You feel sorry for him and other companies, but distribute copies of your games to your friends? and therefore are a pirate. ok...Make your mind up. Anyway, I dont feel sorry for them as I dont personally know them and admit to pirating in the past for myself. I think the main problem is the people who distribute copies and make them available and those that try to make a profit from them. Kill the big distributors and you will see a huge difference. But it doesnt look like they are very successful at that and people like the RIAA are giving up and going for the little downloader (user) instead. I have however made an effort to remove all and any pirate media from my home as im materialistic and must have boxes My xbox 360 and PS3 are clean from piracy, however my PC needs a OS and I still have 2 games on there which are not paid for but in the process of buying them sometime soon.
You bring up an interesting point. I wonder if anyone here who doesn't pirate games, does use a cracked version of windows or (less commonly) OSX? Does it seem to anyone that using a cracked Operating system is "less wrong" because Microsoft have the market share they do? For instance, one of my friends won't pirate games, but he's never bought an Operating System in his life - and I don't mean he uses FOSS. He sees this as acceptable because "Microsoft make enough money out of people" (his words, not mine).
Now that I think about it, I will ISO a game if I can so I can virtual drive it so I'm not switching out a billion discs all the time, but that doesn't count I guess. Plain and simple, piracy is stealing any way you look at it and at some point we will all come into contact and accept it in some way or form. Even the "try before you buy" guys.
Doesn't matter what his intentions were, just what came out of it. If you heard about some incident a while back where a dev put in a piece of anti-piracy code that started wiping data... let's just say the result wasn't pretty, and he had to fully open-source the app in order to make an attempt at saving face. Yes, and it's been done. Incidentally, those are the games I run a cracked version of despite owning a legal copy.
I can understand the guy being bitter and pissed off about the whole situation, but what fool had the 'bright idea' to put such a copy-protection system into the game, when they damn-well knew it would be pirated anyway? Sure, it'd be nice to live in a perfect world where nobody pirated games, but here's a few points about their in-game check: + It was stupid and naive of them to think that someone wouldn't get a pre-release rip out on the net. + If they knew there would be a rip on the net, it was stupid and naive of them to assume that a cracker would be good enough to cleanly and completely circumvent their in-game check (Such copy-protection schemes by their very nature aren't intended to be transparent to would-be crackers, after all). + If they were going to go to the effort of such an elaborate copy-check tied into the game mechanics then they could have at least included an error message along the lines of "Copy protection check failed, exiting game" instead of crashing silently in a manner that looks exactly like a bug - That would have done a fair bit of damage control on the people who thought the game was just bugged and badly-made. He said it himself, people are stupid, so why didn't they account for that when they were wasting their time on such an elaborate protection system? Maybe because 'people' were working on the game? The effort they spent on putting a such a system into the game may have been better spent making other aspects of the game better, such that people might actually think the game is worth buying. Companies who use simple copy-protection systems (basic cd-checks, etc) that get the job done of preventing the "copying for a friend" type of piracy should be lauded in my eyes. Others have gone to great lengths in eroding the rights and convenience of the end-user (StarForce, later versions of SecuRom and the insidious, hideous, disgusting C-Dilla system) but where does it get them? Nowhere - The systems get cracked soon after release (or even before) and the honest end-user who paid for the game is the one to suffer the hardship, inconvenience and intrusion of privacy (C-Dilla monitoring drive usage and phoning home), while the prat who plays a pirated copy may have a more pleasant, problem-free time with the game. Though I find the reliance on an active connection irksome, I find systems like Steam to be an almost pleasant copy-protection experience because I gain some advantages as the honest end-user (no disc required to play, streaming updates, cheaper initial game costs) instead of just being treated like criminal dirt. -- I'm against piracy. I buy albums, I buy movies, I buy games. I used to download games when I was younger and couldn't afford to buy them, since I thought I may as well play the games and show my appreciation for them, which would be better than not getting to play them at all. As soon as I gained an income I stopped downloading games and began buying everything I could and haven't looked back since. The only time I'll download games now is when the games are certifiably Abandonware and can't be bought any more. Buying them on eBay doesn't give any money back to the copyright-holders, so that doesn't count in my eyes. -- A few years ago I contacted Interplay, asking them if they could tell me where I could buy a first-hand retail copy of Planescape Torment, or perhaps sell it to me themselves, since the game could no longer be bought in stores. Interplay sent me a brand new, sealed retail copy of the game (including manuals, original box, etc) for free, with a hand-written note along the lines of "Enjoy ". I wanted even more to pay them for the game, then.
Heretic! You cannot replace The Relix, for He is a living incarnation of a deity. Anywho, I've pirated a couple, such as Sims 2 for my ex, because i'd be damned before actually paying for it, and a few other games on a "try before buy" basis. But I've grown older and wiser, and I actually now the take time to read reviews, and make up my mind about whether it's worth buying, buying when it comes to budget, or not touching with a 12' bargepole.
Why is everyone so against the 2nd hand market? I don't see why we should be considered *******s for not being able to afford to buy new games all the time, and lest you forget that a thriving 2nd hand market will encourage more games sales because you know that if you hate it, you can get rid of it and not have wasted your money on a product you have to keep ad inifnitum. It certainly makes me buy more games, and everytime I get stiffed for something like that it makes me less inclined to buy games, despite the fact that I love them dearly.
I'm sure the second hand market doesn't do too much harm. After all, most people who trade their games do so in order that they have more money to spend on newer games anyway. I certainly did throughout my teenage years. Likewise, you don't hear the record companies complaining about second hand record shops (of which there are many).
i bought titan quest about a year ago and havent actually got around to installing it yet.... so surely i cancel out one pirater, where are idiots like me factoring into his equation eh ? other than the fiscal side of piracy, it must be seriously demoralising when you know that literally thousands of people are stealing the thing you've just worked so hard on. I think that alone would be enough to make me shut up shop. ps. joe you look scarily like a girl i know, which is mightily worring!
Nice one doug! Do you think piracy is encouraging the rise of the MMO? With an MMO developers constantly receive money and its very difficult to pirate. At the moment I've just started playing Eve Online and I can feel myself being drawn in.
Personally, I don't pirate games. I do crack the games I've bought so I'm not sitting next to something that sounds like a buzzsaw. One thing that I cant understand is people who say they pirate games just to see what they're like. Only if they like the game, then they'll by it. It just like taking cookies from girl scouts and telling them they can have the cash if the biscuits are any good. Still theft imo.
you say that like its a bad thing. do you not know that girl scouts are the devils recon scouts and must be destroyed at all costs. The only way to destroy a girl scout is by nicking her cookies and then running away This destroys the evil spirit inside the poor little girl the girl scout is possessing she'll be so grateful that you nicked the cookies and freed her that she will stand they crying her eyes out in thanks. either that or you'll see her explode in a puff of smoke. try it and see
If I made a game, which I intend to, I wouldn't mind people pirating it if I had enough money to get by on, and they didn't come to my forums after downloading it and whining about it. After all, people dont steal your car then come back 2 days later whining you only have a tape player and no spare tyre.
That's the thing that would annoy me, but then they should take into account that they'd whine about it. Piracy is going to happen, guaranteed, so why not make the most of it and use it as a marketing tool? Make your games user friendly by making them DRM free, and you'll get good press like Stardock does, hell, you'll even get people buying the game who aren't interested in it in the slightest because they want to support the DRM free stance. Make your games work well right off the bat, and you won't get so many complaints. I remember when I pirated Stronghold to see what it was like, I found it was buggy as hell, so I uninstalled it and I never decided to play it again, even though all those bugs are probably now fixed and the game works fine. The first impression is the most important, if you make it good you will sell more copies. It doesn't matter if the person who is playing it is playing it legally or illegally, if you leave a poor first impression people will hear about it, and you will lose sales. If you want more sales, give people a reason to buy the final copy over pirating it (instead of the other way around by loading it with DRM), like only being able to download patches if you have a valid game serial code (using a system like Steam or Stardock Central for patch distribution) or only being able to play online if you have created an account with the registered game (but with multiple aliases for if your little brother wants to play too). This is pretty basic marketing, I'm surprised he ignored it and then complains that it's everyone else's fault he had to shut down. A design that does work but requires your average user to do things they're uncomfortable about doing, or plain don't know how to, is a failed design.
Actually, it's easily done but harder to copy, it's what copy protection drivers do, basically on a CD/DVD there are extra "sub channels" the two main ones are used by videos for sub-titles/extra audio, but the others are normally left alone and the reader will ignore them, but games have extra "data" placed in there on purpose so to a normal driver it is ignored, but copy protection drivers look at them and ensure the "garbage" is in the correct format.