News Handheld piracy costs industry £29 billion

Again we dont have exact numbers so I will try guesstimate the following.

One pirate buys the game, rips it and a hundred people download it. The publisher gets one sale.

Ten people buy it and then trade it in, ten people buy the trade ins and then trade it in, yet another ten people buy them and then also trade it in, and so on. The publisher still made ten sales.

Only a complete muppet would honestly think that the second hand market is comparable to stealing games.

 

Yes, well guesstimated to exactly fit the point you were trying to prove. I can do that too, look:

10 people buy the game, rip it and pass copies to 10 of their friends. The publisher makes 10 sales.

5 people buy the game, trade it in, 5 more people buy the trade ins, trade it in and so on. The publisher makes 5 sales.

Clearly piracy must be the far better option!!!

Now, on a serious point, you are completely missing the issue at the heart of the comparison. People who pirate games and people who buy games second hand have exactly the same impact on the developer, they are using that developer's work without providing any recompense to them. The only difference is the person who has bought the game second hand has presumably paid money to someone along the line, either a retail store who will pocket it all or the person who bought the game before them.

From a point of view of the recompense recieved by the developer/publisher there is no difference between downloading a game or buying it secondhand, the developer/publisher gets no recompense whatsoever for your use of their work. Does this make downloading all your games and never buying them right? No, of course it doesn't but it does mean that people shouldn't be acting superior about buying second hand games.

 

As I've said in other piracy threads, this is truly hard to quantify. Do those people pirate games they wouldn't buy merely because they know they can? There's a very small number of people who cannot afford to buy a game, everyone who has the money to purchase a game is a potential customer. A good number of those people may judge games with the thought of piracy in mind and determine that a game is not worth paying $50 for simply because it may be had for free if they wanted, not because they didn't want it all. If a perfect DRM is ever developed people will still buy the game, and indeed many who say they would never buy it will end up buying it because they truly want to play the game, only this time they can't pirate it and say they wouldn't.


As far as second hand games, I'm all for developers/publishers making ways to add an additional fee for secondhand users. It seems I agree with Krazeh that piracy and second hand are indeed similar, only on other sides of the reason.

 

Krazeh, face it, you're a thief. And trying to justify it is making you look like a dick. It's simply pathetic how you think you can justify stealing intellectual rights. As I said, if you don't want the game, don't bloody get it.

I'm ashamed to be on the same forum as you. Saying Piracy is the better option is pure comedy. Grow the hell up, get some money, and buy the games like us. People like you destroy the industry so GTFO.

 

Wow, awesome discussion skills there, too much trouble to actually think up a proper argument so resorting to insults eh?

Firstly, i'm not a thief, at worst you could claim i'm a copyright infringer for having tried games out before deciding whether it is actually worth spending my cash on but that's a long way from being a thief (even if you can't fully understand the difference). Anything I have actually played for anymore than a brief period I have paid for. Yes I could have not downloaded stuff to try it out and therefore not bought it at all but how is that a better option for the industry?

You may have noticed the "Piracy is the better option" statement was made in a sarcastic fashion and was there to point out the pointlessness of M7ck's made up statistics. It wasn't a serious comment and that would have been obvious had you actually read my entire post properly. And to be honest if you're ashamed to be on the same forum as people who don't agree with your views and can actually argue a differing viewpoint then I'd have to imagine there's not a lot of forums you're not ashamed to be on.

 

I may have raped her, but I only stuck the tip in!

Any more and I made sure to say thank you after!

 

You still don't understand the term piracy fully do you? It's the robbery of intellectual rights. You could call stealing in a shop just shoplifting and not really theft. You go learn how much a major games company spends on making a game, and then work out why pricing of games are such as they were. You're STILL trying to justify Piracy (Theft) and saying you're doing a better job for the industry which is laughable.

And I'm fine with people sharing the same LEGAL views as me. That's like a user coming on, going I stole a cool car and then trying to justify it and I don't share the same views as them. You go and understand why Piracy is actually illegal before trying to justify it. Funny how it is illegal eh? I mean if it is alright and is pretty much not harming the industry that much as you say, I wonder why it hasn't been made legal? Funny that isn't it.

You're breaking the law, end of. And you're ruining the industry for the ones of us who pay to play games. I read reviews, or try out Game Demo's before I buy games, you know, those legal options that are out there?! So don't come up with the crap that you're still supporting the industry by not buying the games you like.

 

No, i fully understand the term piracy, it's essentially shorthand for copyright infringement which in this case is producing a copy of a work without the copyright holder's permission or authorisation. An act which is completely different from that of theft and indeed your claim about the robbery of intellectual rights, i've not dishonestly appropriated or deprived anyone of their intellectual rights. In order to do that i'd actually have to steal the source code for the game in question.

You still haven't actually come up with a argument to refute that trying a game and then going on to buy it is worse for the industry than just not buying it all, how about giving that a try?

I fully understand why copyright infringement hasn't been made legal, but then again I also understand what it is and why it differs from theft. Perhaps you should learn the difference before continuing to claim they're the same thing? And I'm not justifying or condoning piracy in the sense of downloading all your games and never paying for them. I don't think at any point i've said that is acceptable or something people should be doing. I do however disagree that sampling a game before deciding whether or not to buy it is some sort of morally reprehensible act or that it causes any of the harm you're trying to imply it does.

People break the law all the time, in all manner of ways. Or are you claiming that you've never ever ever breached any law in any form whatsoever? Take it you've never copied one of your cds for your own personal use? Or ripped it to another format like MP3? Or exceeded a speed limit? Or walked across someone else's property without their permission? Or do one of the other multitude of things people do every day without thinking about it but are technically against the law?

Seriously, try coming up with a serious argument to back up this statement. I'd love to see how you argue that not buying games at all is less ruining to the industry than actually buying games.

 

You say you try the games, yet you trying games you were contemplating but never took further was losing royalties for the company, as I said if you can't afford it then suck it up and don't get it. I think any company would rather you outright didn't buy their game as opposed to downloading it illegaly and then playing it.

You state there are no royalties lost and it is less ruining the industry than buying them? What are the big pirated games then? I'm guessing it's not Indie Games, I'd guess it's moreso the Grand Theft Auto's, Call of Duty's etc. And I bet you many of those who pirate the game would have bought it had their been no opportunity to get the game by stealing it.

Oh, and ripping a CD to MP3, or another CD for my own personal use is not against the law, as if I already hold a license to use it I can do it. And if you're trying to address stepping on someone's property is anywhere near close to piracy, then your argument is just pedantic and out of touch. Also I, unlike you probably, try not to speed. I don't drive much anyway to really speed as my work is a couple of miles away down dangerous country roads you could barely beat the speed limit if at all, especially with all the pot holes about.

You try coming back with a real argument to how you can justify Piracy, and how it has never harmed the industry, because you know full well it has harmed it a heck of a lot. And why don't you decide to actually follow the law, and not come up with crap excuses. As I've said, download demo's, or read reviews before you buy games, but don't go destroying the industry, and stop promoting piracy in your threads as a good thing to do.

You should learn the similarities to Copyright infringement and theft. You go out their, pay Millions to make a game, and then get someone like you to just simply download the game you paid lots of money to make so therefore you can be left out of pocket due to someone stealing your hard work. There's no difference to stealing a hard copy of a game within a store, and stealing a game via downloading it through the internet. Yet I would bet you would say stealing a hard copy of a game is theft (Would you not?) whereas you say Pirating the game is differing to theft. In both ways a company has lost potential money for exactly the same product.

You stop saying that people use Piracy to "test" a game and realise about 99.99% of those who are doing piracy will never pay for the game even though they may play the game a hell of a lot.

 

So if I try the game for 20-30 mins, realise it's crap so delete it and don't buy it then i'm causing a loss for the company? But if I don't try it and don't buy it i'm not? How exactly are you working that out? And it has nothing to do with not being able to afford to buy it, i'm happy to do so if it's actually worth the money but I'm gonna want to know that i'm actually spending my money on something worthwhile before I hand it over. Perhaps you're lucky enough to have money to just throw away on crap and mark it down as "oh well never mind, that's another 30 quid down the drain for nothing" but not everyone has that luxury.

What has trying the game and buying it if it's good got to do with people who had no intention of buying it downloading a copy? You could actually make an attempt to understand the argument i'm making before responding. I'm not saying that downloading games and keeping them with no intention of paying for them is right or acceptable; i'm talking about an entire different proposition which you appear to have skipped right past on your way to rant about the evils of something i've not even said I agree with.

As for your 'bet' I completely disagree, I think a lot of people who download and keep a game would happily go without if there had been no opportunity for them to download it in the first place. I'd go even further and think that a lot of people who download and keep games do it simply because they can and don't really have all that much interest in the game they're getting at the best of times.

Actually under current UK law it is illegal to do exactly that.

I'm not trying to do anything of the sort, what I was doing is pointing out that the "You're breaking the law therefore you're automatically evil" argument doesn't hold up when we live in a society where we all break laws, albeit ones we consider minor and to not have much merit but laws nonetheless.

I never promoted piracy as a good thing, it's not and I've never said otherwise. But then again I can see a distinction between sampling a game for 30 mins and then buying it or deleting it and downloading and keeping games with no intention of ever buying them. It's the former that i'm stating doesn't harm the industry because it simply doesn't, the latter of course is a problem and while I think the impact it has is overblown in cases and could be better handled if the industry realised that certain people will never pay for their games and should not be included in considerations about possible profit and loss I don't condone it or partake in it.

Again, how does me testing a game and then either buying or deleting it leave anyone out of pocket? The only possible way that happens is if you consider that I should just hand over money for any old crap simply because someone had to spend time making it.

Yes, there is the argument that both ways lead to a company losing potential money but the major distinction is that if someone downloads a copy then the company has lost, at most, the potential sale to that one person. If someone steals a physical product then the company has lost that actual item and therefore the potential sale to not only the person who stole it but to the person who would have otherwise bought that stolen item. That's the distinction, copyright infringement doesn't deprive the company of any physical property or prevent them from selling that on to someone else.

Where did I say that anyone who downloads something is only using it to "test"? I'm fully aware that a lot of people who download things will use it and not end up paying for it but I also realise there are people who will part with their money.

 

While it doesn't apply on DS games... for PC games DRM is a big issue. When looking at PC pirating "statistics", I always wonder... how many people do what I do... Buy the game, but download the cracked-drm free version to actually install (when possible). In this case 1 pirate=1 purchase. I just always wonder, how much does this really happen....

BTW I have a ton of gamer friends and none of them pirate. Even the brokest will wait till they can afford it, even though they are plenty savvy enough to download. Who are all these pirates anyway...

 

Well yes, if you don't keep it. It's like taking it back to the store. They don't get your money, you don't get their product, so morally speaking, there's nothing wrong there as far as I can see. If anything it avoids the situation where a user is conned into buying junk games by advertising, which despite being legal, is a definite moral grey area.

 

I want to buy new games, but I only want to buy titles I will enjoy. A company that sells me something I don't like can only do so by tricking me into thinking I will like it. I see this as far more morally wrong than making copies of games for the purposes of making informed purchasing decisions. I can't see how anyone can object to this if I am being honest about it - it's not different to taking some shoes back to a shop because they don't fit properly.

 

Just to clarify, before someone flames me for it; I believe that pirating a game and then keeping it without paying is wrong, and cannot be justified. I do not do this, and anybody who does is shooting themselves in the foot if they love gaming.

 

its there own fault for charging so much for lil poo bear hand held games

 

you can just download the crack for that, you don't need torrents. There are sites.

 

I am surprised that Bit-Tech staff are allowing a lot of these comments to stay on the forums. Bit Techs own rules state 'Promotion' of piracy is not allowed. All these members trying to justify piracy should be banned from these forums before Bit-Tech is affected by it. Surely we dont want to be known for having members who openly break the law and say that it is ok.

Come on Bit-Tech make an example of these thieves.

 

Where has anyone promoted piracy? I think everyone has pretty much agreed that piracy is a bad thing.

 

I'm a bit surprised too but not in a bad way. Most forums I've visited will pretty much immediately close any thread and ban any members that discuss piracy.

Personally I'm glad to see that Bit-Tech allows active discussion of piracy. And besides, it's not Bit-Tech themselves who are promoting piracy, so no issues.

 

Its all very well discussing piracy however we have members trying to justify it and admit they are doing it, and then having the gall to try and insinuate that honest members are just as bad for buying second hand games.

Piracy is illegal, full stop. There is no justification for it.