piracy on pc

kylew said:
To see it as theft shows you're only doing so due to an emotional reaction, trying to link it to something to make it worse than it is. Attempted murder is the same as assault when you use that logic, and people do make out like assault is attempted murder for the very same reasons, due to an emotional reaction.
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No because there are different levels of theft. Nicking a ream of paper from work for your home printer is different to stealing someones car, but they are both taking something that isn't yours.

Everyone had their own moral standpoint. I'm just stating mine and fully expecting many people to disagree with it.
 
Blue160 said:
No because there are different levels of theft. Nicking a ream of paper from work for your home printer is different to stealing someones car, but they are both taking something that isn't yours.

Everyone had their own moral standpoint. I'm just stating mine and fully expecting many people to disagree with it.
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Taking, not copying. What if you copied someone's car with a copy gun that you'd invented? The reason real world examples don't work is because there's no real world equivalent. You're just focusing on the "they have it and they didn't pay THEFT!".
 
genan said:
I think you missed the point there :D
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I think you missed my point. :p I was joking about people complaining about people pirating activision games when activision seemingly don't care about their own developers. Bizarre isn't closing due to poor sales down to piracy, it just seems Activision want them gone.
 
kylew said:
Distribution isn't part of downloading though (torrenting aside). For me to go and download a game, I can do it totally without distributing it to anyone else. Legally wise the act of downloading isn't "illegal" it's the act of uploading (distribution) that people get "done" for.
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Fair enough, so game companies are then focused on stopping the redistributed copies of their intellectual property from being used effectively. It seems near impossible to stop the redistribution then (i suppose steam came reasonably close with its handy little package system, keeping everything in one big file, but obviously that's been bypassed..).

So the only solution is to just continue on as we are? :confused: As you say, DRM techniques will only get more invasive from hereon in. Surely there's a better way to curb redistribution.
 
Alex74 said:
Fair enough, so game companies are then focused on stopping the redistributed copies of their intellectual property from being used effectively. It seems near impossible to stop the redistribution then (i suppose steam came reasonably close with its handy little package system, keeping everything in one big file, but obviously that's been bypassed..).

So the only solution is to just continue on as we are? :confused: As you say, DRM techniques will only get more invasive from hereon in. Surely there's a better way to curb redistribution.
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They just need to accept that it'll happen and stop punishing those who actually buy their games, because let's face it, paying customers are the only ones who are affected by the usage of DRM. But basically, they need to realise piracy will always happen and instead just focus on making quality games that people actually want to buy (this is Valve's attitude). People make a huge issue over piracy as if it's killing the industry, it's doing better than ever despite piracy being easier than ever.
 
kylew said:
Taking, not copying. What if you copied someone's car with a copy gun that you'd invented? The reason real world examples don't work is because there's no real world equivalent. You're just focusing on the "they have it and they didn't pay THEFT!".
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If there was a copy gun for copying cars car makers would go out of business pretty quickly.

"They have it and they didn't pay for it" does actually fit my personal definition of theft quite well (please no daft points about free gifts or competition wins. They don't count)

You may have noticed my definition doesn't match completely with the legal definition, and I'm fine with that. Like I said, I'd be amazed if everyone on this thread agreed with me, but everyone is entitled to their opinion.
 
Alex74 said:
So the only solution is to just continue on as we are? :confused: As you say, DRM techniques will only get more invasive from hereon in. Surely there's a better way to curb redistribution.
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cd keys have workd fine so far....guess developers just have to make a decent mp side to every game :p
 
kylew said:
They just need to accept that it'll happen and stop punishing those who actually buy their games, because let's face it, paying customers are the only ones who are affected by the usage of DRM. But basically, they need to realise piracy will always happen and instead just focus on making quality games that people actually want to buy (this is Valve's attitude). People make a huge issue over piracy as if it's killing the industry, it's doing better than ever despite piracy being easier than ever.
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For the biggest companies yes. I suppose independent developers can use platforms like Valve's steam as a good platform for a 'piracy-safe' release, but they're always the ones who will be hit worst in terms of the cost per pirated download.


Amnesia said:
cd keys have workd fine so far....guess developers just have to make a decent mp side to every game :p
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Fair play, I just would hate to see SP be abandoned for the sake of combatting piracy :p
 
kylew said:
I think you missed my point. :p I was joking about people complaining about people pirating activision games when Activision seemingly don't care about their own developers. Bizarre isn't closing due to poor sales down to piracy, it just seems Activision want them gone.
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Sorry, if I understood correctly they will be closed down due to poor sales. Whether piracy has anything to do with the sales we don`t know. I for one would like the UK games industry to expand rather than shrink, and Activision is (was) a necessity to fund and market those games (just like EA and other not-so-well-liked publishers)
 
Blue160 said:
...free gifts or competition wins. They don't count...
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Indeed they really dont. On the one hand we're talking about taking some kind of intellectual property, copying it and redistributing it, potentially en masse.

On the other hand, if I legitimately obtain a copy of some 'thing', and have it as a reward in a competition or a gift for someone, then that is a contract made to transfer the license which has been and will still be legitimately obtained from one person to the other. The company still has the money for the single license. So if we assume this sort of 'transitive' contract can hold, then there's no problem.

The problem is not a case of getting a 'thing' for free, more about getting something illegitimately, without a contract being made with the company for what you have.

In that case, maybe a downloader could be argued to be an accessory to the real 'villain', the mass redistributer? For consenting to this contract of obtaining the unlicensed 'thing'.
 
Then you get the other end of the stick where by piracy is a better option because you are less likely to get shafted by the hyped up ****** coming from the developers and reviews!.

Two Worlds for example , Check out this HUGE map yeh massive single player 100hrs of playtime if you do all the quests. But we won't tell anyone till they've completed it that it's really only 20hrs and that huge map is just part multiplayer and empty landscape!. Maybe they wont find out! .Divine Dinivity 2 , Don't tell anyone there is a 30fps cap because of the consoles let em find out when they buy it!.

Cod Black Ops , wooooo just don't let anyone know we've derpd it for console gamers let them find out how bad it is when they've bought it and we will fix it later!.

Oblivion , wow check out this Radiant AI look how the dog reacts to the npc look at this amazing graphical game but hey can you like buy it because when you do we will tell you that isn't actually any Radiant AI and we laughed haha!
 
genan said:
Sorry, if I understood correctly they will be closed down due to poor sales. Whether piracy has anything to do with the sales we don`t know. I for one would like the UK games industry to expand rather than shrink, and Activision is (was) a necessity to fund and market those games (just like EA and other not-so-well-liked publishers)
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Poor sales could mean anything to a company like activision, especially when we know how they want to milk people on franchises as much as they can with as little work as possible. I'd be inclined to believe with Bizarre not fitting in to that "mould" they'd rather get rid really.
 
Alex74 said:
For the biggest companies yes. I suppose independent developers can use platforms like Valve's steam as a good platform for a 'piracy-safe' release, but they're always the ones who will be hit worst in terms of the cost per pirated download.
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Steam isn't piracy safe, i don't really know any facts but i find it hard to believe pirates would have a massive amount of trouble breaking steam encryptions or whatever. After all there are copies of Left 4 Dead and stuff floating around which i imagine use things like Hamachi(sp) because there isn't any notable singleplayer.

But anyway, small games do not suffer the most, there is no proof of that. Even if they get pirated 5x more than a mainstream game what exactly was the chance they'd of paid for it given that it was unknown? If they didn't like it no loss. If they did they might pay for it to support the dev. Piracy download figures are completely arbitrary without knowing the facts behind them. Pretty sure i've downloaded a new copy of Diablo 2 about 5 times now, but considering i've paid for it about 3 or 4 times when realistically i shouldn't have to pay more than once, i think i'm in the clear, but that would still come up as 5 downloads.
 
Big deal. Piracy numbers are usually linked to the hype/reputation of a game and the company. It was obvious something like SC2 would sell by the truckload and be pirated like crazy. Yes, hype gets the pirates drooling too.

Too much is made of piracy being the doom of gaming. I wish companies would spend more effort looking after their customers and forget about piracy altogether. That is the only way to get more sales. People will pay for products that are good quality and/or don't kick them in the teeth with DRM and other hoops to jump.
 
Evilsod said:
Steam isn't piracy safe, i don't really know any facts but i find it hard to believe pirates would have a massive amount of trouble breaking steam encryptions or whatever. After all there are copies of Left 4 Dead and stuff floating around which i imagine use things like Hamachi(sp) because there isn't any notable singleplayer.

But anyway, small games do not suffer the most, there is no proof of that. Even if they get pirated 5x more than a mainstream game what exactly was the chance they'd of paid for it given that it was unknown? If they didn't like it no loss. If they did they might pay for it to support the dev. Piracy download figures are completely arbitrary without knowing the facts behind them. Pretty sure i've downloaded a new copy of Diablo 2 about 5 times now, but considering i've paid for it about 3 or 4 times when realistically i shouldn't have to pay more than once, i think i'm in the clear, but that would still come up as 5 downloads.
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Sure, i know steam isnt 100%, nothing is. I acknowledge this in an above post. And yes, there's always that chance that someone will download having already paid for it or will download and then decide they want to pay for it. But the real loss comes from those who just download without paying at any time, who would have otherwise. It's no loss for a company if the person wouldnt have paid anyway, but that then defeats the point of a market completely.

So if we talk about these specific people who would pay but dont, and then take the 'cost' to the company relative to their total turnover, then yes a small company will be hit harder, with all other things being equal.

Ultimately when we're talking about losses to the company, that's what we mean. At no time am i saying 'blizzard is losing out on x amount of money because of starcraft downloads' because again, as you say, it's impossible to quantify based on each individuals intentions.
 
The one thing that annoys me when games publishers moan about piracy is that they say 1million downloads = 1 million lost sales which is absolute nonsense. If people who pirate were not able to i imagine they would buy a hell of a lot less games than they actually pirate.

People are entitled to their opinions, I personally beleive piracy is morally wrong, at the end of the day someone has spent time and effort to create something it is totally up to them to do as they see fit with it. I see people saying well they charge too much for a game so this justifies piracy, in my mind if you don't agree with the price then don't buy it their are plenty of other games.

As a form of entertainment games are incredible value for money of you buy the right ones. MW2 40 quid and 500 hours played, Civ4 god knows.
 
Metatron said:
Blizzard can afford to take the hit considering the amount they milk from WoW subscribers.
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it's not like they force them to play WoW.

also the pirates are missing a big chunk of the game -> multiplayer. then again i bought the game and I am missing the Zerg and Protoss campaigns
 
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