News Call of Duty 4 piracy is rampant

Don't bash me too bad for this, but i am a many-times download offender.

I hereby pledge that i will start paying for games the day that studios start offering a legal download at reduced fees. I firmly believe that games (and other content) can be offered through a download service profitably for 10-15 euros.
In other words: I'd happily pay prices i can pay, but 50 euros for a single game is just way too much.

 

Right.
That's what stopped my playing HL2 (which I own).
I'm on a pretty thin and unstable WLAN connection, and having to download loads of stuff... (well if you don't connect to steam to often they pile up)
Starting Steam is just a pain for me.

If I want to play single player i may have an hour of load time...(update time really) that's just not acceptable.

BUT...for multiplayer it's probably the only way to stop copies.
And that's the trick...single player crackable, multiplayer must be registered.

it works.

 

*

 

Such as http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest Tells you how good your PC is and what games you can run.

 

Or just looking at the box?

 

hw requirements on the box = most often completly imaginary numbers.

but, it still doesnt make it a excuse for pirating. demo's take care of the try if it runs on your system part.

 

ok, i got bored of reading when i saw the fourth long post.

Im gonna admit this, i've pirated so many games in the past that im so ashamed.. But recently, i saw how it was affecting the industry and since like 5 years or so Ive been buying the games that I love, including the whole Call of Duty series. Not only that, but im encouraging my friends to do so as well, and they are.

But let me put an example, I d/l the demo of the latest Need For Speed, it sucked, didnt buy it. But then I saw it at a friends house, and he had a pirated copy. I passed a whole day non stop playing. Then Crysis came out, I didnt even bother on buying nor pirating this one because all the publicity of how it wont run on low or midrange pc's.

So you see, sometimes its not the consumers the ones that screw up....

 

While I know that this is a microscopic view call of duty 4 did sell really well in my home country sweden.

If you look at the multiformat toplist for 2007 you will see ps2 and PC is dominating the charts which is quite remarkable coming from retail sales of new games.
http://gamereactor.se/nyheter/12734/Svenska+speltoppen+2007/
looking only at the holiday period:
http://www.gamereactor.se/nyheter/12388/Svenska+speltoppen+nov/
http://www.gamereactor.se/nyheter/12663/Svenska+speltoppen+dec/

Back to the topic of piracy of online games where patched servers bypass the copy protection I don't know if the problem has grown or if you just are blissfully ignorant unless you're aware of them. For instance I play many valve games on steam but am completely unaware of wheter there exists 100th's of patched servers.

 

Checking game-monitor.com, it would seem out of 24,000 simultaneous players (as of 10am EST) at least 2,000 or so are playing on (presumably) identifiable "cracked" servers. Thats almost 10% which I must admit, is surprisingly a little on the high side. And could be possibly higher if there are many "unidentifiable" cracked/pirate servers. However I don't think that is anywhere near "astounding".

Aggies

 

Pirating A game is never right. I don't care about the price of the game or whatever. One of my friends got busted for pirating, destroyed his entire life. Plus it's never fair to the game developers, they probably worked really hard on the game and you are just stealing money from them basically.

 

a little birdy told me..

... the piracy community prefer to download singleplayer games rather than pay for it. then if its worth their money, some actually buys the real thing. they even say some cracker-group actually pointed out 'if u like it, then buy it! like we did!'.

...but as far as multiplayer goes, most of the community would jump straight up to buy a copy without bothering cracks for playing online. they mightve tried it for singleplayer with a cracked version first, but if its online gaming... very few actually bother to go the distance to avoid paying $40....


.... thats what i heard.

 

All I read here is 'pirating ruins the game industry' and 'pirating is bad'. While I don't condone to pirating (and I never game myself), I think the biggest killer of the game industry is the game industry. How long was it since something really different came out? I mean, Cyris, Bioshock, CoD4,MoH,... are all the same. Pick up a gun, walk around a bit, blow someones head off... Ok, one might be in a different setting, or have better graphics, or more realism but who cares? They are all flavours of the same.

What game studios need to do is bring on something new... Look at Introvision, Uplink, Defcon, Darwinia are all unique games that are fun to play, don't require a 5000€/$/£ machine and cost 10-15$. Low price, fun game. Cashing out 40+$ for another rerun of the same is just asking for piracy IMHO.

 

Thats right... keep making up the excuses to justify your theft. So now because they dont offer a download you can afford, that means its ok to steal. Retard.

Try getting a better job so that 50 euros doesnt hurt so much.

 

Yea, while I'd love that to happen, I'd rather have 10 awesome games in a year with 1 of those being truly orriginal than just having 1 game a year with 9 pathetic attempts at being orriginal but ending up simply being a bit gimmicky.

 

another way to look at things..

Imagine you and your 9 buddies are going go-karting. 2 of your mates decide not to pay for the 1hr session, which they think costs too much money (even though they can afford it but would rather spend their money on [whatever else] ). But they come along anyway and ride a go-kart for free using a cracked key.

How do you feel riding alongside these 2 free loading mates of yours ? You paid for your session, but they know they can get away with it for free so dont bother.

Some mates huh ?

We all know people like these. They play COD4 alongside you on game servers, but think they shouldnt have to pay to have that privilege. Freeloading thieves who will invent ANY excuse to justify why the law/rules dont apply to them.

 

Greetings!

Yep. You got it.

 

I won a copy of the game from an EVGA contest and the bums at Activision never sent it. They'll get no sympathy from me.

 

2 words.

Apple IIGS

OK. for those of us who remember that long ago... it had great sound and graphics (for its time) and could have been (and was) a great gaming machine.... except everyone I knew copied everything for it. Manufacturers were selling 5,000 - 10,000 copies of great games... and selling 50,000 to 100,000 of a piece of crap game on a PC. Guess what happened... no more Apple development, no more software, no more machine.

Pirating software on PCs (or any platform for that matter) will result in manufacturers simply abandoning that platform as they can't recoup their investment. Might take awhile but it will happen. Be smart. If you want it, buy it... if it really sucks there is always ebay.

 

Wait...

Bootleg 'Pirates Of The Caribbean' scam uncovered; Piracy is rampant

 

£35-40 is too high for a game. £30 is fine if its the first few weeks of release... personally I can wait. But ultimately all games should cost £20 or less; I always wait for a few months until the price drops below £20 and then buy from whichever store is the cheapest.

I know a lot of people who used to get the boxed games because it came with a manual/maps/pullouts etc which you wouldn't get if you copied the game. This dissuaded casual pirates who couldn't reproduce these extras. Now you barely get anything in the box and instruction manuals often leave out information which is key to play so pirating means you won't be missing anything. Just something to think about.