I agree that piracy is cheapness and laziness and it actually does hurt somebody trying to profit on a body of work, but I really don't see the point in paying $120 for Earthbound. You could say that it's again cheapness and laziness but at this point nobody is being hurt by the piracy, it certainly doesn't hurt the collectors, there will always be people who want the original antique that the content came on, that will never change, so it wont' hurt them.racrevel said:All this "grey" area stuff is pretty much the same excuses pirates make anyway, pretty much cheapness and laziness.. If you want to find these games you can, you just still need to pay for them saying its overpriced or hard to find or doesnt support the developer is a pretty poor excuse to what ammounts to piracy. When there are generally a ton on ebay you are just being cheap and lazy.
From a moral point of view with piracy of current software I see that the developer has put effort into a game and they deserve to profit from that game if I enjoy it, but with for instance commodore 64 games, the person that put the effort into the game can no longer receive compensation for my enjoyment of the product, the game is now in the realm of things that are worth money because they are rare, like stamps.
If I actually enjoy the design of a stamp that's worth $97,000 because it's one of only seven remaining from a printing in 1917 should I really have to pay $97,000 to enjoy it? Or couldn't I just blow up a picture of it and hang in on my wall for 27 cents?
You can't do that with video games though. I don't want the original antique kinetoscope from 1894 just give me a $2 dvd that has a good recording of the movie on the kinetoscope. I also don't want the original cartridge, keep it, it's fodder for collectors, I want the digital contents of the cartridge, and there still isn't a way that I can pay for a reproduction of the content on most of those goddamn antique plastic cartridges.
There's no reason somebody should have to pay $140 to buy an original first edition printing of the book Cosmos by Carl Sagan just to read it and no reason why somebody should have to pay $140 to buy a first and only edition of Earthbound just to play it, it's silly, especially when it's already in near infinite quantity online and video game publishers have yet to have any interest in releasing any but a tiny fraction of classic video games. Emulation is literally the only thing that's preserving the history of video gaming right now, it's been over 30 years and the industry is only now beginning to take a brief look back and pull a small handful of games back into the public eye. Until they actually do something proactive with a game like re-release it in a way similar to a books second printing or edition, there is no way the masses can interact with those classics besides shopping for ridiculous "first printings" of video games or emulation.