In response to “Pirates Anonymous” from The Escapist Forum: I definitely agree.
I’ve pirated games, and I find when you have a pirated game, you so much more likely not to play it, or to play it very little, than you would had you bought it.
When you spend your cash on a game, you almost feel like you need to play it, to make the loss of those funds worthwhile – you’re more willing to swallow a bad game, persevere with a tough one, and play it till the end no matter what.
When you pirate, you have so many games you barely play any, but you keep getting them ‘just in case’ you feel like it, even though you know you won’t. It definitely becomes just a collecting factor.
***
In response to “¡VIVA LA R3V0LUC10N!” from The Escapist Forum: I, too, believe that eating babies is the best way to solve the DRM problems.
– Trevel
“By far the most funny thing to come out of all of this is the people who aren’t quite getting the joke.”
I agree. But the article itself wasn’t very funny. This is a serious issue, and the article pokes fun at the wrong side of it. It would have been much more effective if the writer had poked fun at the DRM supporters, who DO actually tend to be over-the-top. The problem with the article, as satire, is that most anti-DRM folks are actually NOT irrational, so in order to cloak itself in some level of believability, the satire can’t be all that effective.
– Beery
***
In response to “A Nation of Pirates” from The Escapist Forum: First of all, it isn’t more than likely someone’s committing a crime playing videogames in Brazil. It’s just *likely*. That is exactly what the word means. Use a dictionary next time.
And you mention you pirate in Finland and… nobody cares one bit. Finland’s full of high tech, plenty of content providers, game studios etcetera.
The culture isn’t against piracy either, and plenty of people buy a lot of legal games. Even more pirate some games and buy others. But pirates selling their ill-earned goods is seen tantamount to sacrilege – pirate all you want for your own use, but if you try to turn a profit on the work of others, you’ve committed a crime against the society’s morals.
Or, in short, how American of you. Be you American or not, you certainly think like one.
The same situation exist in a lot of countries, especially in Asia. The alarming thing is that the police rarely do anything to stop them, mostly public “cover-up” raids in some small shops to make it appear as though they are fighting it. Just goes to show that in the right circumstances the piracy industry (if it’s as blatant as being sold in malls, which i’ve seen quite often)is a tourist attracting and good revenue source for the country.
***
In response to “The Pirate’s Ballad” from The Escapist Forum: Ha, this article speaks to an opinion I’ve always held. So many people – progressives, social crusaders, pirates or what have you – who stand up against authority do it for self-aggrandizement. So they can say that they’ve stood up to “the man”. Mindless, thoughtless zeal, I call it. Not to say it’s useless, however. A person fighting for human rights just so he can feel good or some other equally selfish, puerile reason, is still fighting for human rights.
– avidabey
***
In response to “Rob from the Rich, Steal from the Poor” from The Escapist Forum: Great read. I’m not a fan of DRM and I don’t bother to yell at people for pirating games. But when they start arguing that they aren’t really hurting the people who make games or that it isn’t stealing it crosses the line into delusional. Do whatever you’re going to do, no one is arguing that, but don’t lie to yourself about the consequences of your actions.
Articles like this remind them about who ultimately gets burned when you steal these games.
Ding! Idea.
Ship the game without DRM, but crammed to the gills with in-game advertising. When you get the game home and register it online, the registry server detects whether the key is one that has been vended or not; if it’s a vended one, the ads go away so long as the game gets to check the authenticity each time it boots. If the key used isn’t one that was vended, or if the game can’t verify the authenticity of the key, the ads stay.
Even better, if R. Matey keeps playing his unregistered/keygenned copy online, the authentication server tracks ad impressions and bills the sponsors appropriately. Pirates then cease to be “noble rebels against the system” and instead become yet more ad mules, and developers get paid when their games are played.
— Steve
No matter how much piracy there is, I think that there will always be artists who develop games, and there will always be people who manage to make a living off writing them. Of course will there be big-budget, 40 million dollars in development games if piracy is allowed to be too convenient? No. And honestly I don’t care, because my best game experiences have all been in garage games without the huge cinematic, voice-over budgets.
I think I got more entertainment value out of a shareware copy of Scorched Earth that we played for months in the dorms in college than in my $60 copy of Oblivion which now sits on the shelf, having been drained of every bit of interest it once had over a couple weekend.
– caross73
