piracy on pc
- Thread starter RedStarRiot
- Start date
It's not theft though. I don't pirate games at all, and I think anyone who does is simply a cheapskate, but it's not theft.
You wouldn't go into a game store with a laptop and start burning off copies either, what were discussing is more like waving a wand at a Ferrari and creating an exact copy for yourself, the owner isn't inconvenienced and Ferrari have lost no money as you were not going to buy it anyway.
If everybody who downloads pirate software suddenly stopped then games companies wouldn't make loads of extra money because contrary to the lies they tell they are not losing a lot of money due to piracy. In fact because the would be less people playing their games the would be less of a buzz about them and I would wager sales would actually suffer as a result of piracy disappearing.
Your reasoning and debating powers are amazing, actually I was talking fact and truth for the most part, sorry to enlighten you.
Actually a few of us aren't trying to justify it; we're simply saying there would be less of it if prices were adjusted. This is self-evident.
If a new game gets released at £35, there are plenty of people who a) won't pay that and b) will want it on the day of release regardless. There +might+ be a sale at some future point where the price comes down to £15 or so, but by that point these people have played the game already and likely aren't going to buy it.
If, however, games were +released+ at £17 (too low, you say?), how many of these people would actually buy it? You set the price low enough, and people will impulse buy almost anything.
£35 is not an impulse buy. £35 is extortion. Set the price to 1/2 of this, and you could go a long way to fixing the whole piracy problem.
I would still like to see the facts, but I have amended my original post and apologise for being rude.
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Seriously????
You think if you could wave a wand and copy a Ferrari for nothing this would have no effect on Ferraris ability to make money? No one would buy one if there was no exclusivity. Why drop £150k on something that can be got for free? Ferrari would be suing your magic wand maker faster than you can say abracadabra.
Your argument makes no sense.
No, I wouldn't. I don't pirate games either.
On the other hand, I have no problems with anyone buying a book, scanning it and lending to a friend. I don't even have problems with him lending the book.
No, it's not theft.
theft said:
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Im not justifying piracy here, but when I read about it I always look at it in context such as:
1 - Poor People - basically those that do 'steal' the game by downloading and having no intention to purchase, mainly because they cant afford it OR are just thiefs.
2 - Testing People - these are the borderline purchasers and probably torrents can do good or bad here depending on the games quality. IF people like it in this category, chances are they will want legit MP or Patches and will support the publisher.... flipside, they try it and realise its dire and thus have not wasted money outright.
Of course you could go into more depth with it all, but I dont look at Torrent downloads as a lost sale... basically because it was never a sale in the first place (especially in the 1st category) and then odds are the 2nd category actually adds sales to the games total as they may have purchased a game they might not have otherwise.
Probably get slated for that post, but im not advocating torrents and ideally it would never happen, but im sure we all had 'mix tapes' or 'copied disks' of games back in the Amiga/C64 or whatever you had days... forwarding your tape to the right number to get the game to kick in etc
Nowadays my PC gaming is very niche and thus make very little purchases and stick to what I know I like... which in itself is a bad thing for PC gaming as I dont go out of my comfort zone to try things. Yet flipside, my PS3 gives me that platform for 'audacious' purchases of games that may well not tickle my fancy elsewhere (for example I bought Batman AA and Burnout on the PS3 2nd hand, but would never think of getting them on a PC)
1 - Poor People - basically those that do 'steal' the game by downloading and having no intention to purchase, mainly because they cant afford it OR are just thiefs.
2 - Testing People - these are the borderline purchasers and probably torrents can do good or bad here depending on the games quality. IF people like it in this category, chances are they will want legit MP or Patches and will support the publisher.... flipside, they try it and realise its dire and thus have not wasted money outright.
Of course you could go into more depth with it all, but I dont look at Torrent downloads as a lost sale... basically because it was never a sale in the first place (especially in the 1st category) and then odds are the 2nd category actually adds sales to the games total as they may have purchased a game they might not have otherwise.
Probably get slated for that post, but im not advocating torrents and ideally it would never happen, but im sure we all had 'mix tapes' or 'copied disks' of games back in the Amiga/C64 or whatever you had days... forwarding your tape to the right number to get the game to kick in etc
Nowadays my PC gaming is very niche and thus make very little purchases and stick to what I know I like... which in itself is a bad thing for PC gaming as I dont go out of my comfort zone to try things. Yet flipside, my PS3 gives me that platform for 'audacious' purchases of games that may well not tickle my fancy elsewhere (for example I bought Batman AA and Burnout on the PS3 2nd hand, but would never think of getting them on a PC)
Your argument makes no sense because Ferrari would use that magic wand to copy their cars themselves. I doubt anything wouldn't be free if it could be copied then.
No problem:
Truth, I was going to buy it till I saw the price, an it was £40
Truth, I did grow up with PC games, they cost that much.
Truth, falling prices, dumbed down operating systems and the reduced skill needed to make a PC work has resulting in everybody having one.
Fact, Launch prices never really came down despite games coming on a CD worth 30p instead of a £10 (SNES battery backup) to £20 (N64) cartridge.
Fact, PC games used to cost 1/4 the price of console games ad less
Truth, either that or they decided to put the price up because of fluctuations in the costs of CD's
Truth, if games cost a reasonable about instead of 20% of the average weekly wage more people would buy them, the games companies are killing themselves off just like the record companies have been for years.
It makes perfect sense because if you read what I said, the person wouldn't have bought one anyway so Ferrari have lost nothing. Do you really think that if piracy disappeared then everybody who downloads MP3's would run to the shop and pay £15 for an album to get one song that they heard on the radio and kinda like? no they wouldn't so when record/film/game companies tell you "we lost X million" its all rubbish because it assume every download is a lost sale when it isn't and it doesn't factor in the money they actually make from piracy.
Soldato
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It can be had for around £30 if you shop around.
I'm trying to point out that the whole car/magic wand arguament makes no sense in general. I'm sure holes can be picked in my reply, but then the whole premise is daft.
Yeah but nothing beats Sega investing so much money in Shenmu that it would have needed every single Dreamcast owner on the planet to buy it twice n order to make a profit, that's just the ultimate video-game fail, E.T eat your heart out
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That's not really the problem. Thing is no matter how cheap it was, you will always get a hard core of people who will pirate something, just because they can.
Ok, so it was 'downloaded' 2.3 million times. That is not 2.3 million lost sales.
The vast majority of those downloaders wouldn't have purchased the game anyway. And of the rest, many will go onto buying the game after trying it, simply because to my knowledge there is no demo of SC2.
it wasn't even downloaded that many times, it's purely there was that much traffic.
