Sims 3 Leaked Online

[Andy Chalk]

I'm afraid, Malygris, that I did provide a major motivation even in the post that you replied to. Please, do not continue to reject the facts of this case out of hand. It's intellectually dishonest, and it's just plain wrong.

You mean the fact that a demo for Demigod didn't come out fast enough? I fail to see how pirating the game rather than waiting for the demo - which Stardock is working on - is anything but a sense of entitlement. "I want it NOW and I'm too important to wait!" Wah.

Here it is in simple terms: Stealing to provide food and shelter for you and yours is fine. Stealing videogames because (you think they're too expensive/you want to "try before you buy"/you're angry about DRM efforts/you're sticking it to the man) is not. It's greed and/or an inflated sense of self-entitlement.

Also, "distressingly puerile," very nice. Word of the month club membership is really paying off, eh?

 

[Hithlain]

I'm an economist, so I know firsthand that the information that companies use to determine what games to make next is the PROFIT. Your contribution may be small but you are voting for more of the same with your money. Think of all the lost sales over the years....

As an economist who is opposed to piracy, surely you must also be decrying the terrible effect our public library systems can have on book sales. Surely.

well yes in a way. But think of all the productivity created by the increase in education
My knowledge in exotic fruit has increased exponentially for example!

And you're saying such benefits to society are not possible with torrents?

For instance, what if I said that I had just torrented a copy of Adobe Creative Suite for my girlfriend who is entering a graphic design program. That program costs over five hundred dollars at bare minimum, way out of our reach right now. At yet it is required for the class. Instead of forcing her to enter the program without the tools she needed, torrents would have then increased her educational possibilities, would they have not?

That is why schools often subsidise things like that for the students. I know Purdue does it where I go and it's dirt cheap. Which is pretty much all I can afford. A lot of colleges also offer it free on their computers or remotely (which is how I use it) as long as you are in school. So yes, I do support that. I don't support stealing however >_>

 

[yourbeliefs]

Maybe The Sims 3 can take the #2 most pirated game spot from The Sims 2..

 

[Susan Arendt]

Torrents allow people access to information for free as well. Outside of simple physical differences where is the appreciable difference between torrents and libraries?

Simple -- libraries are created with the help and knowledge of those providing the content. Libraries work with book publishers to fill their shelves -- it's all done with the publishers and authors' consent. The same is not true of torrents (at least in most cases).

And also, people viewing porn in the library is totally ew. (Fun fact - I worked in a library when I was in high school.)

Sounds like there's an anecdote in this.

Indeed, but let's leave that for another time.

It's fine to state your opinion that they are stealing. But the fact remains that what they are prosecuted for is not stealing. As I've said on this thread, that's not splitting hairs, that's an important difference to examine when one talks about the legitimacy of piracy.

Really? Why?

 

[Ilosia]

Personally I say that people should wait a while before commenting on this, it's way to early to simply say that none of these downloads will turn into sales.

 

[Lord George]

I've already pre ordered it, but if I was to torrent this then would I still be a pirate?

 

[nikomas1]

I've already pre ordered it, but if I was to torrent this then would I still be a pirate?

In the legal sense, until that copy arrives, You've "pirated" it, but really, I don't think anyone would think you stole it, for as long that you don't cancel the order that is.

 

[Miral]

You know what? When you typed the sentence that said: Pirated copies != lost sales, you lost what little credibility I had given you.

That's a blatant bit of silliness. I mean, really now. How can pirated copies not equal lost sales? It just doesn't make sense from a buisness perspective.

Of course it makes sense. It's simple economics. As you increase the price, demand for something goes down. As you decrease the price, demand increases. If you decrease the price to zero, then demand is typically maximised (although having said that, there are some quirks; a lower-priced item is sometimes seen as "less valuable"/"less good" and so demand falls off, but again once it goes below a certain point demand becomes higher due to impulse buying).

Given a product on sale for $50 and the same product offered for $0 (or rather, whatever it costs to actually download it), it's therefore not surprising that the $0 one is in higher demand than the $50 one, even though it is illegal.

And it is simple truth that many people who pirate a game would not be willing to buy it at full price even if that were their only option -- and they might not even be willing to buy it at a discount. Sure, piracy will definitely cause some lost sales, but you definitely can't count every pirated copy as a lost sale, nor probably even most of them.

Plus: games are priced very stupidly. I point to Valve's findings [http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22378] that when they cut the price of games by 75%, the actual revenue went up by 1740%. (ie. that's not 17x more sales, that's 17x more money!)

 

[scotth266]

SNIP

While your first paragraph is true, and your understanding of economics is great, a downloaded copy (especially in the case of those willing to just steal the game off the Internet) is a lost sale, not matter how you look at it. The company is not making the money off the copy that they would have if the pirate had bought the game: that is my point. Hence, it is a lost sale.

You're using the flimsy definition of what a lost sale is to bolster your argument. While being sort-of true, if you remove the human factor piracy causes the devs to not make money that they would have if it didn't exist.

EDIT: Damn Ragdrazi, Susan beat me to the punch. My point was that libraries are a buisness that make the writers money, and torrents are not, something that she's demonstrated with her argument. Sure, if torrents were more like libraries (operating on a monthly fee, offering a specific amount of time that you can BORROW the game, and they delete themselves after this amount of time) I would support torrents happily. As is, they serve as little more than non-physical thefts.

 

[Andy Chalk]

yadda yadda thesaurus

You keep banging that drum, champ, but your imagined right to "try before you buy" is nothing more than a sense of entitlement rearing its ugly, "me-first" head. How does the decision not to release a demo translate into your right to steal a game? The argument falls apart even faster in cases when a demo is planned but not ready when the full game releases, as is the case with Demigod.

In other words, try harder.

 

[Susan Arendt]

Is wanting to try a game before you buy it a valid reason for wanting to pirate? Absolutely, without question. Being asked to plunk down $60 for something you've never tried, then denied the ability to return it or even trade it in and make some of your money back, is outrageous. But having good motivation for doing something immoral (yes, I'm calling it that) isn't necessarily a good enough reason to go ahead and do it.

 

[Andy Chalk]

But there's a lot of room between wanting to pirate and actually doing it. Do I get irritated when games I might be interested in don't offer a demo? Sure. Does that justify swiping the whole thing outright? Absolutely not. It justifies nothing more than a decision on my part to not buy the game.

Which is true of pretty much every excuse for piracy. "I hate EA and their shitty DRM!" Okay, so don't buy the game. It's a simple equation, and splitting semantics over whether or not copyright infringement is theft in the eyes of various courts in various jurisdictions doesn't enter into it.

 

[Sigenrecht]

I think all semantics and justifications are irrelevant; the simple fact is, people torrent things because it saves them money, and unless the pursuit of greed has become sinful all of a sudden (OH WAIT--), I don't think I stand on stable enough a ground to decry people trying to save a quick buck. I mean, most of these people will be teenagers who make a hundred or so a week. I'd keep that for stuff I need rather than stuff I'd like, and; oh shit, look over there, there's an alternative that costs just as much as NOT BUYING THE GAME. It's like killing two birds with one stone, and it stops becoming a moral question, but a logical one.

 

[Sparkky]

Despite the high-minded claims of many file-sharers, at the end of the day piracy is about little more than greed and an overinflated sense of entitlement.

whats with the escapsist reporters and their overly bias opinions on piracy and supporting the developers blindly. Its truly saddening.

I'm about ready to just give up on this site as this isn't impartial news, this might as well be a blog post. I want game news, not some random shmucks opinion on piracy tacked onto the end and shoved down my pupils.

If the greatest minds debating computer ethics can't come up with a solid conclusion about piracy and its effects; what the hell gives Malygris this "overinflated sense of entitlement" that allows him to pass such a judgment.
Seriously disappointing article.