I voted for I used too. I used to pirate games all the time, but once I discovered the second hand market out there there was really no need. Now, because of my job, I don't really have to buy new games. I still do download some games - but only abandonware and even then I'd prefer a second hand copy. I went through a stage of DS pirating too - but not anymore. The last major game I kind of stole was Half-Life 2 and that was a special case. At uni we had very poor internet and you needed it to run the game. Only one pc in the house could get online and that was in Bauuls room, so I used his account to play the game. Even then, when we moved out at the end of the year and I could get online properly I still bought the game to play it again. Hell, even some new games (Like Audiosurf) that I could get review copies of for free I still buy if I really want them. Review copies in the office often aren't available to nab afterwards because Tim needs them for testing something or because we keep them in the office for relaxation at the end of the day. And yeah, three times for that quote was excessive, but relevant in the previous conversations and worthy of seperate discussion here I feel.
I notice a general trend here: 1. Nobody (apart from a small minority) bother pirating console games (in the UK/USA at least). 2. The older you are (and hence the more money you have [and less time]), the less you pirate games. I have downloaded a few games in the past, but apart from one game (which I really should have bought), I wouldn't have bought any of them. I've been buying quite a lot of legit software recently, including all my MS stuff which is an achievement.
It sounds like excuse-mongering, but I'll only pirate something if I know I'd never buy it. Otherwise I'll wait and see. Crysis for example, I haven't bought (lack of cash), nor pirated yet (because I'll definately buy it one day). It's a poor excuse, and not really much of a veil for my conscience, but there we are.
I have never pirated a PC game. A lot of people seem to try before buying but I take the attitude that if the game has no demo available it's likely to be a worthless pile of c**p.
Pretty sure I've never pirated a new game, anything that I have downloaded is ancient and usually unavailable; Master System ROMs and the like. Not sure which category that puts me in though.
When you look at the latest figures Nvidia released about the number of high-end cards sold, and the number of games sold this year, you have to admit that either these people buy an expensive card without playing, either they pirate games. It is unlikely that you will want a geforce 8600 or more if you do not plan to buy games, unless you went buying a computer which came with this card (actually that may be possible, when you look at the configurations of expensive PCs from major PC builders).
Last game for the PC i pirated was Sims 2 but decided that i really shouldn't waste my time with it as it was no more fun then Sims (which i bought) so that left my system within a week. Before that it was SupCom which i had the demo to but decided i wanted a bit more. It was so good i went out and bought the Cybren special edition of play.com as i felt bad. Am currently "getting" the Lost game but from the general chatter on teh interwebs i'll be surprised if the game makes it to the end of march on my PC (or even one play) As i've said before i also have the N64 goodset, some Dreamcast games and a couple of megadrive and SNES sets which i acquired about this time last year. The chipped xbox in the living room is slowly acquiring a decent back catalogue of xbox games as well. I can honestly say i have no pirated games which you can buy 1st hand in their original format that i play on a regular basis. But then again after my first year of uni i think i've become very ambivalent towards piracy.
I think it would help if they revised their business model, like Stardock, targeting older gamers and providing updates. In my opinion most of the people who buy games would agree on paying smaller prices for a model ala steam or direct2drive. After reading this, I decided to buy Hellgate London but it is not available to be bought on both direct 2 drive (UK website) and steam. If they make it so updates are only available via steam or another prorgam, it would probably help alot to sell games. Honestly look at this page: http://www.direct2drive.co.uk/buy-pc-games-download When you see what are the games highlighted, it makes me sad ... EDIT: I just saw that it is available via the EA app, I really hate this app, it is a real memory hog ...
I'm generally the same way - with all software (everything I run except for Photoshop is legit, and as soon as I start using that in a manner where I get money from it, I'll pay). Truth be told it not much has interested me lately so it doesn't really matter. I often will DL a game to try it out if there's not a demo available, and I'll buy it if I like what I'm playing. If not, I've got better things to do with my hard drive. However, I'll often continue to use the cracked version or whatever as I HAVE been burned by copy protection on legit copies before. I never pirate console games, but a) there are almost always demos available, b) I can't be bothered to chip my console, especially as that's not free and rather defeats the purpose and c) $23/month for two games out at a time through Gamefly is more than fair - especially compared to $60 a game.
It's debatable whether that's any better than pirating, with a second hand sale, the developers get nothing, in their eyes you may as well have pirated it.
I've pirated a couple games in my lifetime, but I now own every game I play. If a game doesn't offer a demo, I assume it's not worth my time; I'll be damned if I'm going to spend $40-50 to find out that it's a bad game. I've never pirated a movie, but I have downloaded my share of mp3s. On the non-game side of things, I've been making an effort over the last couple years to go totally legit. As of right now, thanks to some pretty quality open source applications, I'm happy to report that everything running on my computer is legitimate. Edit: Following that logic, nothing should ever be sold second hand. Buy a shirt at a thrift store and you just robbed a department store and a designer of a sale. There is a difference between piracy and buying second hand. For one, assuming the seller didn't make any copies and is still playing the game, the license has been transferred to you. -monkey
Why does everyone ignore the second hand market and only focus on pirating. Yes sales are lost through pirating but what about second hand sales? These games companies get nothing at all from second hand sales. Second hand sales are getting bigger and I see more second hand games on sale in game shops than new titles. The games companies that think they only sold 1 million copies, probably had 3 million people play their game because the orignal purchasers sold it on and thats 2 miillions sales they lost out on.
if they put out a crappy demo or doesn't even have a demo, I would pirate the game first and decide to buy, like cod4
i voted yes. but i havent in a long time. really there has been only one game i even play which i bought. any other game just isnt good enough to warrant buying as i will only play it for a short time then delete it. now that i will soon have a pc that can handle games and i can afford them i will start to buy games. i'll still DL to try and delete them and get it if its good. if you could rent PC games i think people would pirate less.
I've used to do it a lot when I was young and had no income (i coudnt have bought them anyway, zero loss for them),the little money i had went to hardware, but now? either a game is good, Orange Box for example then i buy it, or its crap like for example nfs pro street, then I dont buy it (but also dont pirate it), having a neighbour with a xbox360 who buys like every game out there Cheesecake... better than any demo. As for the second hand market, well, its one of those sided swords, I mean if you know you will be able to recoup some of the cost later on it it might increase the chance that you buy it to start with, on the other side the manufacturer would get more if who ever you sell it to would go buy it from the bargain bin, btw, many games, music cd's, dvd's, software and whatever allready states either on the disc itself or in the eula that selling it would be illegal (even though the law says something else), so its only a question of time until the mafia ehh riaa will come for you for that too.
Now that im in a position to buy games I buy the ones I like (i.e. I have money!). Saying that I don't buy alot of games, this year im going to buy WOW: Wrath of the lich king and Spore, afaik thats it. The guys rant about piracy made alot of sense tbh, id never suspect they put in security checks halfway through a game! :O I fully understand kids pirating. When I was a kid I had about enough money to buy a £16 game every 4 weeks, IF i didn't buy anything else - and they were the days when PC Games weren't £16. I realise the price is probalbly fine, but my point is many of the people pirating will just be kids who cant afford it anyway, some of it will be people who crave having everything on the internet. The people who pirate when they have the money is just ridiculous though, its stealing for the sake of stealing. People pirating a game the having the audacity to post on their forums complaining are just ******s. If one of the games I pirated back in the day wouldn't work it was que sera sera, if I can't ****ing afford to buy it then I don't deserve the tech support - even me as a 15 year old knew THAT.
I used to Pirate games when they came on floppy disks. My friend had one of the original 2D Duke Nukem games, and I borrowed the disk and played it on my own computer. Since then, I don't bother, games are pretty cheap anyway
