is a portion of the population that know piracy is wrong, but still would rather have the game for free anyhow. DRM, and eliminating torrent isn’t going to change that. You eliminate torrents? things will just swing back to a different transfer type, like news binary transfer. Piracy rates aren’t moved at all.
I like valve’s strategy. They acknowledge that piracy will always exist, but in areas where there is spikes in piracy rates, they see opportunity to better service customers.
Well… EA is really asking for it, Money grubbing bastards… pay for furniture in The Sims 3. I mean Jesus Christ how fucking cheap-ass can you get?
Every game i own i bought. if i dont have the money, i dont buy it. i dont resort to stealing. just save your money. If you dont have enough money then too bad no games for you.
I bought Call of Duty Modernwarfare 2, CoD4,COD5:waw, and many more. I own about 52 games that i PAYED FOR. theives need to be strung up like in the old days >.>
for the tenth time, piracy =/= stealing
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.