camazotz said:
The problem I see with pirates is they are a bunch of worthless, whiney self-serving gits who feel they are entitled to other people's work and justify their actions on the slimmest of excuses.
And the problem I see with developers is that they feel entitled to my money without providing a quality product that:
A) Has a cohesive story, and quality gameplay to tie it together, rather than just being a piece of crap built on expectations raised by advertising, paying for positive reviews, or selling on a good previous product
B) Comes finished, not poorly made and requiring patches and work-arounds for the next 12 months
C) Is my own copy when I purchase it, and I am able to do what I would like with it, not that I am effectively "leasing" a product and can only install it on a certain number of computers, or must be online at all times to play it (even for offline single-player content), or whatever other hoops they've applied unnecessarily
D) Is charged at a reasonable price
slowpoke999 said:
Heres the steps to making gaming better in general:
Give instrusive Drm the boot>Give rip-off DLC the boot>Give subscription fees the boot>Give paying for in game items the boot...
DRM is, to me, the same as gun ownership. It makes you feel safe, but criminals just start to carry a gun as well. It might stop a few potential burglars, but the backlash (deaths from armed intruders, or accidents caused by having a gun in your house) isn't worth the gain. DRM might stop some pirates, but the others just work harder and still pirate your game, and you lose legit customers who are annoyed at the difficulty in accessing something they've bought.
Useless DLC must go (extra weapons, cars, etc). If I'm enjoying a product however, I'm more than willing to continue to pay for quality DLC (e.g. Borderlands), or an ongoing fee (e.g. WoW), so long as the product is of a good quality and continued to be supported in the case of subscription services.
epunk35 said:
The defense for pirates is "they wouldn't have bought that anyway", if I pirate a song that I really love, then I pirate the rest of the album the song is from, then never buy a record from that artist. They have lost a sale, because I liked their music a lot obviously, but piracy was free and easy. Had the option not been there I would have had to suck up $10 and buy the album. Same with the game if I wanna buy Metal Gear Solid but I pirate it instead and I play it. Sale lost because I don't need it since I've played it.
I find new music through reviews, checking out the artists featured on an album I already like, similar artists to the ones I already like, and the inspiration for the artists I like. It's $35 for a CD here (unless it's a top 20 artist). If I only like 1 out of every 10 albums I try, it's costing me $350 to find a decent CD. With downloading, it costs me nothing. Sure, Artist A has missed out on the profits from that one CD of his I might have bought, but because he's a horrible artist he'd never have seen another cent from me, and neither would anyone else that was linked to him in any way. I probably would've said "Oh, I hate " and never gone back to it. But because I was downloading music instead of buying it, I wasn't burnt by his crappy product. I was willing to give Artists B, C and D a go as well, and I now buy all their stuff on release date, go to their gigs, buy their shirts. I owned about 10 CDs before I began downloading. I now own around 500. I can easily go & spend $300 at a time on music. My music taste has expanded ridiculously in the past 10 years, purely because of pirating music.
Same with games. If I pirate it and love it, I buy it for my collection and replay value, and buy the sequel too.
Serioli said:
Also not sure the 'pirate my material and buy a t-shirt' model would work with a game due to the production costs compared to those involved in music.
I think it was an indie game developer, who would only be making $5-10 profit on his $20 game sale anyway. Agreed it's hard for bigger developers to make money that way, but they could try giving away an older game for free & gain some future sales. I'm sure the Free Portal deal going on right now with Steam is getting some definite sales for the sequel. Those who like both Portals might try HL2 & love it. They like HL2, they might give TF2 or L4D a try. Hell, since they're now on Steam and seeing the sales, games by whole other companies are probably getting a significant boost in sales.
dementedartist22 said:
Do I love games? Yes. Can I afford games? Not always. Does this mean I can steal? No. Yeah If I want a stereo and I can't get it, I could certainly steal one from best buy, (Assuming there was an easy, undetectable way to do so), and go home and enjoy it, for free. Does that make it right? Nope.
A better analogy: You want a 3DTV from best buy, but they have none on display. The salesperson tells you it's a good TV, a review you read in a magazine says it's a good TV, and the last Sony TV you bought was awesome. You spend your hard earned cash on a Sony 3DTV, get it home, turn it on, and it's a black and white 30cm CRT with some googly eyes glued on the front. Or it's a good normal TV, but the 3D won't work properly until they "patch" it in 3 months. Repeat process multiple times for multiple products from multiple suppliers. You'll soon learn not to buy anything unless you've tried it yourself, no?
Piracy is when your mate has just bought a brand new TV, so he lends you his old Panasonic 3DTV. You love the thing, and buy your own. Or maybe he never asks for it back, and so you just keep his without buying your own. But since you know Panasonic make good 3DTVs, you'll be willing to give their new stereo a try, even if you can't try it in-store.
Johnnyallstar said:
300 jobs were lost because one of the leading music media suppliers had to shut down a distribution center in my area. I was working for them at the time. It's not good, no matter how people justify it psychologically.
Ah, of course. That's entirely due to piracy. It has nothing to do with the fact that the music industry is increasing support of over-produced, under-talented, cookie-cutter artists rather than taking a chance on new styles. Please learn the difference between correlation and causation.
DaOysterboy said:
B) Why do the pirates cling to the argument that "We'll buy it if we like it." Can you show me any statistical evidence? "I bought such and such after pirating it" isn't good enough, because I have a friend who looked at my game collection and says "Oh you like such and such? You know I could get you anything you wanted for free." Gimme a damn number and not an anecdote.
In your ranting, you might have missed the difficulty in quantitatively measuring something as abstract as the increased number of purchases for future titles, or games in general, caused by piracy and it's effects (increased interest in games, positive word of mouth, etc). Unless you're sending a questionnaire with every game purchase AND expecting people to answer it honestly (which they probably won't, considering their answer would be admitting to an illegal act), you're never going to get accurate quantitative data.