To anyone who thinks piracy is ok
- Thread starter icame
- Start date
Kair said:
Please don't try to tell me i didn't read your reply. When i said that those who make the product (or finance the development) don't make any money - that was not the point in and of itself. I built on that to say that he is not only NOT making money, he is LOSING money: an important distinction. I then went on to ask where is the incentive for producing software if it will only cost you money. And it begs another question - where did our producer get his money from in the first place? if producing software costs money, and makes none, so where does he get his money from?
You have explained some of the inconsistencies of the illustration. But one inconsistency has been replaced by another - if the blue bars depict revenue, i will assume that the grey piracy bar reflects the value of the total downloads. So why do you have a gigantic red "Everyone" bar in the middle? If all the others are reflective of amounts of money, and therefore not actually even vaguely reflective of the amount of people buying the software, why do you have a bar that is not reflective of money, but of people instead? It seems a little propaganda-ish to me.
Piracy is not OK, but I think some games should have better demos for me to check out whether they're worth paying for or not. I've only really "pirated" a handful of games in my entire life, and, really, I was only doing it to find out whether they were any good or not, because the demo didn't tell me enough, or didn't even exist.
Those games, most of the time, I ended up buying, so I don't consider that to truly be piracy, since they got their money. The few I didn't buy, I deleted, because I thought they were crap and didn't want to continue playing them. So there was no money lost on the publisher's end, due to me not wanting to play the game after I saw it was truly like, and not keeping the pirated copy I had, so there's no extra "unpaid-for copy" floating around.
Those games, most of the time, I ended up buying, so I don't consider that to truly be piracy, since they got their money. The few I didn't buy, I deleted, because I thought they were crap and didn't want to continue playing them. So there was no money lost on the publisher's end, due to me not wanting to play the game after I saw it was truly like, and not keeping the pirated copy I had, so there's no extra "unpaid-for copy" floating around.
I think also there's some grey area when it comes to the claim 'I can't afford to buy games'.
Are you in a country where games cost half a month's wages, and the pirated ones are like $2?
Or are you, like most people, in the UK or US, and when you say 'can't afford it' actually choosing between buying a game and a night or two down the pub or nightclub?
I personally love delivery pizza, but I can only afford to order it once a month if I'm lucky on my budget, and if something interesting comes up on Steam, well, I choose that over pizza.
Now I'm not saying I don't download anything any more, but I carefully manage my disposable income to buy games when I can. I sense many people use 'can't afford' when they mean 'would prefer to spend the money on beer or weed'.
If you're choosing between games and rent or bills, basic living expenses, then tbh I don't mind the piracy, whatever people say about 'if you can't afford it you don't get to play it', there's actually no harm done. However, if Budweiser or Dominos are getting your money instead of the gaming industry, then you are robbing the people who work around the clock to entertain you.
Side note: It kinda amuses me how often piracy threads hit 20+ pages, and yet no-one has their mind changed, I think we all still hang on to our opinions whatever other people say, and most of the time it's the same things repeated. Seems there's been a few new things come up this time however, so not really complaining.
Are you in a country where games cost half a month's wages, and the pirated ones are like $2?
Or are you, like most people, in the UK or US, and when you say 'can't afford it' actually choosing between buying a game and a night or two down the pub or nightclub?
I personally love delivery pizza, but I can only afford to order it once a month if I'm lucky on my budget, and if something interesting comes up on Steam, well, I choose that over pizza.
Now I'm not saying I don't download anything any more, but I carefully manage my disposable income to buy games when I can. I sense many people use 'can't afford' when they mean 'would prefer to spend the money on beer or weed'.
If you're choosing between games and rent or bills, basic living expenses, then tbh I don't mind the piracy, whatever people say about 'if you can't afford it you don't get to play it', there's actually no harm done. However, if Budweiser or Dominos are getting your money instead of the gaming industry, then you are robbing the people who work around the clock to entertain you.
Side note: It kinda amuses me how often piracy threads hit 20+ pages, and yet no-one has their mind changed, I think we all still hang on to our opinions whatever other people say, and most of the time it's the same things repeated. Seems there's been a few new things come up this time however, so not really complaining.
I should note that when I say swapping copies, it wasn't 'swapping' as such, as we were all keeping a copy of anything we passed on, it was plain and simple piracy, just as torrenting is now, anything one person got was spread thru the network at school.Garak73 said:
I don't think DD is such a problem, I personally feel like I still have a collection of games, when I open my steam library and see 100+ titles. What needs to happen is more companies need to stop clinging onto old titles and get them onto Steam for a couple of bucks, because even 10,000 sales at $2 is worth getting an ancient game windows 7 compliant.
As for your last paragraph, I'm entirely in agreement, after buying GTA IV thru steam near it's release, I'm feeling stung and I'll seriously reconsider buying anything else with heavy protection. Steam should be enough! Especially when they went back and stripped GFWL and Rockstar Social out later on, just tells me to buy games 6 months to a year later when they'll be cheaper and 'safe'.
It is merely an illustration of how many people get to benefit from the information.Turbo_Destructor said:
There will be no capitalist leech in the third hypothetical world. I already told you it was not like the two other capitalist worlds. Humanity does not run on money, capitalism does.
More and more I wonder why people buy into the anti-piracy rhetoric. Saying that piracy is against the law is true, this however does not always make it morally or even ethically wrong. I know of plenty of circumstances especially in the third world where software piracy becomes almost a necessity.
A good example of this would be serveral buildings recently built in Kenya which were drawn on pirated versions of auto-cad. Sure this was piracy but then again the local architects and engineers could hardly afford the software legally.
Interestingly those adds which include "You wouldn't steal a Car, etc..." and state that piracy is stealing could be considered false or misleading advertising in Australia as piracy is not "Stealing" or "Theft" under any criminal code I know of and certainly not the Australian Criminal code. Indeed software piracy is covered in most countries by the copyright act which would make any unlawful duplication a breach of said act. Which you may feel that this is semantics it is not as Theft always implies that you are stealing goods from someone depriving them in of the monetary value invested in the goods and the goods themselves. In the case of copyright infringement you are depriving a producer of moneys which would in be owed had you bought the software from the producers distributor legally. A rather striking difference.
Software piracy is a far-cry from actual piracy and indeed all types of theft. to say otherwise is simply to misrepresent the facts. While piracy is illegal and not advisable, this hardly makes it the biggest evil of the day or indeed even a large evil, the lack of transparency and blatant disinformation surrounding the topic is also worry some especially when software companies claim there losses from piracy in the billions while giving no evidence that this is indeed the case. As piracy figures for games are always stated as the figures of illegal downloads detected, ignoring that the bulk of these downloads come from third world countries and often even countries where said games have been banned from sale.
Muslim nations are especially notorious for banning anything they deem as morally reprehensible. When these downloads are properly attributed the cost of software piracy looks decidedly marginal.
A good example of this would be serveral buildings recently built in Kenya which were drawn on pirated versions of auto-cad. Sure this was piracy but then again the local architects and engineers could hardly afford the software legally.
Interestingly those adds which include "You wouldn't steal a Car, etc..." and state that piracy is stealing could be considered false or misleading advertising in Australia as piracy is not "Stealing" or "Theft" under any criminal code I know of and certainly not the Australian Criminal code. Indeed software piracy is covered in most countries by the copyright act which would make any unlawful duplication a breach of said act. Which you may feel that this is semantics it is not as Theft always implies that you are stealing goods from someone depriving them in of the monetary value invested in the goods and the goods themselves. In the case of copyright infringement you are depriving a producer of moneys which would in be owed had you bought the software from the producers distributor legally. A rather striking difference.
Software piracy is a far-cry from actual piracy and indeed all types of theft. to say otherwise is simply to misrepresent the facts. While piracy is illegal and not advisable, this hardly makes it the biggest evil of the day or indeed even a large evil, the lack of transparency and blatant disinformation surrounding the topic is also worry some especially when software companies claim there losses from piracy in the billions while giving no evidence that this is indeed the case. As piracy figures for games are always stated as the figures of illegal downloads detected, ignoring that the bulk of these downloads come from third world countries and often even countries where said games have been banned from sale.
Muslim nations are especially notorious for banning anything they deem as morally reprehensible. When these downloads are properly attributed the cost of software piracy looks decidedly marginal.
It is not entirely unbiaised, but it's very enlightening. It took several days of reflexion on this article to write what follows. I am serious about my position, so I present you the mother of all text-walls. If you can't be bothered to read it all you can just skip to the very last sentences.icame said:
Don't bother coming at me with your usual anti-piracy arguments, I probably already answered to it in this post. I wonder if anyone will make the effort to read it entirely, meh, at least that made me study my own opinions in depth.
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I only quote the points on which I disagree, if I did not quote it I mostly agreed to it, and I read the whole thing several times. Of note is the authors opinion on Steam, that I share completely.
I read the previous versions of this article some time before, when I didn't really start to think on the subject. I already disagreed on some points, but I really liked it and it opened my eyes to the complexity of the issue. It is one of the things that made me study dialectics, and now I am going up against it's author. Since he is smarter and way more knowledgeable than most of the loud armchair specialists of the internet I have much respect in his insights. I hope that he could be open to reconsider some of his opinions when presented with the correct arguments, as I am.
page 2- the legality of piracy
-"digital piracy allows perfect reproduction with no quality loss. Thus digital copies combined with a mass distribution channel like the Internet equate to far greater potential to cause economic loss to the software and entertainment industries than ever before."
->The opposite side could say with as much reason that digital copies+internet equates to a greater potential for exposition of general culture, and so a greater incentive to actually buy more creations (see the point on page 3 and the one on the conclusion for more on this).
page 2- the rationale of copyright
-"you cannot copyright an idea"
->indeed, but there is more than one side on this point. One can discuss the idea presented in an article but not pass the article itself around, or if the article is in digital form it is itself assimilable to an idea, and can thus be passed around. The only limits being basic respect for the author, which means giving credit to the one who put the idea in this form.
->When one says he "owns" something after buying it he means that he owns the right to use it as he sees fit, and sharing is not publishing. It's understandable that many artist would like perfect control on what people do with their creations after they bought it, but this is simply delusional.
-->further discussion on how the digitalisation of a work could reduce it to the equivalent of an idea may be needed. This does not mean the work becomes worthless however, see the point on Conclusion.
page 3- on the free rider problem and the incidence of positive word of mouth
-"However the argument deliberately ignores one fundamental problem: there's no evidence to suggest that positive word of mouth from pirates results in anything other than more people pirating a particularly popular game."
-"the evidence does not support the claim that anything beyond a minority of pirates actually wind up purchasing the games they pirate."
->The zeitgeist article on the situation of last century's Germany seems to be relevant here ( http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,710976,00.html ), it's main drawback is it's an historical study made of hindsights, it still is better than a flimsy study. A minority is still better than nothing, at least that is a solid gain, opposed to an hypotetic loss.
-->Is the current situation with online piracy identical, partly related, or completely different to what happened in last century's Germany despite the similarities ? That is yet to be determined objectively.
page 4- global piracy rates
-"In any case, we can conclude that the proportional rates of piracy shown above do indicate quite clearly that the scale of piracy is very high all around the world, and that there must be some genuine and likely quite significant economic losses incurred in aggregate due to all this piracy, even if it's not on the basis of each pirated copy being a full-price lost sale."
->The scale of piracy, while impressive, is not a proof of loss. (see previous point, and some of what follows)
page 6- PC vs Console (part 2)- is piracy solely to blame ?
-"So far there's a very strong case for the premise that piracy is a substantial reason why there's such a discrepancy between sales of the same game among different platforms. No other plausible explanation accounts for the way in which console games outsell PC games by such a large factor."
->The other factors (pc versions don't need emulators, casual/console gamers are the majority...) are at least equally important. The numbers of piracy would be more relevant then the other factors if the losses were not just potentials.
->Actual losses due to the unavoidable arms race against crackers can be considered, since publishers do have to invest in complex security measures constantly just to discourage the casual piracy. But even consoles need DRMs , a console is itself a DRM, so this is just a change of battlefield .
-->It's human behavior that dictates this situation, but can it be changed ? how ? Shifting to other audiences is not a long term solutions to this problems. For instance, console emulators may just become more common.
page 6- PC vs Console (part 2)- a cautionary tale
-in relation to the article Piracy bleeds Mac game makers dry.
->This is the same issue but in the smaller Mac world and that's a crucial difference, I can think of several rebutal to this point.
-->this was too small a market, especially with mac users generally not being pc gamers at all. (knowing a few mac users personally, I can tell). For that reason it is safe to say too few would have paid, if they did not have a choice, to make a difference.
-->too few publishers, and/or too little publicity.
-->the games didn't sell much because they either were not good to begin with, or were not to the tastes of the mac users.
-->mac games makers and publishers bailed out because finding a profitable solution did not hold as much short term benefit as switching to the already existent, and much larger, PC market.
--->As a conclusion to this, I would say that total destruction of the PC game market in the same way is impossible, as the proportion of paying customers is non negligible, at least for the talented developpers (as the profits of some indies like Minecraft's creator can prove). The majors switching completely to the console would leave the indie developpers freer to expand and eventually become majors themselves. Because, Finally, due to the number of PC being so large in the first place, the proportion of paying customers cannot be reduced to the point that this market would be entirely unsustainable, no matter how bad piracy gets. It's easy to stay fixated on downloads being orders of magnitude greater than the sells, it does not make them more than potentials.
page 7- Online and Subscriber-Based Business Models
-"even single-player games now usually have a multiplayer component tacked on in the hopes of building an online following and thus providing further incentive for more people to actually buy the game rather than pirate it."
->"usually" only for the most popular titles. A minority of players are not interested in any kind of multiplayer, adding multiplayer to an otherwise sound single player game may attract gamers with an interest in multiplayer, not force the single players to pay.
-->Will exclusively single player games be a thing of the past because of this ? Despite the problems raised by piracy it does not look like it, or does it matter anyway, if the single player mode is good despite ressources spent on multiplayer ?
page 7- Online and Subscriber- Episodic Content Business Models
-"We did this with Operation Flashpoint and experienced a sales spike after each new episode was released as people with conterfeit copies were forced to go out and buy the legitimate product. We are talking about many tens of thousands of extra sales gained this way."
->The other side of the coin, that is not any less valid, is that those tens of thousand of extra sales (or a part of them, to be more fair than this quote) would not have happened had the game not been downloaded and tried by these persons in the first place.
->The way episodic content is done now (à la half-life 2 etc...) is clearly wrong in that it's to the detriment of the players, but it has the potential to be a good compromise with human behavior. the quality of the add-ons and the games is a different issue, poor quality is not sustainable on the long term, and the game industry already crashed because of poor quality, not piracy.
-->is the current poor quality of games due to piracy ? That is another debate, though this is only making something unavoidable into a scapegoat: the only real reason for a lack of quality will always be a lack of talent. A lack of talent may be due to a lack of incentive, but if this lack of incentive is unavoidable there is no loss to begin with. Anyway profits are still being made, so there is no way for incentives to disappear completely in a large enough market (that include the market for non-casual games).
page 7- Online and Subscriber- Desirable or Undesirable Changes?
-"It's one thing for consumers to constantly demand that the PC games industry create better quality games which are not only cheaper and run well on lower spec hardware, but also have no copy protection; it's another thing altogether for companies to somehow find a practical way to turn this fantastic and often unrealistic request into a business model that works."
->The logic for AAAs is different because it draws the casual pirates, but that is still a reasonable expectation for niche genres. A game, good or bad, only cost more today because of the public expectations on graphic quality. Ambience, story and gameplay depth have become secondary because developpers keep targetting the largest possible audience (they would do the same even with no piracy), which is mainly concerned about the costly eye candy ; even though these elements together are proved to more than compensate for a bit less detailed game.
-"it's likely that certain types of games, possibly entire genres, will be relegated to niche status, or in extreme cases die off altogether as adventure gaming did. This is discussed in more detail in the Conclusion."
->Great games tends to be unsuccessfull because they are often too sophisticated for the larger audiences, a loss of potential sells is not any more probable than the public for these games not being large enough yet. The current publishers and devs can leave, but there will be others to fill in the gaps sooner or later, be it the frustrated gamers themselves (see point on page 10- PC Gaming is Dead). Side note, products having a life cycle is normal, it's not a point but a constatation unrelated to the authors thesis against piracy.
-->Publishers and developpers running scared of niche genres for this reason, are not helping in getting the public for these games to grow. This vicious circle could be broken if the casual gamers tastes evolve toward some of the years old classics that are still being praised. Time will tell.
page 8-Copy Protection & DRM
-on DRM being only meant to discourage casual piracy and being effective at that.
->This is easy to overlook in a heated debate, DRMs discourage the shallow casual players only interested in the new big titles. For the niche players this is a different story, it seems the ones attracted to more sophisticated, unknown or ancient games will always be savy enough to decide if they want to pay, drm or not. In effect DRMs are relevant only in proportion to the genre's popularity, as Stardock found out.
-->the conscience of gamers attracted to niche genres how they tend to pay more, and how their excuses may be more valid than the casual pirates' is yet another debate.
-on "DRM Causes Piracy"
->More popular games will attract more casual gamers, which are the casual pirates, in direct proportion. So naturally a highly popular game without protection will let them all try it, this can have some bad consequences obviously. This and the poor reviews that follow are only due to common stupidity, not on piracy simply being "bad". There are games, as mentioned in this article, who were pirated because of their DRMs, even if it was due to hysteria and more or less valid excuses. So, DRMs do cause piracy maybe as much as they fight it, at least in some cases. In other words, DRMs fight zero day piracy, but encourage the ongoing file-sharing.
page 9- Copy Protection & DRM (part 2)
-on the vested interests against starforce and others.
->It's easy to pinpoint the torrent sites owner making big profits on publicity for being amoral bastards, indeed that is what most of them are. Yet this is not enough to make sharing amoral in itself (see point on page 10- practical solutions).
page 9- Copy Protection & DRM (part 2)- DRM and the Future
-"piracy has forced increasingly intrusive DRM upon us. No-one likes it, but it's here to stay so long as people pirate things rampantly under a range of excuses. If you want to be outraged about DRM, direct a lot of that anger towards the pirates who've made it necessary."
->DRMs are a necessity agains casual piracy, piracy is unavoidable and so is the constant arms race between the crackers and the security engineers. I would rather save my anger for the crackers, but piracy can't go on without the crackers, and vice-versa in a lot of cases. In the end this is an unavoidable situation, there is no point in just getting angry about it. More intrusive DRMs fueled by hatred toward freeloaders are only food for the crackers. They may be necessary for popular games but nothing will ever change by seeing them as the one and only thing to do.
page 10- Practical Solutions & Conclusion- PC Gaming is Dead
-"while PC gaming as a whole may thrive based on the sales success of subscriber-driven MMOs and casual puzzle games for example, many PC gamers may see their favorite types of games become casualties to changing business models in search of gamers who actually pay for the games they play."
->There is no reasons to think that attracting more people with casual games will change the proportions of consumers and freeloaders. This is like chasing a mirage. At least this could have the good side effect of making niche gamers desperate enough to give more support to whatever few games and developers they like (or take matters into their own hands, see the thief serie, it's mods, and the Dark Project) .
page 10- Practical Solutions & Conclusion- The Culture of Piracy
-"Not only are the people who are pirating games openly bragging about it, they're flowering it up with a range of excuses, even suggesting that it's their right to do so."
->I can only answer this bia with my own. The right to share is a basic thing if you take the humanistic view, one may be dead set against piracy but still owe his human rights to Humanism, period. For the non casual downloader who pays for most of what he gets this is neither a flowering up nor a farce, for the casual however this is only a convenient excuse. Humanists online, interested in the betterment of all humanity through all things (not just video games, movies and music, but paintings and ebooks for example), represent only a microscopic fraction of the downloaders, but this is not enough to negate the good in humanism or in sharing.
page 10- Practical Solutions & Conclusion- Practical Solutions
-"What's objectionable about this practice isn't so much the amount of money these people are making, but the fact that they're doing it without contributing a single cent to the people who are actually responsible for creating the content that is being pirated. These sites are the ultimate free riders, because their content is almost entirely made up of other peoples' hard work."
->Wherever there is easy profits there will be nosy bastards, it remains that torrent sites have no "content" but "access to the ones sharing the products", that would be the torrent client. The torrent sites owners may be downright cynical (as are many downloader) and yellow livered about it, they still help in a humanistic goal. At least ad-blockers are there to give back some of the cynicism.
-->some practical solutions for the torrent sites themselves would to stop being so hilariously greedy and put links to the authors sites or even paypal accounts, to actively encourage and facilitate donating to the artists on the same pages where the clients can be found, befriend the authors who use Creative Commons by helping them to get known and so on.
page 10- Practical Solutions & Conclusion- Conclusion
-"With the Culture of Piracy so prominent now, it seems everyone is demanding freedom without understanding that freedom does not equal free; everything has a cost, and we need to recognize that if content creators provide us with entertainment, they need to be rewarded fairly for it. We need to demonstrate that we can exercise the freedoms we have responsibly if we don't want to lose them. People can conjure up all manner of excuses to justify rampant piracy all day long, however neither the data nor logic bear any of these excuses out in the end."
->With the digitalisation of all medias, for the first time in history, freedom = free since this digitalisation is making them a lot closer to ideas than to material goods. It's giving credit where credit is due that is not free, people not respecting that is more of a maturity issue. There is no need to ask for a honor system, because with piracy already being free and practical that is how things already work. If anti-piracy arguments were all completely true there would already be no more musicians and video games, they're obviously not about to disappear either.
->Data nor logic goes against the fact that from a humanistic view, the view that did more good than all the materialistic ones combined (see Human Rights, of course that can be debated, I'll defend my position on this too), sharing is beneficial for everyone on the long term.
This will be very hard to accept for some, but I don't use humanism to justify myself, it is a fact, not an excuse, that noone managed to refute.
I pirate because I can, I do not feel guilty.
I did feel guilty about it in the past, I have read hundreds of articles and studies for and against piracy myself, and now I know I don't have to feel that way. At least because I know that I paid for more than I would have if there was no file sharing. Proving or disproving this claim once and for all should be the real goal, rather than fighting up there on our respective moral high horses.
Erm, correct me if I'm wrong, but from a developer's and publishers standpoint, wouldn't used games from gamestop be the same as piracy, seeing as they make nothing from that sale?
I don't blindly support Steam, in truth I really don't like it, and I agreed with this article because it said that Steam would be really good only if it wasn't becoming a monopoly.usucdik said:
I was thinking that it would be a great help if the torrent site owners could invest some of what they earn through publicity to put in place easy donation options and promote talented artists. It's not like it would threaten their livelyhood.
Is it ok to sneak into a cinema and watch a movie for free, just because you weren't sure if it would be any good?
Is it ok to jump the fence at an amusement park/zoo/whatever to avoid paying the entrance fee, because you just wanted to check it out?
Is it ok to sneak onto a train and not pay the fare, because you didn't have the money, and would have walked otherwise?
The answer is no, no and no.
If you want to try and excuse your behaviour by claiming that "its not actually stealing" or that "they don't lose anything because you never would have paid for it anyway" try thinking of the above examples and realise how full of shit you are.
Is it ok to jump the fence at an amusement park/zoo/whatever to avoid paying the entrance fee, because you just wanted to check it out?
Is it ok to sneak onto a train and not pay the fare, because you didn't have the money, and would have walked otherwise?
The answer is no, no and no.
If you want to try and excuse your behaviour by claiming that "its not actually stealing" or that "they don't lose anything because you never would have paid for it anyway" try thinking of the above examples and realise how full of shit you are.
I'm just going to be honest here. If a game looks interesting, I'll go to a certain website (in fact, I've even put it in "my favorites") and see if someone has put it up. My internet provider (comcast) somehow detects torrents and if I happen to try to download one, a notification letter will be sent to our account, warning us about it. I'm guessing if I do this a whole bunch of times, we'll lose internet service. Anyway, the point is, I'm cheap and see no need to pay for something that'll only give me brief gratification (that is, unless my parents buy it for me for a certain occasion). As a result, I have downloaded several games, most of which I have only played for a couple of weeks. I've considered the pros and cons to doing this and decided that none of the cons affect me in any way that would bother me, and in response to the title of this thread, I know perfectly well that piracy is "wrong", but I stopped caring about right and wrong long ago. Instead, I ask myself how ths will impact me negatively in any way that I'd care. I happen to be a selfish asshat and I honestly don't give a crap. ^.^ *braces self for brutal replies*
Anyone remember when demos were available for every game out there?
This argument has been repeated several times over the last uhh... 25 pages so I'm just sharing my experience here.
Bought CoD4 after playing a pirated copy at a lan.
Bought New Vegas after the first play through. On number 6 now and excited about DLC :S
Bought and played WoW after checking the basics on a "private" server. (Own almost anything Blizzard)
Bought Mass Effect 1 and 2, Borderlands, Bioshock and a really long list can follow here.
The point is that I like to check out a game before spending the money and I don't continue playing games that I don't like. I'm not saying that this is true for everyone but if I hadn't been a pirate then I'd only own a small handful of games since I don't trust corporate sons of b****** to keep the end user in mind.
We pay two prices for games here R350 and R500 which is (googles exchange rates)50.84 U.S. dollars and 72.63 U.S. dollars. We've got 5 member families here living on R800 a month, so yeah games are expensive. New Vegas costs R671 which is 97.40 dollars.
This argument has been repeated several times over the last uhh... 25 pages so I'm just sharing my experience here.
Bought CoD4 after playing a pirated copy at a lan.
Bought New Vegas after the first play through. On number 6 now and excited about DLC :S
Bought and played WoW after checking the basics on a "private" server. (Own almost anything Blizzard)
Bought Mass Effect 1 and 2, Borderlands, Bioshock and a really long list can follow here.
The point is that I like to check out a game before spending the money and I don't continue playing games that I don't like. I'm not saying that this is true for everyone but if I hadn't been a pirate then I'd only own a small handful of games since I don't trust corporate sons of b****** to keep the end user in mind.
We pay two prices for games here R350 and R500 which is (googles exchange rates)50.84 U.S. dollars and 72.63 U.S. dollars. We've got 5 member families here living on R800 a month, so yeah games are expensive. New Vegas costs R671 which is 97.40 dollars.