Well ultimately, I'll be the judge. I might watch a film the whole way through and decide it wasn't good enough, or I might decide I really like it and buy the DVD. It's a basic question of am I glad I had that experience; would I want to repeat it; do I want to support the creators so that they might make some more of what I like? I decide that. However, why do games developers not, for example, let us pay £1 or £2 for a time-limited trial? I think the answer has something to do with games largely being sold on hype rather than quality. Consoles do it (at least, the Wii U does, though not for all games) - I can download a free demo with a limited number of activations and decide whether a game is for me or not. This should be standard practice and isn't because developers realised they could make more money by buying reviews, making misrepresentative cinematic trailers, and releasing games in whatever state they happen to be in on release date. Duping. Others can tolerate it if they want, licking their wounds with the notion that 'if it's legal, it's right', but that's not for me.
Sony does this as well with some games, though you have to pay for your PS+ for the 'privilege'. You get (I think) an hour with the game. Not really enough to even get past the tutorial in some games, but better than nothing.
I agree, and prefer the idea of time-limited access to the full game. The fact we suspect developers being capable of such tricks is another justification for piracy. Duping the consumer is no more justifiable than piracy. Piracy is a form of consumer protection. How much money do creators lose due to genuine fans pirating their stuff? It hardly happens because genuine fans want more and understand it needs paying for. How do you get people to become genuine fans in the first place? That's what creators need to focus on.
I personally dont mind justifying pirating the odd game here and there. My steam library has well over 1000 games on it, not to mention other librarys such as origin, GOG, humble bundle and *shudder* Uplay. I've been stung over the years paying premium prices for games of which I feel i've either had very little or no value for money. Some examples: Brink: £39.99 I paid on release. Game was absolutely broken and unplayable on ATI graphics cards (3-5 FPS at the time on a brand new £2.2k ASUS ROG Laptop). Took them months to fix it to a playable amount, by this point no-one was playing it. Batman Arkham Knight: £39.99. No further comment required Evolve - Super Duper Edition £64.99 Game would constantly crash, by the time they sorted it out, the community was dead Blood Bowl 2: £39.99: Broken at launch, vsync, fullscreen modes missing, skills missing, game barely worked, and would only work at native screen res. Battlefield 2142: Winter Assault £9.99 Bought the retail copy of this (which turned out to have no disc, just leaflet with a serial number on the inside to activate the DLC). Opened it up to reveal that the leaflet inside was completely blank where the serial should be. Contacted EA, never got resolved. Bioshock 2: £39.99: Couldn't get it to work after 5 hours of trying thanks to GFWL. Eventually gave up and didn't ever end up playing it Bulletstorm: £39.99 Had so many issues with GFWL between me and my friends we ended up abandoning playing it within a couple of days of purchase. On the back of this and a bunch of other irriatations when I've paid for games at full RRP, If there is a game I want to play (especially SP games) I may pirate it first. If I enjoy it to some extent, I will buy it. Having said that, pirating games is pretty risky nowadays anyway, they usually always have some nasties attached to them especially if they've came from a torrent.
That's why I began by saying that I believe the primary cause for piracy has to do with the fact that people in general don't see value in digital assets. That said, pirating "just cause" is something I struggle to understand, because in many cases it's completely unnecessary and seems to be just an affirmation of immaturity or apathy. In my opinion you can't be against a system but still want to experience what comes out of it.
But the industry doesn't have to rely on duping customers, it's not inherent to 'the system'. I like to play video games, but I like to know what I'm getting when I hand over my cash. I don't like to be given the impression a game will be something I like, then pay for the game only to find out subsequently that I was given a false impression. Who would actually want to support a system based on misrepresentations and duping? It's borderline deception. I refuse to align with the idea that the law defines what is just. Maybe it does to the society it's based around. But I am an individual and am not bound to accept whatever 'society' says. Slavery was legal too once. Yeh, that's right. I just compared Batman: Arkham Knight with slavery. Next?
That's true, but then only play the games that aren't a part of that, and only those. Otherwise you are still justifying that system since you are a part of its userbase. The system is profitable, that's why it won't change any time soon, unless people start understanding that they need to stop giving money to something they don't agree with.
Think piracy has had a big say in the success of games like DOTA 2 and League of Legends. You can play both for free and achieve whatever you want. The best player in league has commented saying he's never paid a penny to play it and refuses all player skins. And he's been now paid to play it ( has been for several years, Faker player name) Steam offers demos on most games and with its refund policy you can buy and return anything that's crap. Probably was a teenager the last time I pirated a game though. TV stuff is another story I do pay for every Sky tv channel but do still download shows.
There is a problem with the "try before you buy" philosophy. If something is as readily available as water - just download what you want without commitment or cost - it loses value or, more accurately, the perception of it's value is diminished. So you download a pirate copy of what turns out to be a decent-ish game. Not great, but not a steaming turd. You are much more likely to decide, "y'know what, I didn't mind it but it wasn't worth £35". There is no facility to pay the games developer/publisher what you think it is worth. Are you really going to go out and cough up the full price there and then for a middling but unbroken game? Or are you going to sit on it with the intention to buy it when the price has dropped to what you think is more acceptable? If so, how likely is that to happen? I completely agree that we need to see proper demos again, be it paid or otherwise, but piracy and the loose justification of it isn't sustainable.
*Cough* Humble Bundle *Cough* Honestly, it's where I get most of my games nowadays. Wait a year or two after a game is released and the publisher bundles will be on there.
Legally? Not likely. Morally? Grey area, go with your moral compass. I am firmly in the "IDGAF about what anyone else thinks about my actions, I'll stand by them even if they land me in trouble" camp. Probably more down to my rampant misanthropy than anything else. I don't get much of a chance to play games, enjoy movies or even listen to music at the minute (1 and 4 year olds seem to take up most of that time), and I haven't pirated anything in a long time, unless you count not deleting recorded BBC TV shows after a predetermined period. Back when I did occasionally pirate a game it was only in lieu of a demo. I can't think of a single instance where I played more than a few minutes of a game before deciding to buy it or deciding it was utter rubbish - the former far more often than the latter I hasten to add. At which point, regardless of my choice I always removed every trace of the pirated version. I don't advocate piracy but the system is broken and has been for a long time, therefore, much like drug dealing, the real world has found a way around it. Another thing to remember is that very few pirated copies of games/music/movies/box sets would ever have been a sale in the first place, as the majority of pirates are the indiscriminate sort who were never willing to open their wallet. In my opinion* there's a difference between the habitual pirate who simply steals everything because they can, and the occasional pirate who would prefer not to have to do it but is forced** to by circumstance. How big of a difference depends entirely on your moral standpoint. Legally they are the same thing. *They are like arseholes, and most of the time don't let other people's arseholes cloud my judgement. **Clearly nobody is ever forced to pirate any form of entertainment, but in the context of the argument and given the nature of the forum it's the word I chose. Your mother.
But I don't object to hyping per se. Hyping is a great part of the video game experience. But if the hype is false there should be an easy way to back out, and there isn't. That's true, but it is conditional and not something I've dabbled with yet. Not that I've pirated any games for ages though, too many good games going for cheap and too big a backlog on my consoles - no time for more That's another thing. I've got a number of games and films on my hard-drive that I've torrented and then never done anything with. That is just good impulse management to me. Why make a wasted impulse purchase when you can apply that impulse to a wasted torrenting instead? I've gained nothing, I've just avoided losing money impulsively on something that I'm never going to use.
I disagree, the hype is a huge part of the problem, since it's hand in hand with false advertising and encourages an almost religious behavior absent of critical thought. That said, isn't the Steam refund system good enough?
In terms of the worth of digital goods, I read this the other day which outlines the basic economics involved quite well. link Admittedly there is differences between games and music but the basic points about scarcity and the effects of zero marginal cost on consumer behavior still apply.
You mention paying £35 for a decent-ish game. I haven't paid £35 for any game. Ever. But I have bought Mario Kart 8, Smash Bros. U, Bayonetta 1&2 and Splatoon at release, and each of those titles go far beyond any reasonable definition of 'decent-ish' in my eyes. Splatoon was the only one I felt I was taking a risk on, but it was cheaper than those other 3 mentioned, and had a fantastic reputation (I actually waited 1 month before getting Splatoon). £35 for any decent-ish game will never be a runner for me. 'Decent-ish' at all doesn't sound like being worth a purchase to me, whatever the price. I don't want to waste my time with decent-ish games, regardless of money paid. 'Good' is the minimum I'll accept. 'Great' and above are what I'm after. Once a developer has made their decent-ish game, their costs are relatively fixed at whatever it cost to make the game. They can then ask £35 for it, but I'm never going to pay that (ignoring future inflation obvs), as established above. It costs them nothing if I pirate it and decide it's not for me. If I can't pirate it then I'll just ignore it. But by pirating it (or by playing a full-access demo) there's a chance I would find something in it that really appealed to me and they might get a purchase from me when the price drops. The value in a video game is not determined by how much it cost a developer to make it. The value is determined by how much people are willing to pay for it. YMMV. Nintendo has earned my (relative) trust (derived from my history of pirating their games - see Gamecube story), but PC gaming is a minefield of dodgy ports and generic, 'decent-ish' turge. Going back to my Gamecube story - before that happened I wasn't a gamer, other than occasional bouts of Championship Manager. Piracy led me into the market much, much more than before. I'd never bought a console, or any retail game other than Championship Manager, because the prices were off-putting. Let's face it, video games are fun but they can easily **** with the rest of your life due to how easy it is to get immersed in them. The costs outweighed the benefits for me and so I didn't participate. Still to this day I hardly (relatively speaking) buy anything over £15. Games are addictive and alienating, depending on circumstances, and I'll be blown if I'm going to fork out RRP for the pleasure of cutting myself off from other responsibilities. Ebay and sales are where the majority of my games purchasing occurs. But I've still spent at least £700 in the last 2 years, when combining hardware with software. Piracy helped me become a participator in the video games economy. You could argue if I hadn't pirated I would have still got more into games but spent more money, but you'd be wrong. I'm tight with money, don't earn a lot and would have never gotten as 'easy' with my money on games as I have been recently. I wouldn't have bought a Wii U or a N3DS, nor the 60+ titles I've bought on them. You need to get yourself over to Nintendo. When it comes to the 4 games I've listed above... THE HYPE IS REAL!!! The hype for each of those games was great fun and each game delivered. Where's the beef? I'm not saying the Steam refund system isn't good enough. I've not tried it, but I was looking at the conditions a few weeks back and thought the conditions were maybe a bit tighter than I'd prefer, but was worth bearing in mind. And I'm not just talking about video games, the points I've made apply to films, music and ebooks too.
You're getting too hung up on the £35 - the number is arbitrary. I could have easily typed £15, but a lot of AAA titles launch around the £30-£40 mark on the PC, so I chose 35 purely as an example. My argument is, whatever the retail price at the time you download it, the fact that you can get it for nothing, and as easily as turning a tap, will inevitably diminish it's value in your eyes and reduce the chances of you rating it as worthy of the price. On launch day? That was one of my initial points - if you believe the end results are frequently not worth the prices, just ignore them for a year or so and pick them up in the sales/bargain bins/humble bundle. If you absolutely have to have it, accept the fact you'll have to cough up the money.
Except you don't HAVE to at all. Isn't that the point of this topic? If Publishers still utilised a demo format, it would negate the need for many to pirate in the first place. The fact that they don't is contributing to lower than possible sales and an increase in piracy due to this. Conversely, it also means they don't have to give a monkeys about the final product. This is why I buy games after launch, so they can either get patched, or if they're not bothered I just won't buy it at all.
I already said as much - I wholeheartedly agree, but the lack of such an option does not justify piracy; which some use as their argument.
I know that, and I don't really care if people go after it, so there's no beef. People are free to consume whatever they want and be a part of it. The only problem I have is when people encourage bad behaviour from companies and then complain about it while being a part of the userbase. Out of curiosity, did Nintendo provided the try before buy chance you said you needed? Exactly.
