Poll: Is Piracy Really That Bad?

[mjc0961]

Shock horror, there ARE people who actually wouldn't buy the game in the first place. There ARE people who do it because they would never be able to afford gaming in the first place

And that's supposed to make it okay that they got the game for free? I noticed someone who asked something similar just got called on for their wording, but I'm wondering about the actual point of how that's supposed to justify the act.

It doesn't make it okay or justify it. Games are luxury items. If you're not willing to pay for them or unable to pay for them, tough shit. You aren't entitled to play them and you don't need to play them to survive. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just lying to themselves. "I can't afford it in the first place" is a passable defense if you steal food, water, or clothing because without them you would likely end up dead. But it doesn't fly at all for entertainment. You don't need it to survive, so you deserve no sympathy if you take it without paying for it. Can't afford it? Either find a way to start being able to afford it or go without.

 

[Nuke_em_05]

There are a lot of items that you cannot "try before you buy" with no guarantees or return policies. Life is full of disappointment.

I ask you to name six items or industries that are not software where
1) You cannot try out the product before you agree to pay for it
2) You cannot return the item if after a reasonable period, you are not satisfied
3) You cannot get your money back, in store credit, or some type of compensation if you were disastisfied.
4) The industry is not heavily regulated to protect consumers from fraud, misleading information, and abuse.
5) The service or item is legal.



All I can think of is sporting events. Even there if you compained that you were sat behind a poll and couldn't see the game, you could probably get free tickets to the next game or simular compensation.

Face it, software and gamming in particular is about the only legal industry that gets away with behavior of this type.

Housing, Banking, Credit, Investing, Education, I'll even go one more and throw in Government.

But seriously, sure, that is kind-of a racket.

Here's the problem, and the first part of my post: there is no way to know how many people, after "pirating" a game, actually turn around and buy a copy, or honestly decide that they don't like it. For all intents and purposes, they are the same as "group 1" as far as the publisher is concerned.

 

[Gamergeek25]

stealing is still stealing.

 

[jthwilliams]

There are a lot of items that you cannot "try before you buy" with no guarantees or return policies. Life is full of disappointment.

I ask you to name six items or industries that are not software where
1) You cannot try out the product before you agree to pay for it
2) You cannot return the item if after a reasonable period, you are not satisfied
3) You cannot get your money back, in store credit, or some type of compensation if you were disastisfied.
4) The industry is not heavily regulated to protect consumers from fraud, misleading information, and abuse.
5) The service or item is legal.



All I can think of is sporting events. Even there if you compained that you were sat behind a poll and couldn't see the game, you could probably get free tickets to the next game or simular compensation.

Face it, software and gamming in particular is about the only legal industry that gets away with behavior of this type.

Housing, Banking, Credit, Investing, Education, I'll even go one more and throw in Government.

But seriously, sure, that is kind-of a racket.

Here's the problem, and the first part of my post: there is no way to know how many people, after "pirating" a game, actually turn around and buy a copy, or honestly decide that they don't like it. For all intents and purposes, they are the same as "group 1" as far as the publisher is concerned.

So I know you were half joking but just to proove the point

Housing - Heavily regulated, deeds, inspections, certificates and legal documents that protect both the buyer and the seller are required for every house sale (can cost up to 10k just to cover the costs of all the inspection and legal review) Not to mention building codes, electric codes and everything else that goes into certifying a house.

Banking - despite the last few years of fall out, banking is again one of the most regulated and getting even more regulated daily. People have and continue to succesfully sue and win against banks for failing to meet consumer protection requirements sometimes getting a free house or two out of the bargin

Credit - you can cancell a creditcard at anytime, and the industry is heavily regulated to protect consumers, but yeah people still get in a lot of trouble over fees, that is why there is more regulation limiting fees and increasing loan sharking laws

Investment - OK 3 of the things you have named here are all the finance industry. It is heavily regulated even though creative bastards seem to get around it to everyone dismay from time to time.


Education is also regulated, A school or college must be certified to be accredited and is audited. You can also withdrawl without penity from every acedemic program I am aware as long as you do it in a certain period of time. You can also audit classes at most schools for little or no cost.

Government - well you may have a point here, but government isn't so much an industry as a way of life.

Everything you stated was a service and not something that creates a tanglable product that you buy transactionally. (except housing)

------------------- OK kidding or kind of kidding aside-----------------------
I feel strongly that piracy is a direct response to having no return policy for games which in theory is justified by piracy.

Also, the game industry needs to take a page out of some of the larger software companies. Rather than seeing piracy as a lost sale, they need to look at it as a potential sale that has not yet converted. You could go crazy trying to prevent piracy, but if you could find a good value add for you legit users and then give people who (accidently) got a pirated version to get a legit version easy and quick and without accusations, then you might convert 25% of those 2million pirated version and really increase your proffit.

 

[ooknabah]

Yes, it's bad. If people aren't paying for games (and they AREN'T) then we're not getting new ones. This is particularly bad for the main pirating audience (hardcore gamers who are tech savy) since we lose our voice vs. audiences that are less prone to pirating- See casual games audience.

 

[Sammi Costello]

The only argument one could ever make in favour of piracy is this: The game is not available for retail purchase in my country/region. That's it. If you want to experience a game, and it is physically impossible for you to aquire a copy (ie, the copies aren't in your region, either physically or digitally), then you can make an arguement for.

 

[predatorpulse7]

The reason why games are pirated in many countries of the world is because they are too expensive for many of the local populace to buy. Where I live, pc games go in the 30-40 $ range(diablo 3 standard is 80 bucks preordered) and if you own a xbox or playstation, you are looking at 60-70$ per game easily. The minimum wage is around 210$ give or take and medium is probably around 400-450$ or so. Basically if you buy one xbox game you've already lost one third of your salary for that month.

On the whole piracy is bad for the industry but tbh, I can't exactly blame people downloading. I only started buying games when I got a pay raise(and I wanted to support certain developers that I liked) but when I was younger I was pirating games like crazy. It's very easy to say "games are expensive and it's essentially a hobby so you should chose more inexpensive hobbies" but those that did gaming from an early age know how hard it is to simply quit. And for us older guys, that started gaming when we where swapping games on floppy disks it's even harder to quit.

One thing I never understood is why don't the publishers of these games adapt their selling strategy to the country/region in which they are selling the games in. You can't put out a game with the same 60-80$ pricetag and expect to sell as well in Central-Eastern Europe(to give just one example) as it would in the US, where the buying power is far greater. Make the prices cheaper by a 10-20% on release,sell bundles, do something to encourage those local players to BUY your game. There is great untaped potential in that part of the world(but not only) for gaming but since many people simply can't afford to buy the games but have a great passion for gaming, they pirate. I know several people who pirate the game when it comes out, wait a couple of weeks(even months) and get the game on discount and such, cause they want it in their collection or to share with friends later on(especially those who can't afford to buy the game). I heard that the piracy rate in Eastern Europe is around 67% and to be frank I'm surprised it's this low. A couple years ago, it was probably close to 85-90% of games.

 

[Monkey_Warfare]

Lets see because I enjoyed them after pirating them i bought super meat boy (and because of this binding of isaac), Left 4 dead (1 and 2), magicka, Trine, Shogun Total War, Penumbra Trilogy, oblivion, Bastion, Civilization 5 GOTY and Metro 2033. All games I wasn't sure if I would like but when I tried them I decided they were worth the money.
Of course there are several i pirated liked and didn't buy because they had obnoxious DRM (assassins creed 2) and many I pirated and hated. Since they have a no returns policy I am not sinking 50+ dollars into a useless game
The moral of the story is if you make a good game I will buy it if its on steam (so I can store a backup on my external not have to keep legions of DVD's) and lacks Ubisoft style DRM.
Movies I will buy when they stop making me sit through 20 minutes of ads to see the movie. Punishing legitamate customers and making pirated products superior is one of the dumbest things Hollywood does

 

[Space Spoons]

I think the whole "bringing the games to a wider audience that might not otherwise experience them" argument is bullshit. It might be true, but so what if it is? I want to experience driving a Ferrari. Should I go out and steal one, then rationalize it by saying that because I experienced it, I might possibly maybe buy one legitimately down the line?

You can't afford a game? You don't get to play it. Period. You're not entitled to get something you want just because you want it.

 

[Zaik]

Biggest problem with this internet argument is that nobody ever properly breaks the term 'piracy" down into its' proper halves, and you never have any idea which one a person is talking about.

On one hand, you have pirates who mass produce the shit and try to pass it off as legitimate and sell it to people. That's obviously bad and nobody in their right mind actually supports that.

Pirating for personal use? It's really hard for me to care. Some stuff might not be available where you live, or perhaps you're trying to avoid getting shit on by always online drm in a strictly single player game Ubisoft, or maybe you just got tired of deciding between eating 30 days out of the month and buying a few games here or there. Could also have a damaged disc you can't install from anymore, though that excuse is starting to dry up fast with things like Steam, Battle.net accounts, EA download manager, etc. allowing you to download the games with legitimate cd keys. Older games that you couldn't get from those are generally going to be too old for anyone to actually care enough to charge you with anything.

Yeah, if it's some single guy pulling in 80k/year and pirates ALL his games, that guy is a dick. But that's most likely a fairly slim minority of people who do it. Pirated games are awful buggy messes, unpatchable, and just too much trouble for someone who has the means to just hop on amazon.com, buy them legitimately, and either download them in a few hours or have them delivered straight to his front door. (except for AC2, that game was 100 times better pirated than legitimately bought and I dare anyone to disagree with me)

 

[Strazdas]

Its weird to see such a thread in forum that has so strict rules about piracy talk. it s even weirder of how pool ended up. I noticed people get warnings for admitting to pirate. Thats pretty sad, because you shy people away from giving their true opinions and thus ruin the whole test.
i would jsut liek to point a single thing out:

4) Could subject minors to content their parents/guardians wouldn't want them exposed too.

Thats actually a PRO and not a CON.

Also, when you live in a third world country, guess how many things you can buy, when the companies like Amazon or ebuy even refuse to ship stuff to you.

Pirated games are awful buggy messes, unpatchable, and just too much trouble for someone who has the means to just hop on amazon.com

while i do not endorce piracy, lets get the facts straight. there have been more problems with buggy DRMs than with pirated releases. pirated releases are patchable. most of them even have a workaround for a multiplayer (unofficial servers obviously). while this image is not from games, it shows the concept very well:

Spoiler

 

[Strazdas]

I would also like to point out since i see the misconception roar (yay media?). piracy is what ships in somalia does. what you are talking about is "illegal file sharing". but i guess piracy sounds "more dreadful" right?

 

[SonicKoala]

There ARE people who do it because they would never be able to afford gaming in the first place

I fail to see how this justifies stealing the game.

Piracy =/= Stealing

People such as that do not equal lost sales. It could even be argued that they help a game, I.E publicity, word of mouth, and the fact that if they were to secure a stable income, there would be a chance that they would actually purchase games.

Well, if publishers stop with these idiotic anti-pirating measures, and instead try focusing on giving pirates better incentives to buy new, that is.

Piracy isn't stealing? That requires some serious elaboration.

Okay, they don't equal lost sales - they still have no right to be playing the game, since they didn't pay for it. As for helping a game, that's highly debatable and is in no way based in fact. Moreover, if someone who did pirate a game tells someone about it, isn't it highly likely the means by which they acquire it will become a topic of discussion? And once that individual hears they got it for free, what incentive does that person have to go pay for it? And furthermore, who cares if they're 'helping' a game? That doesn't change the fact they still stole something. Are you suggesting that this beneficial act of advertising the game forgives the crime they previously committed? I call bullshit on that.

And if they don't have a stable income, then they should fucking wait until they do before they begin indulging themselves in luxuries such as video games. And your final point seems to be suggesting that it is all the publishers' fault that people are stealing; well, you realise there wouldn't be anti-piracy measures if piracy wasn't an issue, right? Pirating a game because you disagree with a publishers' practices are not going to change those practices; they will only make them worse.

 

[SonicKoala]

It's theft, pure and simple.

No, it isn't, you fucking moron.

How is it not?

Because you aren't depriving the owner of any product they have made. Stealing always implies one side losing something. Piracy not always implies one side losing something. Therefore, piracy isn't stealing.

Is the 'owner' in this case the game publisher? I'd just like clarification on that. And when does piracy not imply one side losing something, even if that is something like potential profit?

 

[Strazdas]

And if they don't have a stable income, then they should fucking wait until they do before they begin indulging themselves in luxuries such as video games. And your final point seems to be suggesting that it is all the publishers' fault that people are stealing; well, you realise there wouldn't be anti-piracy measures if piracy wasn't an issue, right? Pirating a game because you disagree with a publishers' practices are not going to change those practices; they will only make them worse.

Yeah, lets breed illetare army of slaves because they cant afford books. ive seen that before. publishers do have a LOT of fault in people illegaly downloding the product (not working protectinos securrom securrom even sent a crack in email to a friend who had problem loading the original disc. technically cracks are not illegal. its illegal to download a game. to modify it not to need a disc is not illegal in any country. there has been many studiesp roving that piracy is much higher the lower income you go. this is simple, because people who cant afford food cant pay for WAY OVERPRICED games. its not good what they do, but they dont really have a choice.