Pirating Games

After exhausting my own views on this subject, I asked my work colleague (who I consider to be a "normal" person) what she thought of software piracy.

After a second to ponder on the issue she burst out with, "well if you can get away with it, then it's great! Why shouldn't people be able to get something out of those capitalist bastards, I hate fat cat companies..."

Coming from such a sweet girl, I was slightly shocked to say the least!

I asked her because I knew I'd get an unbiased and somewhat ignorant opinion, which was the perfect way to gain a impartial view. I'm starting to realise that I'm in the minority when I say "Piracy is wrong".

It saddens me that people find things like this OK - and don't feel guilty doing it - because then where do those people draw the line regarding wrongdoing?

Is keeping hold of a wallet you find in the street OK? Even though you have the details of the owner? Would you inform a shopkeeper if he'd undercharged you?

I think I already know the answers most here would give, and that only saddens me further.

 

If I knew I had to elaborate to such levels (like eclap has), just so people of your intelligence could grasp what I was getting at, I would have done.

Sorry, I keep forgetting that most people are intellectually inferior to me, I'll remember that for future discussions.

 

Jess come on people wake up...
Pirating software is such a big deal these days... Yes it is bad, but some people don't give a fart about that, only in US there is this RIAA and MPPA thingie going on ohh if you have pirated stuff you need to go to jail... comme on! rapists should go to jail and thieves who stab you in the back in the street and steal your wallet... I mean seriously, we might be stealing other people's work, but look at actors, artists, they have a ****load of money, they migh or not care if some gypsy from Romania has all his discography from DC+++, becaouse the artist sits his fat plastic sugeried ass all day in a leather chair and drinks champagne for lunch...
Game developers are not that fortunate however, they indeed lose money. But there are some exceptions like EA, who has so much money that they realsease like 10 games for PC, and a bunch more for the consoles each fiscal year, wonder how they have so much money.... well the quality of the games migh suck you say? look at Crytek.... Far Cry was the only game they made, and now look at Crysis... how they got so much money? Microsoft... a lot of piratcy going on... but the company is the most powerfull software company. Explain me... how can a software company that has its producs the most pirated of all producs be the most powerfull software company at the same time? Piracy really does not affect the industry so much so the people responsible should not do time in jail and sit with criminals and thieves in the same cell. All those laws are made by greedy bastrard gouvernors who want the entertainment industry to have big income so that half of the money goes to the government!
Think of this, you have two choises... You are a judge, and there are 2 guys: one stoled your HI-FI Sony Blu-ray player, and the other one pirated your cheap-ass shareware porn game that you made in 1 mouth. Who are you gonna send in jail? It is worst and more expensive to steal phisical valuabales than stealing digital things thare are so much cheaper to produce

 

Storm, you should be asking yourself those questions, and if you can honestly say yes to all of them then you are a saint.


personally i would give the wallet back ONLY if i had the details cos theres no way i would hand it in at my nearest police station, as for shop keeper, if it was a small paper shop or cafe or whatever then id be honest, if it was pc world then no not a chance.

Storm if you have never downloaded anything illigally then good on you and you can cast the 1st stone, throw away mate

 

I agree with Sash. It's a moot point. No one is going to stop pirating because of morality. Stop charging 40+ dollars for a game and more people will buy it.

 

Yeah but when you buy an Aston you know your getting quality when you buy a skoda you know your getting quality (the right quality for the right money) when you go out and buy Crysis you know your getting quality, when you went out and bought boiling point you had your arse slapped, just like if you went out and bought the skoda for the same price as the aston.

 

yeah thanks Doug, and to make another point.. the only legal things i have in my laptop are XP and half life 2 with CSS....

 

Who is the selfish bastard now eh? Btw if you can find at least 10 arguments for each of my points i will respect you forever

 

I think gaming market is overpriced. About pc games , i have many games , i have played 80% of them and i have really enjoyed and finished only 5% of them. From this 5% i have buy almost all of them after a reasonable time when their price was acceptable. For example ,Command & Conquer Decade,u get a fantastic set of games for a very fair price. I will also buy Warhammer Anthology. But i haven't buy it yet because in my country (Greece) costs 50 euro and i can find it from play.com for 28 euro ( but it is not available ).
The same thing happens with console games . The prices here is 10-20% at least more expensive than other EU countries. I dont have any console but my friends have and i encourage them to buy them original from other countries or ebay.

 

what has always bothered me

Something that has always bothered me:

How are emulators and downloading abandonware somehow "less immoral" than pirating new games?

For example.. I have a PSP... if you go on a major psp homebrew news site, like http://pspupdates.qj.net/ you will see lots of news posts about emulators being released. now you KNOW that nobody using those emulators actually has a ROM dumper and is playing "legitimate" ROM files in their emulator. They are downloading and pirating ROM files to play with their emulator. But then if somebody mentions an ISO or pirating a retail PSP game in the forums or comments section on that site.... it is a huge "NO NO! You're evil for stealing PSP games!" ...

what gives? What makes it "less wrong" to pirate a game that is 10 years old? and... what's more... when people download ROMs, it is seldom just one or two... it is hundreds at a time. shouldn't that be 100x "more wrong" to download 100 ROMs than to download 1 ISO?

i know the typical justification is "they don't sell this software anymore, and you can't buy the hardware to play it anymore"... but .... you can still buy actual copies of old games/consoles on ebay, if you really look. and they are usually pretty cheap, too. the point is that downloading a ROM is still copyright infringement, it shouldn't be "less immoral"

splain it to me, lucy ...

 

i can explain the abbandonware thingie: it is becaouse the produc ended it's life cycle, like in marketting.. (yeah i hate it! GRRR) After 10 years usually no one buys that product anymore so the developer has no profit from that product, so it ended it's life cycle and some of them are realesed to the public for free

 

I'm not quite sure if you know what selfish means. It seems not.

And your respect for me is something I have no interest in.

 

You were wise to swiftly remove the lewd remark at the end of your post! I would hate to think I touched on a nerve.

And anyway I don't mean for others to get het up over my posts, that's something they do all by themselves.

 

will, everything i own here is pirated, except a copy of my windows i baught, OEM, but since my mobo is no longer stable i baught another one, and lost my oem, and i dunt have the money to buy another one, so i hacked it, a game in my country (Jordan) is 33% of ur salary, and u need 3x the avg. salary if u wanna live, so there is noway i can buy games, i was barley able to buy my new animation eqiupment listed, but if i had money, i would buy the originals, the whole issue is games being Uber expensive.

 

i am sure you saved a lot on that 8800 gts and that conroe... so you have a PC that is considered in ur contry NASA PC but you don't buy original games?

 

i just thought it was a bit petty to call you an Arrogant prick thats all.

im just not sure what your point is anymore, i mean what are you trying to prove to me and others?

we all know its wrong, we all know theres for's and against's on the subject but you seem to think you are the be all and end all on the subject, please feel free to explain why it really upsets you on such a personal level?

Are you one of these FAT CATS?

 

if this is the case.... does it mean that peoples' motivation for purchasing new retail games is "respect for the developers", and not "fear of the law"?

 

depends on the person's morality. For example when i was small i asked my parents for games, now i just download them... for me is more like "respect for my parents"

if you want someting, just get it... that is how powerfull people had their power

 

1. No
2. Yes

Honestly. Line drawn.

 

How about stopping the name calling and try keeping a civilized debate? I guess that's entirely impossible for you lot? Doesn't exactly ooze respect of you when you can't argue without coming to personal attacks.