if you’re one of those people on Hamachi or GameRanger playing a pirated copy and have been for more than a few days, then you should either buy it or accept that you’re a thief and quit rationalizing it any other way.
I totally agree with you. The one thing I hate most about pirates is the way they constantly try to justify their actions -- trying to lay the blame on anyone but themselves. "Oh, I pirated it due to the DRM" or "I pirated it due to there being no demo" or "I pirated it because it's too expensive" or "I pirated it because it's crap!" and so on.
We all already know the first claim is false, look at games like World of Goo -- an indie game with no DRM and the pirates are still all over it. In cases where there is no demo, why can't they simply wait for one? (And note to developers, that don't put out demos; start putting them out.)
If it's too expensive, then either save up or buy it when the price goes down. The price of the game is never a valid reason to steal it -- and don't start on the "it's not theft, it's copyright infringement" argument. By not paying for the game and playing it, you're stealing income the developers should have gotten from you. That's theft. And in the final case, if it's too poor in quality to pay for it, then simply don't play it.
Why do pirates always assume that they simply MUST play every game even if they can't afford to buy it or are not willing to buy it? That's what I hate about *those* people. And please, don't try to use your geographical location as a way of justifying piracy either. Don't try the, "it's not sold where I live, so I had no choice" argument; *I* live in a country where PC games are not sold domestically, yet I manage perfectly well to purchase games. Thank you very much.
So yeah, I agree. These thieves need to stop trying to explain how they couldn't possibly be thieves and accept the simply fact that they are.
I also don't think, on the publisher's side, that DRM is a valid solution. Legitimate customers should be rewarded for their purchase, not treated like they can't be trusted. I really hope that with Demigod, we will see some additional content which is simply never going to be accessible to the thieves. But I'm not an idiot, I expect they will still find a way to steal the additional content too . I really hate pirates. They ruin it for the rest of us.
First off, I know i probably shouldn't bother writing this post because bananasam isn't going to read it and probably doesn't even care what I have to say.
But here goes. Having pirated, no, I'm going to use the word stolen, having stolen more games over my lifetime than a whole highschool of virgin nerds could fathom, I think I have a pretty good idea into the mind of the digital pirate.
Movies/music are different story, imo, but if you interested in my take, let me know.
I think bananasam's most accurate point, which Frogboy seems to understand clearly, is that people who steal games aren't going to pay for them no matter what you do. It's true. Those people are clearly aware that it's stealing and you know what? Those people don't care. We live in a culture of IP theft. I think most of forum people are old enough to a have jobs, but how many of you have seen a Xeroxed copy of that stupid beat up cat with the caption "I only have one nerve left and you're getting on it" on the wall at someone's desk? Or the 85 different funny versions of the serenity prayer? Yeah, that overweight middle aged cat lady in your office didn't come up with that on her own, she stole it. So when we come to software/movie theft what you're seeing are the 1%ers of the digital world. The other 99% are doing it too, but in the socially acceptable way, and by definition the 1%ers don't give a crap about what you think.
Where banasam is wrong. It is about price, partly.
Looking back, I think the stolen games I played the most were Liesure Suit Larry 1, 2, and 3, King's Quest 1, Wolfenstein 3D, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Lego Star Wars, and Rome: Total War. The LSL and KQ we ended up buying as part of the commemorative multipack, in the lsl after we had already bought 4, 7, and 8?, so zen, whatever. Wolfenstein 3D . . . did anyone buy that game? not to digress, but I have no memory of seeing it for sale. Ok, so the other three . . . I maybe put 10-12 hours into RCW, 6 at best in LSW, and 15-20 in RTW. Yeah, those are games I should have paid for (from my point of view, you can say what you want). I would have paid $6-10/hour to play those. Imo, that's a lot to pay for this kind of entertainment, but it's in an acceptable range. This actually a good place to mention I've heard game exec type people price their games this way. Too bad they're out of touch. It usually goes something like "Ok, so you and a buddy go to a movie theatre, the good one in town, ok, so that's $12 each. Oh, wait, it's 3D, so $14 each. You get a drink, popcorn, and candy, that's another $10 each. Ok, ok, so it's an animated movie so it's only 90 miuntes long. Man, our game will take you at least 360 minutes, so we can charge like 4 times as much dude. So that's 14, 10, times 4, carry the 1, times 2, jesus christ we're gonna be rich dude we can charge $190!!! Oh, wait, even better, if we knock $100 off we'll sell even more copies at $90!! yaaayy!" Yeah, no. I did exaggerate, I'm sorry. But I did see this defense on a nightly news show. Man, are game budgets really on par with movie budgets? And I slap the guy that just thought of clerks.
Ok, so now, the typical scenario. Invited to a lan party for a game I don't own which doesn't have spawns. Hell yeah I'm going. If we block 12 hours for the party, someone is playing around 9 of those, and all in for maybe 3 hours, tops. I think it's ludicrous to ask someone to pay $60-85 to play a game for 3 hours. Insane in the membranes as the backwoodsy people would say. And then again for every flavor of C&C? Really? How is that not about the price? I don't even like C&C, but most of my friends do, so I tolerate it. Movie theatre candy isn't that overpriced, and remember what I said about a culture of theft. I would say ~60% of the games i stole were to play at some lan party, yes, I'm a social geek/pirate/a-hole.
The other 30% typically came in the form of some friend saying "remember XXX? this game is just like it except yyy." Where XXX is the game which we played almost exclusively for 4-5 years and continued to play for another 4-5 years part time, and yyy is modern graphics/interface/or mouse support. You know the advertising is always top notch, and it's the number 1 game of year according to the game website. So you really have no idea 1) what the game is, 2) how it plays, or 3) if you'd even like it. (this is usually where somebody says 'ooooh thats part of the thrill of buying a new game because you never know whats inside' and my response to that is, "hey once you've finished your marketing internship and get laid, call me up if you need a job, I could really use a doorstop) If they had demos would I have got the demo? Probably not. Demos are invariably neutered so they can use the tagline "all this PLUS zzz feature" where zzz is the one feature you were actually interested in. I can't say I played any of these games for more than 90 minutes. Yeah, I know, it's my fault for not liking the game. It doesn't matter that it's not the game I wanted to play.
So why did I buy sins instead of steal it? It came highly recommended from people who play different genres. It really did sound like XXX (which happens to be Stars!) with yyy. It was only $40. It was the hottest selling game and I knew I could sell it outside the grocery store for $5 less than I paid for it if I didn't like it.
And how does this matter? Frogboy probably walks around like he ate the whole bottle of Enzyte saying "gawdammit I knew it, I knew it, I knew it, In yo' FACE SONY!!" when he reads stuff like this. Talk about a forward thinking big picture guy.
Oh, wait, you noticed that's only 90% didn't you? Yeah, I've got about 250-300 gigs of games I've not even tried yet. I've been too busy playing sins/entrenchment. I've not played another game, except stupid flash games, since march of 2008. To be honest, I'm probably not going to get around trying them before I decide to use the drive for something else, especially since Demigod looks so good.
(Oh, so as an addendum, I did recently buy an honest copy of XP. I had just never gotten around to it before. So, do I steal business software? I don't know if I've registered my winrar . . . nope, I use OpenOffice (I contribute $) but I keep a stolen copy of MS Office to make sure important docs look right in PPT or Word, I have some video editing software I stole for hobby/project I haven't used in 4 years, and I had a stolen copy of quicken for four months, and then bought the newest edition.)
