most pirated games 2009

m4cc45 said:
As Steam have proven, give people an easy means to access the games and a cheap price and people will buy games. Hence the Xmas / New Years sale they have on is going really well. I've probably bought 10 games over Xmas.

If you make a game so DRM ridden you can barely run it, limit them to 3 installs, force people to have the media in the drive, etc. then people will go out and pirate the games mainly for convenience. It's interesting when game companies go on about PC piracy and they will move to consoles, well piracy is just as ripe there.

A cheap game good will sell in the bucketloads, an overpriced pile of rubbish won't.

M.
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I think this is a factor. Pirated games are are clearly superior to the legal copies.

For a legitimate customer, it makes sense to buy a game, leave it in the box and download a pirated copy to play.

I wonder how many of those downloads are that scenario.
 
britboy4321 said:
No I'm serious. Please answer .. is it OK to do my example things? I don't understand -- how is it different from you stealing computer games? None of my examples, using your logic, had any victim. YIPPEE!! Victimless crimes yea? Seriously do you not see the comparison? Amazing ..

DOM -- I take your 'is your life perfect' response to be an admission that stealing stuff like computer games is actually morally wrong? (Some people here don't think it is!!!! honestly!!)
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As you so candidly admit, you don't understand. The only example you gave that is comparable is sneaking into a cinema to watch a film without paying. You then get increasingly more divorced from reason.

No doubt you have already leaped from an assumption that I pirate games to the conclusion that I am a deranged sociopath who gets his jollies spying on women in showers.

In reality (i) the last time I pirated a game was in the mid 1980s and it was swapping cassettes when I was at school and (ii) the conclusions you draw about people who pirate games are truly bizarre.
 
malachi said:
a lot of game devs see the second hand games market just as bad as piracy because someone else is making a profit which isnt passed back to them.
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They could enter the market themselves.

Or they could devote all their attention to killing the resale market for PC games, which reduces the market for new games as well by reducing the appeal of the platform. Which reduces the profits for the game devs, obviously. But they're doing it anyway.

The biggest profit time for a game is just after release...which is when second-hand copies aren't available anyway. So it doesn't reduce profits anywhere near as much as some people think.

Also, in the way it's implemented at the moment (although the game devs have pretty much succeeded in killing it on PC in their never-ending quest to ruin PC gaming), it directly encourages new sales because the same shops do both. So it gets people into shops, where they buy games. It also promotes series sales. For example, I bought NFSU2 second hand. As a result, I bought Carbon and Most Wanted new. Which, come to think of it, are the only two games I've ever paid new release price for. I'd forgotten about those.
 
Angilion said:
I think this is a factor. Pirated games are are clearly superior to the legal copies.

For a legitimate customer, it makes sense to buy a game, leave it in the box and download a pirated copy to play.

I wonder how many of those downloads are that scenario.
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I've done it on things I've had legitimate keys to but either lost or damaged the disk. Now that makes me an evil pirate but when I enquired about a replacement disk for Dungeon Keeper 2 I was told it was going to be £20 required me to send a reciept, etc. The game itself was only £5.

I think, in the end, I bought another copy of these forums, but I can understand anyone in that scenario doing it.

I can also understand people who use No CD cracks when playing games which limit your installs such as BioShock.



M.

Edit: With regards to the second hand market I don't think there is a profit. You buy a game at £30 sell it for say £10 so no profit. I guess you could say developers loose that £30 but by the time it enters the second hand market it's normally not worth it.
 
Only time. Interesting how he goes on about Blu Ray security when this has been bypassed for ages - it's also a very one sided argument. Next year I think we'll see the first chips arrive for it. Not that it bothers me, I have no consoles!



M.
 
Well next year if it becomes widespread, is still awesome for a console to have lasted this long :)
That would be over 3 years!! I can't recall any consoles over the past few generations which have protection that has lasted this long.
 
Angilion said:
No doubt you have already leaped from an assumption that I pirate games to the conclusion that I am a deranged sociopath who gets his jollies spying on women in showers.
.
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OK, I'll go slower for you.

1a) Pirates argue that they are not 'taking any goods' therefore they are not committing any serious crime
1b) Putting a webcam in a shower involves taking no goods, therefore following this logic can be justified by the perv as not committing any serious crime

2a) Pirates argue that they would not have bought the game anyway, so pirating it is not a problem
2b) The 'webcam' guys would not have done anything to attempt to 'legitimately' see the girl naked, therefore they argue the webcam makes no difference it changes nothing -- the girl was not going to be taken out on dates whatever happened so why not? She should never find out, no problem. Sound familiar yet?

3a) Pirates suggest their crimes are victimless
3b) The girl in the shower will never know she was filmed, therefore 'it's victimless'. Wahay -- echo?.

4a) Pirates claim it's OK because 'loads of people do it'
4b) If loads of people did the shower thing, people would undoubtably claim it isn't that bad also.

5a) Pirates claim it's the game's industries' fault for not, er, doing a very good demo / using DRM / offering you a specific license / price / anything else we can possibly think of
5b) The perv says 'girls are never interested in him' and 'don't give him a fair chance'. They don't understand him. They find him creepy / anything else he can possibly think of. Hardly his fault eh? And still -- the comparisons continue -- it's always 'someone else's fault' the crime is done .. Wahay -- you're both justifying your crime on the behaviour of the actual victim. Nice. Of course 'just leaving the blimin' victim alone' doesn't really spring to mind... that wouldn't be fun at all ..

6) They are both relatively easy crimes to action.


So what I'm donig is COMPARING you, or more specifically your moral standards, to a person that puts a webcam in a shower to covertly take film of girls showering. Because your logic is the same, your reasons, your understanding of how 'it hurts no-one', the same thoughts of 'where's the problem?'. You both justify your crimes in preciesly the same way, managing to persuade yourself there is no real issue with it. It's almost funny ..

The ONLY difference is the moral dilemma. You place a high 'moral value' against spying on girls. You place a low 'moral value' on stealing software. And it is precisely, exactly, this moral dilemma which I have issue with. The fact you can justify being a thief, but somehow spying on girls is outrageous. It's bizarre.

And yes -- I'm afraid the perv would find YOU outrageous for thinking nothing of stealing stuff. It's a 2-way, mutual dislike thing. Us on the fence -- well -- I see 2 peas in a pod ..

To the normal person in the street, they are about the same level of offence. TO THE LAW, they are about the same level of offence. But, just like, exactly like, the guy with the webcam who thinks 'where's the harm' -- you keep justifying to yourself the theft is OK. Again -- 2 peas in the same pod ..

Never forget, the average Joe in the street thinks the crimes are about as bad as each other. That's how you're regarded by joe average. Don't forget .. line both you and the perv in front on a judge -- society will give you about the same sentence. You're about as bad as each other, according to EVERYONE (apart from yourselves, of course).
 
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Piracy is clearly morally wrong, but I think that devs have a lot to answer for.
For example, I bought Gothic 3 on the day of release. It had a huge amount of bugs, both graphical and gameplay issues that made me regret my decision.

The same with Race 07. I bought the game off steam. There is however a bug in the game where the AI cars come in to the pits every single lap if the weather starts to change. I've reported the bug to Simbin and was told it was on their Todo list. So when the GTR evo expansion comes out, I buy that hoping the bug to be gone. Nope, I bought the STCC expansion hoping it was fixed. Nope.

I decided against buying the Race On expansion.

So devs can treat their customers like rubbish and people just make excuses for them like "do you know how hard it is to make a game?" If they think that little of the loyal customers, then I have no sympathy for them if people pirate their games.

But really, the whole entertainment industry is the same. They want to sell us endless remakes of movies, cover version after cover version of songs, games that are just re-released every year where the only difference is a an '09 instead of an '08 after the title and a few tweaks here and there. Pirates aren't the only ones ruining the industry by making copies.

Do we honestly think that game prices would be lower without piracy?
Or would they be higher without the competition?
As has already been said, the PS3 proves that they will still charge £40-£50 a game whether there is piracy or not.
 
britboy4321 said:
OK, I'll go slower for you.

1a) Pirates argue that they are not 'taking any goods' therefore they are not committing any crime
1b) Putting a webcam in a shower involves taking no goods, therefore following this logic can be justified by the perv as not committing any crime
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Emm, you do realise that example and the entire following argument doesn't make any sense?

In 1a you are talking about the non-removal of a physical object being the same as the removal of privacy which is an intangible and can't be classified exactly. Many if not all women would be horrified at the thought of a voyeur seeing anything of their private lives, you've deliberately used an extreme to elicit the highest emotional response - a classic 'straw man' argument.

I'm not disagreeing with your standpoint just your fallacious argument. I have used BT in the past to replace disks (when my laptop died and I couldn't find my XP disk I downloaded one - I have a legitimate key just didn't have the medium from which to install the software I am entitled to use).

Games are a different matter though, I have downloaded a few although I tend to just buy them from Steam now.
 
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Vampyre said:
Emm, you do realise that example and the entire following argument doesn't make any sense?

In 1a you are talking about the non-removal of a physical object being the same as the removal of privacy which is an intangible and can't be classified exactly.
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Copyright and intellectual property rights and privacy are all intangible. That's the cornerstone to the entire thieves' argument that it isn't theft! It is, of course, copyright theft.

I actually originally wrote about 8 examples of crimes I'd associate as having the same moral dilemma as pirating games, on my original response (such as sneaking into a cinema without paying). All the opposition came back about the 'girl in shower' example -- I was explicitly asked to further my thoughts on that example. It's not a strawman.
 
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I get my music from itunes/online/HMV.

TV SKY/itunes/blockbusters/iplayer

I listen to radio in the car and at home

So the answer is no to your Q

As for prices that has nothing to do with it if all games where 50p there would still be people with the attitude well i can get it for nothing
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You sir need to get out more :p

:rolleyes:
 
So customers in your world britboy are expected to be saints amongst living things but it is ok for the companys to make shoddy products that they know damn well have bugs overcharge and disregard a customer once they have the money. While i don't support piracy i do see why it is happening and can understand it and whether they like it or not the companys doing the moaning have played a big part in it's rise.

So many times before i wised up i paid good money for things that were simply shocking in terms of quality on release and since the internet has become so easy and popular the companys have no problem at all releasing software that is in a beta stage. Why because they can patch it up, forget the customer who in some cases goes through months of frustration trying to get said software to work and is usually so peed off with it by the time it gets fixed that they have moved on.

This is an argument that isn't as black and white as some people like to think there is blame on both sides and until that is recognised piracy will continue to be a problem and will probably keep increasing.
 
britboy4321 said:
Never forget, the average Joe in the street thinks the crimes are about as bad as each other. That's how you're regarded by joe average. Don't forget .. line both you and the perv in front on a judge -- society will give you about the same sentence. You're about as bad as each other, according to EVERYONE (apart from yourselves, of course).
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I'll ignore your shower perv thing but to say the average person actually cares about piracy is rubbish. I don't think I know a single person who wouldn't use some pirated software if they had easy access to it. Just look at the ammount of pirate dvd's and cd's there are available at markets and such like too.
 
britboy4321 said:
Never forget, the average Joe in the street thinks the crimes are about as bad as each other. That's how you're regarded by joe average. Don't forget .. line both you and the perv in front on a judge -- society will give you about the same sentence. You're about as bad as each other, according to EVERYONE (apart from yourselves, of course).
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Really?

The response I usually get when people find out is "oh cool can you get me the news series of heroes or so and so's new album".

:confused:
 
Tefal said:
Really?

The response I usually get when people find out is "oh cool can you get me the news series of heroes or so and so's new album".

:confused:
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Yea if my mate nicked 40 blu-ray players from out the back of Currys, a lot of people would say 'Wow I'll give you a tenner for one'.

So that's OK then ... :rolleyes:


(and 'I've got sneaky naked pictures of [beautiful girl everyone knows IRL but no-one is dating] -- fancy seeing them ... do you think many would say 'no'? Honestly?)
 
But you just said society would condemn us?

Now you're saying it wont?


And no if i said "hey I got some pictures of <insert name here> I got while peeping o nher in the shower, I'd wind up alone in the bar with a bunch of disgusted mates on the toher side of the room...
 
I know this is a tired old argument and used by both sides but the "I will never buy that game, if i dloaded it you never would have made the money from me either way"

Why dont they try to add some MORE product placement in games then they still have some money making potential paid or free.
 
The only people that would condemn you are:

a) The judge, because they seem to think it's their job to be as morally condescending as possible to everyone who comes in front of them - probably throwing in the word "wicked" at some point - despite probably going home that night and jerking off to amputee porn.

b) The Daily Mail and its horde of *****
 
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