And the Most-Pirated Game of 2010 Is...

[Housebroken Lunatic]

It's true that not every download is a lost sale. While it's a safe bet that some of the pirates would have bought the game were there no other choice, there's no way of knowing how low (or high) that percentage would be.

Ultimately making the practic of criminalizing the act of internet piracy and comparing it to actual theft completely idiotic, since you can't even prove that something was stolen. One can only argue that something was "hypothetically" stolen, and even that is a stretch.

 

[Housebroken Lunatic]

If you don't have anything to hide, than i'm not sure why it is such a big deal.

You just described the argument which every totalitarian regime has used to justify it's totalitarian methods.

"If you have nothing to hide, then you won't get hurt".

So kudos to you for being on par with Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler and other charming fellows like them.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

If you don't have anything to hide, than i'm not sure why it is such a big deal.

You just described the argument which every totalitarian regime has used to justify it's totalitarian methods.

"If you have nothing to hide, then you won't get hurt".

So kudos to you for being on par with Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler and other charming fellows like them.

Thank you. You could just as easily say:

And it seems that we could accomplish catching these people if we could have that PATRIOT Act thing go in action. I wouldn't be surprised if all of the people against it were terrorists and would be in trouble. If you don't have anything to hide, than i'm not sure why it is such a big deal.

You may think I'm over-exaggerating here, but I'm not. People are against ACTA because it's another example of the same kind of unconstitutional (in the US, I recognize that this is an international thing) over-reaching of government power (everywhere) that was contained in the PATRIOT act.

And saying that, if people won't respect the law, the law shouldn't respect human rights? Okay, fine. Let's cut off people's hands for shoplifting, and torture them to get information. The comparison to Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler is more valid than I thought when I initially read the post; I was just going to compare you to Dick Cheney.

 

[Housebroken Lunatic]

And saying that, if people won't respect the law, the law shouldn't respect human rights? Okay, fine. Let's cut off people's hands for shoplifting, and torture them to get information.

Interestingly enough, about the practice of cutting off people's hands for stealing and otherwise show a complete disregard for human rights. Isn't that practice something that countries inhabited by people of "terrorist descent" (or as they were previously called "arabs") are rather notorious for doing?

It's funny how these right-wing nutjobs with their full support of the PATRIOT act, doesn't differ all that much in thought from their most recent boogeymen which they want to wage war upon, isn't it?

In my own opinion, Dick Cheney, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Josef Stalin, Average terrorist prick, average right-wing nutjob = same shit, different assholes. And what's most depressing is the fact that my opinion is a bit too valid for comfort...

 

[hecticpicnic]

I wan't to see how many games were pirated beside the games that were bought.
Jees at this rate it could get as bad as the music downloads.

 

[LitleWaffle]

If you don't have anything to hide, than i'm not sure why it is such a big deal.

You just described the argument which every totalitarian regime has used to justify it's totalitarian methods.

"If you have nothing to hide, then you won't get hurt".

So kudos to you for being on par with Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler and other charming fellows like them.

Adolf Hitler was against innocents, these conditions are against people breaking the law?
And thank you.

 

[Housebroken Lunatic]

Adolf Hitler was against innocents, these conditions are against people breaking the law?
And thank you.

Bullshit.

They weren't innocent according to german laws back then. Just because there is a law, it doesn't mean that it's reasonable or should be followed. You are pretty naive if you genuinely believe that all laws are enacted through democratic methods. The majority of all laws in existence came to be through arbitrary decisions by whatever people who happened to sit at a position of power at the time...

 

[LitleWaffle]

I believe we're arguing from two different perspectives. You're arguing from the perspective of legality. I'm arguing from the perspective of amoral economic forces, going by what I see in reality.

You're saying "it's illegal" and I say "so what?". Just because some lawmakers say "no" and then there are a few symbolic cases of a few people getting sued for exorbitant amounts of money they can never pay by having a few songs on their computer, that doesn't make any of these file sharing laws enforceable. And that's really what my argument rests upon--that there are tons and tons of people that *will* get something for free, whether it's legal or not.

How are you going to pursue them? You won't. Crying THAT'S ILLEGAL! is ridiculous in this day and age in my opinion. These no copyright laws have been flouted time and again and it won't stop. If you want to be in the business of producing an easily-reproduced something, you need to find a business model that does not depend on unenforceable laws.

Your beginning opinion was that "piracy of a digital object isn't stealing", now your saying "so what"?

A pirate will never/rarely stop at just "a few songs". After they do it once and don't get caught, what makes you think he won't keep going? By the time they do/if get caught, it will be more than a "few songs".

And honestly, they have been making progress on thwarting pirating.

http://blog.wirebot.com/2010/08/27/microsoft-prepares-to-ban-pirates-caught-using-leaked-halo-reach/

That was from a while ago, and they have the potential of catching pirates.

And it seems that we could accomplish catching these people if we could have that ACTA thing go in action. I wouldn't be surprised if all of the people against it have pirated and would be in trouble. If you don't have anything to hide, than i'm not sure why it is such a big deal.

You saying "so what" to the fact that it is illegal is exactly the cause of pirates. If people won't respect the law, than the law shouldn't respect human rights.

That's like a little brat changing the rules of a game in his favor all the time. There are two possibilities of how you feel about that kid.

You either A: Hate him and want him to pay or B: Are that brat.

Teach that brat some gog dang respect and he'll grow up into a respectful and fine citizen.

Teach the pirates as a whole some gog dang respect and your country will grow into a fine, more law abiding one, instead of that stupid brat.

??? if the law does not respect human right it is not the law its an occupying force of oppression mascrating as the law, not respecting human right is never an option for the law(on the whole not individual cases of questionable human right violations) no matter how many people pirate games. and Progress they were running zero day bootlegs of a not released game with live activated it would literly have been immpossible for ms not to catch those people.

While that may be true, I believe human rights are too overpowered, much like what we wanted the law not to be around the beginning of America. If their human rights prevent them from having themselves tracked for law breaking like something as basic as this, than it needs a little weakening, then huh.

Edit: I mean like tracking IP Address of who accesses this certain website which could be controlled after finding the IP Address of who runs the website, than a major portion of this could be hindered and it would be like a slap across the little brat's face.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

its sad that people in the gamer public consider the gaming industry their enemy, they are activly shooting themselves in the foot. Just think if the pirates win and the game developers go away, what do you gain? the pirates wont make games, we wont see triple a titles. All that will be around are facebook games. So inconclusion those who are pro piracy and sticking it to the man only want to see facebook games in the future.

just an observation

As a consumer, I consider anyone who intends to part me from my money in return for some good or service they are selling as an adversary, if not an outright enemy. The devs here may be just trying to make a living, but the publishers are trying to squeeze as much profit as possible out of the consumers in order to earn insane amounts of profit for the shareholders. Unless you're a robber baron a captain of industry filthy stinkin' rich yourself, those guys really are your enemy.

the publishers are just trying to make a living and the developers are also trying to make as much profit as they possibly can. And if they your enemy stop buying their products, dont support your enemies. your logic is flawed

No, the publishers are trying to keep their investors in private yachts and gold plated toilet seats, not simply to make a living. If they were just trying to make a living, game prices would be lower, and we wouldn't be seeing stuff like day 1 DLC. As for them being my enemy, you misunderstood my post; they are only my enemy in the sense that my goal, as a consumer, is to make my money go as far as possible, while theirs, as producers, is to get as much of my money as possible. Therefore, it is in their interest to charge as much for a game as they can get away with, while it is in my interest to spend as little as I can on each game I buy.

A better word, which I used in the post that you quoted, is "adversary," since we try to thwart each others' goals at every chance we get, but we don't exactly hate each others' guts. In any other industry, this relationship would wind up with the product being released at a price that both parties could agree to, but in this industry the publishers are fighting the market, and keeping the price artificially high. See my earlier posts in this thread for my explanation of how they use piracy and the used market as scapegoats, claiming they eat into their profit, instead of recognizing it as an ultimatum from a significant portion of consumers who are unwilling or unable to pay the exorbitant price that they charge for their games -- a price which, for some strange reason, is standardized across all companies and all retailers, effectively cutting off competition in the traditional sense. In the final assessment, it's not my logic that's flawed, but rather your understanding of basic capitalist economics.

 

[LitleWaffle]

Adolf Hitler was against innocents, these conditions are against people breaking the law?
And thank you.

Bullshit.

They weren't innocent according to german laws back then. Just because there is a law, it doesn't mean that it's reasonable or should be followed. You are pretty naive if you genuinely believe that all laws are enacted through democratic methods. The majority of all laws in existence came to be through arbitrary decisions by whatever people who happened to sit at a position of power at the time...

No, not bullshit.

The Nuremberg Laws were made during Hitler's reign, which made what they are and did illegal. Sure hatred of Jews had been around for some time before then, but Hitler set things in motion with his power. However, Piracy is based on economy, a basis of civilization. Different conditions.

And gee, a law against piracy, how is that not reasonable? How long has there been punishment for thievery? A loooong time. Piracy is a more modern version of thievery in basic terms. The laws against it try to keep order on not just the foundation of our country, but of every country with an economy since the near beginning of civilization as we know it.

If thievery is allowed, our entire economy would shatter for supply and demand would fall completely off balance and anarchy would occur, and as wonderful as the idea of no government would be lovely in theory, it would work if people these days weren't dicks. Many would suffer without the government and many would die. Civilization keeps order at a much better capability than with no government whatsoever. And to keep Civilization in order, we needs laws that uphold the foundations of it, which include punishments for thievery, and in this case, piracy.

Yes, certain laws are made by the current people in position of power, much like the Nuremberg Laws. However, we have a bunch of people with different opinions in power, as shown by the tax cut stand off a couple months(or a month, can't remember) ago. If one branch of our government is corrupt, we still have two buffers that can put them in their place.

Nonetheless, a law against an entity that would shatter our economy's foundations and throw us all into chaos is not unreasonable.

 

[Housebroken Lunatic]

Piracy is a more modern version of thievery in basic terms.

Something has to actually be stolen in order to be "theft". Which has never been the case with internet piracy, ultimately making your entire argument = void...

 

[Ilyak1986]

Know why thievery is bad? It isn't because someone else gets something that they didn't pay for. The reason that it's bad is that it takes *away* something from someone who could have sold it to somebody else.

Once again, consider an apple vendor in NYC. If I were to steal an apple from him or her, it's not such a bad thing that I have the apple, so much as I *took the apple that he or she intended to sell.*

However, with game downloads, if I download a game because I can, it's not like I'm going to the store and illegally taking something with limited inventory off of the shelves away from a person that was possibly going to buy it for money.

Heck, my stance about things is this: if someone is unwilling to buy game X for $60 and downloads it, that's not a loss on the company's bottom line, because that person never would have bought the game anyway!

See, Chris Anderson says that sometimes, even charging a penny for something would cause you to lose the "sale" when that person would have bought that something for free. It's called the penny gap and the reason it happens is that it forces the consumer to make a choice. If the consumer instead got that something for free and didn't have to make that choice, he'd take it. But once you force the consumer to decide between A *OR* B, well, said consumer wasn't intending on getting A in the first place and had B to begin with, so that's the way it'll stay.

As for this whole IP thing...I really don't get why we put so much value on that which has infinite supply. If you don't want to create something of intellectual worth, don't. Go and get some other job. Frankly, I don't think a field such as writing or music should be entered for the money. As for developing video games, yes, the devs need to make a living. But when giant companies are gonna ***** and moan because piracy eats into the profits that they want to put out to shareholders, then no, I have no sympathy.

Frankly, I think that piracy only becomes a problem when someone gets popular enough for people to say "ehhh I want that game, but not for that price". If some indy developer wants to sell a cool game for $10, I think quite a few people here would gladly shell out a couple of bucks over Steam for a fun indy game.

Seriously, for people to think that suddenly The Man in videogames is going to starve because of piracy, that's a joke.

And frankly, when something has infinite supply, I don't think that there's anything being stolen. Copyright to me is a giant joke. There are probably very easy ways of ensuring that the proper creator of said work is credited for it. But the compensation? I don't think that people should really expect to get big bucks from something with a marginal production cost of zero.

 

[FriedRicer]

its sad that people in the gamer public consider the gaming industry their enemy, they are activly shooting themselves in the foot. Just think if the pirates win and the game developers go away, what do you gain? the pirates wont make games, we wont see triple a titles. All that will be around are facebook games. So inconclusion those who are pro piracy and sticking it to the man only want to see facebook games in the future.

just an observation

As a consumer, I consider anyone who intends to part me from my money in return for some good or service they are selling as an adversary, if not an outright enemy. The devs here may be just trying to make a living, but the publishers are trying to squeeze as much profit as possible out of the consumers in order to earn insane amounts of profit for the shareholders. Unless you're a robber baron a captain of industry filthy stinkin' rich yourself, those guys really are your enemy.

the publishers are just trying to make a living and the developers are also trying to make as much profit as they possibly can. And if they your enemy stop buying their products, dont support your enemies. your logic is flawed

No, the publishers are trying to keep their investors in private yachts and gold plated toilet seats, not simply to make a living. If they were just trying to make a living, game prices would be lower, and we wouldn't be seeing stuff like day 1 DLC. As for them being my enemy, you misunderstood my post; they are only my enemy in the sense that my goal, as a consumer, is to make my money go as far as possible, while theirs, as producers, is to get as much of my money as possible. Therefore, it is in their interest to charge as much for a game as they can get away with, while it is in my interest to spend as little as I can on each game I buy.

A better word, which I used in the post that you quoted, is "adversary," since we try to thwart each others' goals at every chance we get, but we don't exactly hate each others' guts. In any other industry, this relationship would wind up with the product being released at a price that both parties could agree to, but in this industry the publishers are fighting the market, and keeping the price artificially high. See my earlier posts in this thread for my explanation of how they use piracy and the used market as scapegoats, claiming they eat into their profit, instead of recognizing it as an ultimatum from a significant portion of consumers who are unwilling or unable to pay the exorbitant price that they charge for their games -- a price which, for some strange reason, is standardized across all companies and all retailers, effectively cutting off competition in the traditional sense. In the final assessment, it's not my logic that's flawed, but rather your understanding of basic capitalist economics.

....I thought the prices were the same due to fixed pricing.Plus, do you hear yourself?Activision isn't sitting on the some precious resource that YOU CANT LIVE WITHOUT!It is a product that does have a value because you pirated it.Because you WANT it.Thats why you stole it in the first place.THEY made it and can charge how much you think you'd pay.You do or you don't.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

its sad that people in the gamer public consider the gaming industry their enemy, they are activly shooting themselves in the foot. Just think if the pirates win and the game developers go away, what do you gain? the pirates wont make games, we wont see triple a titles. All that will be around are facebook games. So inconclusion those who are pro piracy and sticking it to the man only want to see facebook games in the future.

just an observation

As a consumer, I consider anyone who intends to part me from my money in return for some good or service they are selling as an adversary, if not an outright enemy. The devs here may be just trying to make a living, but the publishers are trying to squeeze as much profit as possible out of the consumers in order to earn insane amounts of profit for the shareholders. Unless you're a robber baron a captain of industry filthy stinkin' rich yourself, those guys really are your enemy.

the publishers are just trying to make a living and the developers are also trying to make as much profit as they possibly can. And if they your enemy stop buying their products, dont support your enemies. your logic is flawed

No, the publishers are trying to keep their investors in private yachts and gold plated toilet seats, not simply to make a living. If they were just trying to make a living, game prices would be lower, and we wouldn't be seeing stuff like day 1 DLC. As for them being my enemy, you misunderstood my post; they are only my enemy in the sense that my goal, as a consumer, is to make my money go as far as possible, while theirs, as producers, is to get as much of my money as possible. Therefore, it is in their interest to charge as much for a game as they can get away with, while it is in my interest to spend as little as I can on each game I buy.

A better word, which I used in the post that you quoted, is "adversary," since we try to thwart each others' goals at every chance we get, but we don't exactly hate each others' guts. In any other industry, this relationship would wind up with the product being released at a price that both parties could agree to, but in this industry the publishers are fighting the market, and keeping the price artificially high. See my earlier posts in this thread for my explanation of how they use piracy and the used market as scapegoats, claiming they eat into their profit, instead of recognizing it as an ultimatum from a significant portion of consumers who are unwilling or unable to pay the exorbitant price that they charge for their games -- a price which, for some strange reason, is standardized across all companies and all retailers, effectively cutting off competition in the traditional sense. In the final assessment, it's not my logic that's flawed, but rather your understanding of basic capitalist economics.

....I thought the prices were the same due to fixed pricing.Plus, do you hear yourself?Activision isn't sitting on the some precious resource that YOU CANT LIVE WITHOUT!It is a product that does have a value because you pirated it.Because you WANT it.Thats why you stole it in the first place.THEY made it and can charge how much you think you'd pay.You do or you don't.

?

Okay, now I know you haven't been reading the thread. I made it explicit on, I believe, the first page of this thread that I'm not a pirate. You don't understand my argument because you haven't read it in its entirety. I pay for all of my games, I'm just unwilling to pay full price, because I consider $50 or more to be a ripoff. Heck, I've spent well over $100 in the past year, most of it going to used games and the periodic sales that pop up on Steam. If you had read my earlier posts -- or even the one you just responded to -- you'd know what the heck I was talking about. Although that would require some sort of understanding of the way the interplay between producers and consumers is eventually supposed to set a fair price in a capitalist system, something you apparently have no concept of.

Edit: Whoops, I thought you were psrdirector. Would you kindly go back and read the entire thread? It will answer your questions.

 

[Ilyak1986]

its sad that people in the gamer public consider the gaming industry their enemy, they are activly shooting themselves in the foot. Just think if the pirates win and the game developers go away, what do you gain? the pirates wont make games, we wont see triple a titles. All that will be around are facebook games. So inconclusion those who are pro piracy and sticking it to the man only want to see facebook games in the future.

just an observation

As a consumer, I consider anyone who intends to part me from my money in return for some good or service they are selling as an adversary, if not an outright enemy. The devs here may be just trying to make a living, but the publishers are trying to squeeze as much profit as possible out of the consumers in order to earn insane amounts of profit for the shareholders. Unless you're a robber baron a captain of industry filthy stinkin' rich yourself, those guys really are your enemy.

the publishers are just trying to make a living and the developers are also trying to make as much profit as they possibly can. And if they your enemy stop buying their products, dont support your enemies. your logic is flawed

No, the publishers are trying to keep their investors in private yachts and gold plated toilet seats, not simply to make a living. If they were just trying to make a living, game prices would be lower, and we wouldn't be seeing stuff like day 1 DLC. As for them being my enemy, you misunderstood my post; they are only my enemy in the sense that my goal, as a consumer, is to make my money go as far as possible, while theirs, as producers, is to get as much of my money as possible. Therefore, it is in their interest to charge as much for a game as they can get away with, while it is in my interest to spend as little as I can on each game I buy.

A better word, which I used in the post that you quoted, is "adversary," since we try to thwart each others' goals at every chance we get, but we don't exactly hate each others' guts. In any other industry, this relationship would wind up with the product being released at a price that both parties could agree to, but in this industry the publishers are fighting the market, and keeping the price artificially high. See my earlier posts in this thread for my explanation of how they use piracy and the used market as scapegoats, claiming they eat into their profit, instead of recognizing it as an ultimatum from a significant portion of consumers who are unwilling or unable to pay the exorbitant price that they charge for their games -- a price which, for some strange reason, is standardized across all companies and all retailers, effectively cutting off competition in the traditional sense. In the final assessment, it's not my logic that's flawed, but rather your understanding of basic capitalist economics.

....I thought the prices were the same due to fixed pricing.Plus, do you hear yourself?Activision isn't sitting on the some precious resource that YOU CANT LIVE WITHOUT!It is a product that does have a value because you pirated it.Because you WANT it.Thats why you stole it in the first place.THEY made it and can charge how much you think you'd pay.You do or you don't.

They made it, they can charge a price, and...? It doesn't mean people have to pay the price. There is this thing called the internet, where anything digital can be found for free if you look long enough.

Put it this way to all of you crying "it's the LAW!". Remember what the RIAA did to Napster? I think they're probably livid by now seeing as to how they killed the original, but now filesharing is all over the global interwebz and rather than try to control one source, they've completely lost control of trying to stop piracy beyond symbolically laying down a lawsuit on some poor random unsuspecting person for 6-7 figures when they work as a waiter or something to try and send the message that "THIS CAN HAPPEN TO YOU!".

Clearly, there are a great deal of people that aren't threatened by this. And frankly, rather than try to be jackasses with their mass regulations and buying congresscritters to pass ACTA or whatever it is, creators of intellectual property should try and find a business model that works. Piracy will happen, and no, there isn't anything that can be done to stop it. Stop trying and instead put those resources into making piracy work for you rather than against you.

 

[FriedRicer]

its sad that people in the gamer public consider the gaming industry their enemy, they are activly shooting themselves in the foot. Just think if the pirates win and the game developers go away, what do you gain? the pirates wont make games, we wont see triple a titles. All that will be around are facebook games. So inconclusion those who are pro piracy and sticking it to the man only want to see facebook games in the future.

just an observation

As a consumer, I consider anyone who intends to part me from my money in return for some good or service they are selling as an adversary, if not an outright enemy. The devs here may be just trying to make a living, but the publishers are trying to squeeze as much profit as possible out of the consumers in order to earn insane amounts of profit for the shareholders. Unless you're a robber baron a captain of industry filthy stinkin' rich yourself, those guys really are your enemy.

the publishers are just trying to make a living and the developers are also trying to make as much profit as they possibly can. And if they your enemy stop buying their products, dont support your enemies. your logic is flawed

No, the publishers are trying to keep their investors in private yachts and gold plated toilet seats, not simply to make a living. If they were just trying to make a living, game prices would be lower, and we wouldn't be seeing stuff like day 1 DLC. As for them being my enemy, you misunderstood my post; they are only my enemy in the sense that my goal, as a consumer, is to make my money go as far as possible, while theirs, as producers, is to get as much of my money as possible. Therefore, it is in their interest to charge as much for a game as they can get away with, while it is in my interest to spend as little as I can on each game I buy.

A better word, which I used in the post that you quoted, is "adversary," since we try to thwart each others' goals at every chance we get, but we don't exactly hate each others' guts. In any other industry, this relationship would wind up with the product being released at a price that both parties could agree to, but in this industry the publishers are fighting the market, and keeping the price artificially high. See my earlier posts in this thread for my explanation of how they use piracy and the used market as scapegoats, claiming they eat into their profit, instead of recognizing it as an ultimatum from a significant portion of consumers who are unwilling or unable to pay the exorbitant price that they charge for their games -- a price which, for some strange reason, is standardized across all companies and all retailers, effectively cutting off competition in the traditional sense. In the final assessment, it's not my logic that's flawed, but rather your understanding of basic capitalist economics.

....I thought the prices were the same due to fixed pricing.Plus, do you hear yourself?Activision isn't sitting on the some precious resource that YOU CANT LIVE WITHOUT!It is a product that does have a value because you pirated it.Because you WANT it.Thats why you stole it in the first place.THEY made it and can charge how much you think you'd pay.You do or you don't.

?

Okay, now I know you haven't been reading the thread. I made it explicit on, I believe, the first page of this thread that I'm not a pirate. You don't understand my argument because you haven't read it in its entirety. I pay for all of my games, I'm just unwilling to pay full price, because I consider $50 or more to be a ripoff. Heck, I've spent well over $100 in the past year, most of it going to used games and the periodic sales that pop up on Steam. If you had read my earlier posts -- or even the one you just responded to -- you'd know what the heck I was talking about. Although that would require some sort of understanding of the way the interplay between producers and consumers is eventually supposed to set a fair price in a capitalist system, something you apparently have no concept of.

Edit: Whoops, I thought you were psrdirector. Would you kindly go back and read the entire thread? It will answer your questions.

I never called you a pirate.The response was more of a general one in regards to pirating and what you stated as a reason for pirating and the ''adversary'' you spoke of..I read the whole thread man,and,like i said, the people who make the product are not needed as much as their product.Yet people pirate their stuff so it has value.Since they made it...they can price it.Thereason the prices are the same is due to fixed pricing to stop predator pricing from bigger stores trying to out sell smaller ones.'a price which, for some strange reason, is standardized across all companies and all retailers, effectively cutting off competition in the traditional sense.'I was trying to explain the 'strange reason' with that previous sentence.

 

[FriedRicer]

its sad that people in the gamer public consider the gaming industry their enemy, they are activly shooting themselves in the foot. Just think if the pirates win and the game developers go away, what do you gain? the pirates wont make games, we wont see triple a titles. All that will be around are facebook games. So inconclusion those who are pro piracy and sticking it to the man only want to see facebook games in the future.

just an observation

As a consumer, I consider anyone who intends to part me from my money in return for some good or service they are selling as an adversary, if not an outright enemy. The devs here may be just trying to make a living, but the publishers are trying to squeeze as much profit as possible out of the consumers in order to earn insane amounts of profit for the shareholders. Unless you're a robber baron a captain of industry filthy stinkin' rich yourself, those guys really are your enemy.

the publishers are just trying to make a living and the developers are also trying to make as much profit as they possibly can. And if they your enemy stop buying their products, dont support your enemies. your logic is flawed

No, the publishers are trying to keep their investors in private yachts and gold plated toilet seats, not simply to make a living. If they were just trying to make a living, game prices would be lower, and we wouldn't be seeing stuff like day 1 DLC. As for them being my enemy, you misunderstood my post; they are only my enemy in the sense that my goal, as a consumer, is to make my money go as far as possible, while theirs, as producers, is to get as much of my money as possible. Therefore, it is in their interest to charge as much for a game as they can get away with, while it is in my interest to spend as little as I can on each game I buy.

A better word, which I used in the post that you quoted, is "adversary," since we try to thwart each others' goals at every chance we get, but we don't exactly hate each others' guts. In any other industry, this relationship would wind up with the product being released at a price that both parties could agree to, but in this industry the publishers are fighting the market, and keeping the price artificially high. See my earlier posts in this thread for my explanation of how they use piracy and the used market as scapegoats, claiming they eat into their profit, instead of recognizing it as an ultimatum from a significant portion of consumers who are unwilling or unable to pay the exorbitant price that they charge for their games -- a price which, for some strange reason, is standardized across all companies and all retailers, effectively cutting off competition in the traditional sense. In the final assessment, it's not my logic that's flawed, but rather your understanding of basic capitalist economics.

....I thought the prices were the same due to fixed pricing.Plus, do you hear yourself?Activision isn't sitting on the some precious resource that YOU CANT LIVE WITHOUT!It is a product that does have a value because you pirated it.Because you WANT it.Thats why you stole it in the first place.THEY made it and can charge how much you think you'd pay.You do or you don't.

They made it, they can charge a price, and...? It doesn't mean people have to pay the price. There is this thing called the internet, where anything digital can be found for free if you look long enough.

Put it this way to all of you crying "it's the LAW!". Remember what the RIAA did to Napster? I think they're probably livid by now seeing as to how they killed the original, but now filesharing is all over the global interwebz and rather than try to control one source, they've completely lost control of trying to stop piracy beyond symbolically laying down a lawsuit on some poor random unsuspecting person for 6-7 figures when they work as a waiter or something to try and send the message that "THIS CAN HAPPEN TO YOU!".

Clearly, there are a great deal of people that aren't threatened by this. And frankly, rather than try to be jackasses with their mass regulations and buying congresscritters to pass ACTA or whatever it is, creators of intellectual property should try and find a business model that works. Piracy will happen, and no, there isn't anything that can be done to stop it. Stop trying and instead put those resources into making piracy work for you rather than against you.

What would happen if all products could be obtained in a similar manner?
True,people don't have to pay...Cuz they use the net to STEAL IT!It's life and frankly okay because NOTHING is tightly regulated in this world,but it is wrong and if your're not caught kudos your a good thief-but if you are...man up and pay that 3 million dollar fine!lmao.
oh and...http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html