Defending the Villain

[CarrierII]

I'm going to throw a spanner in the works - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7342135.stm

I am trapped right in the middle over this issue. I can identify with all camps. I am writing two games right now (one is more in a planning stage, but hey) and the latter will hopefully be worth something. Equally, I can identify with those who pirate because they cannot afford games. I can't afford games either (I don't pirate them, though). I can't endorse the breaking of copyright law when my sister is trying to make it in the music buisiness, that would just be shooting her in the foot, yet, I would love to get music for free.

I would love to see games move towards entertainment, and not sales (There were a couple of articles on this website on this topic that I found myself agreeing with), I am not a fan of the big name games because I find them all samish, with only different guns (Oh, that and I don't enjoy killing for the sake of killing). But yet, Epic games have a point - "...These people need to eat..." (How many of you read the UT license agreement?).

I also hate to just sit and talk about problems, hence why I'm writing games myself (with help from my brother and his friend). What I hope is that people will start to group up on the internet, and make games themselves. In the words of Eric. S. Raymond - "As it is impossible to coerce effectively over a network connection.." - anyone doing work on the game would be in it for the fun, and thus you can be sure the product will be solid (If not quite as shiny as something made in EA's latest art studio...). A major step in this direction would be an engine that anyone could use, for nothing. I know that the Unreal Engine, and Source (I think) let you make and distribute mods for free, but I can't afford a copy of UT3 yet, so that's a little annoying. I can afford the bandwith to download a hypothetical free engine though (Free net connections FTW). Maybe I'll find enough time in my life to make one, it'd be nicer if it was open source, but anti-cheats on an open source engine is a modern day oxymoron.

Wow, that's my first major post.

 

[fmsmoothie]

@ Dr. Evil: Yes life is so tough leeching off the teet of all media. I pity you because you have to resort to stealing things because you are so poor. And you can buy media at a price, you just don't like the price.

Also the argument that you buy the games you really like, how many games have you downloaded that weren't worthy of a buy? Probably hundreds more, and thats taking away from the industry that you obviously would be lost without. Since you have to try every single p.o.s. game that comes out.

 

[rcorp]

What about borrowing media? Am I a selfish little prick if my friend lends me his DVD and I watch it? Or if I buy a used music CD? Either way, the creators get nothing and if everybody did that, the creators would die of hunger...
Fortunately I live in a country where downloading music and movies is legal so I can only pay for what I like. And even then a lot of people think I'm stupid for paying for something I could get for free. Yeah, those crazy post-communist countries.

 

[Kemmler0]

Don't fool yourself. There is no country in the world that endorses stealing. Its just not illegal. There is a difference.

On the other side of the coin, i am sick of being blamed and punished as a legitimate consumer for the actions of others. The next time an anti-piracy check is even remotely more complicated than typing a CD key, or invades my privacy even a little bit. I'll get a pirate copy, no questions. Even the fact that i require an internet connection to use certain product, i find offensive.... I buy media off the shelf for a reason!

It's big media's fault in the first place. By trying to stop the flood of media out onto the internet (can anyone smell books burning?) instead of accepting it as new business possibility, they precipitated the problem.

This is your new business environment you dinosaur - adapt or die!

 

[Vinnn]

I will happily pirate music. The new Killers album? Got it! The Doors collections? Got them. I dont think Jim Morrison minds (yes I know he is dead. It was meant to be ironic to prove a point). Who is losing here, honestly? What, Im going to feed Jim Morrisons beneficiaries because they happened to be related to a talented man?

Who can honestly say that they have never gone to a friends place and listened to a CD? Or watched a movie? Or played a game? Dont have double standards, and dont be so quick to call hypocrite. Can you say you have never had a 8 hour lan-fest playing Starcraft or had a night long Halo competition, even if you dont own a copy?

I went to watch a DVD I hired out (legally) the other day, and had to sit through every warning and advert on it. All this anti-piracy garbage? Give me a break. All this is doing is punishing people who are doing the right thing by making them sit through ads attacking people who will never see them.

Games, however, are different.
Ill admit, if its possible to, I will download it. Here is why: Im in Australia. A PC game for me can cost well over $100, which, for you Americans, is about US$92. A little steep? Perhaps!
Especially considering I am a full time uni student making next to nothing and spending $25 a week on bus fare alone.
Dont overcharge so much, you money hungry monsters.

I dont know. I like downloading music. I even get a little joy out of it. A sick little thrill.
Games are different, I almost always feel a little remorse when I download something (except Superman 64. All I felt then was a bloodthirsty rage.) I buy games when I can, and when I love them more than my own friends (thankyou Half Life 2).
But, god willing, I would rather castrate myself then spend $300 on Microsoft Word. To everyone who is crying tears of blood for the money that the EA corporation is losing when I download a copy of Fifa 08, do you all own legal and legitimate copies of all the M$ merchandise?

Nugoo, I admire your love for games. You are getting into the field for the right reason.

 

[jlaakso]

I literally cannot understand the thinking behind force-feeding me "don't copy this movie" propaganda when I start up a DVD I've bought. I already bought it, you idiots! Movies are so cheap these days, I don't see who would rather go to the trouble of downloading them. If you pirated the movie, however, I do think you wouldn't be looking at insulting infomercials... So why bother your customers?

With music, I think it's a matter of convenience. Online retailers are finally catching up and it looks like it's currently easier to buy online than pirate. Now, if only more retailers offered me proper versions (no DRM, high quality, choice of formats). Because the pirates are used to getting the superior product.

With videogames, I think it's a matter of so many gamers being so young and poor that piracy is the easy way to go. I used to be unable to buy new games until my mid-20s. This was not a problem, as the shelves are stacked with used and older gamers at a bargain. I was never short of games to play, even if I got the latest titles half a year later.

Also, the average PC gamer is rather tech-savvy, and thus the trouble you have to go to in order to pirate a game isn't much of a hurdle for them. I personally use no-CD cracks on my PC games: again, why do you inconvenience your legitimate customers? I've had a case of the copy protection software telling me my media was not legitimate - I had no trouble downloading an illegal copy to actually play the game, but why am I made to suffer through this? Then the next game's installer recognized the image mounting software on my PC and told me that I was a dirty pirate. Needless to say, I wasn't happy. I'm not at all convinced that the copy protection schemes do much good for the PC market, but certainly they make me wonder just what am I paying for. Stop being such jerks towards your fans.

 

[fmsmoothie]

@ Dr. Evil: I'm saying near the end of your first post you're playing the victim, and that we should all pity you for pirating.

 

[bkd69]

For starters, copyright infringement is neither theft nor piracy, it's trespass.

It's still illegal, however, and sometimes immoral.

What do I pirate? Mostly British tv shows that are unavailable here, fall season pilots, for a sneak preview, and pilots for series that never got picked up. And vintage arcade ROMs. But I'm far worse than a pirate...I tend to buy used games, and games that wind up in the clearance bin.

Now, when might pirating stuff be not immoral?
If it's simply not for sale at all:
Win98. Microsoft has suspended all sales and support for Win98, and doesn't sell an OS that runs on Win98 class hardware.
Fallout and Fallout 2, or other abandonware. Unless of course, they get bundled with the new Fallout 3, or somebody's got them on some shovelware compilation.
Old arcade machine roms. No, not Namco museum or Atari classic titles. Rather, things like Venture, or Trogg.

Or maybe when the proceeds are going to causes you disagree with.
Michal Moore has already given blanket permission to download his movies, though whether that permission is his to give, I can't say, but his reasoning is that the people he most wants to see his movies are the least likely to pay for the privilege. After all, how much would you pay for a movie ticket, if you knew all the proceeds were going to benefit Scientology?

Or, when you've already paid for the content.
There is absolutely nothing at all wrong with buying a game, and downloading a cracked, consumer friendly version, or a nocd patch. Well, there could be some discussion as to whether your desire for a cracked version is complicity in encouraging others to crack and distribute the game, but I'm pretty sure that a legitimate purchaser's desire for a starforce-free version of a game is less motivation than the cracker's non-game buying peers.

Illegal, yes. Immoral? Tain't necessarily so.

However, did nobody read Brad Wardell's essay?

Point the First:
Don't spend more to develop a title than you're going to get back in sales revenue.

Point the Second:
Imaginary Pirate Revenue cannot be entered in the balance sheet.


For a title like Gish, yes, piracy can mean the difference between Gish II: the Reckoning, and no more games from the author.

But not for EA. Or Ubisoft. Or for sequels. here you have companies with sales records and experience, that know about how many units of each title they're going to sell every christmas, and the wherewithal to make reasonably accurate forecasts of any new titles in the planning stages. Again, who's to blame if they spend more in development than they're going to make back in sales? They need to have a sound business justification if they're going to count on the latest version of SnakeOilRM to convert x,000 torrent leeches into paying customers of the newest installment of Bob Hannigan's Spectrum 7: TacOps Reno.

You can't write off Imaginary Pirate Revenue as a business expense, or a loss. Believe me, if you could, the RIAA and the MPAA would have done so a long time ago, the better to eat away at any potential payoffs to writers, musicians, craft trades, etc. This is why you don't see any record industry executives or movie producers on line at Hollywood soup kitchens. And as long as Snake Oil salesmen and industry watchdog spokescritters trot out ludicrously large numbers of Imaginary Pirate Revenue, which nobody actually believes, all the rest of their claims are going to fall on less than sympathetic ears.

Is it wrong to download copies of games you haven't paid for? For the most part. Can you blame the death of PC Gaming on piracy? Nope.

 

[Therumancer]

Simply put the PC gaming industry is dying for a lot of reasons. Piracy not being one of them. I could say a lot about Piracy, but forget the morality and legal repercussions. In this day and age of keyloggers and "phishing", going to some "hidden" site or grabbing a torrent from the wrong guy can do all kinds of nastiness to your system. Sure, some people take the risk, but on the other hand an increasing number of people aren't willing to risk an expensive computer to get a free piece of software.


Generally speaking though I think the PC gaming industry is dying because of a combination of consoles, and the fact that most of the really good designers are involved in MMO projects which is where the greatest potential rewards are. Very few PC game companies seem interested in developing a single player game that can last someone hundreds of hours anymore when for a similar amount of work they can make an online game and try and get subscription fees along with the software sales.

Not to mention the fact that most game designers don't want to bother to make their stuff compadible with all the hardware out there. Every gamer has had a head-banging experience with the Game company insisting you contact your hardware manufacturer for a solution, and the hardware guy (if you talk to them) insisting it's the software (which it usually is in the long run).

I think a lot of game designers are defecting to consoles in part because it's easier to work with standardized hardware.

Pirates are a conveinent boogey man, and I think that game designers delude themselves into thinking that almost everyone using their software is a thief or potential thief, rather than wanting to look in the mirror to realize that the problem is them.

Of course then again I find the definition of "Pirate" among the industry to be rather messed up in my opinion. Like the Pay Per View/DVR example, I tend to believe that when I buy something it's mine to do with what I want more or less, and use as I want to. All of the copy protection, and needing to keep CDs in drives, and everything else just serves to annoy me.

What's more, I am not a big fan of the "attitude" of many software companies, communicated in their EULA that I am simply using their software, and it in no way belongs to me, and that they have any say over what I do with something I own. Yeah I can understand them not wanting me to run off a million free copies and throw them from my car as I drive down the street, but otherwise they can pound sand.

I will also mention as a side note that I do not consider Abandonware, Fansubs, and similar things to be "Piracy". Basically if something is out there to buy, that's one thing. But if your not releasing it for sale where I can get it, then it's fair game, as it's not costing the company anything as I was never a potential customer.

Basically if some company in Japan for example is concerned about people translating and reading/watching their work in the US, then they should have put it on the market to begin with. When it comes to issues of censorship, I believe people who want to see an uncensored version ALWAYS have that right, so if a company releases a work edited for the US, it's still not piracy if you obtain an uncensored version.

I for example imported a copy of "The Witcher" simply to avoid censorship issues. In that case the company received money because it was possible to do (and was in my language). But in some cases things like fansubs, or running a translated rom through a modded game console are nessicary (though I don't do the latter due to the potential to damage the machine).

>>>----Therumancer--->

 

[Darkmantle]

I have pirated games I have legitimately bought because of DRM. I openly admit to downloading cracked versions of both WC3 and SC1, both times because something happened to make the CD key unreadable, so when I formatted my computer, I lost my games. I would have lost them for good if not for cdgens and cracked versions. But I had already paid for the product, so I figured I was entitled to a copy, original or not be damned. Same thing with the spore DRM, only going to let me install 3 times, MY ASS it's going to restrict my installation rights, cracked it.

In those situations, were my actions justified? I think so.