Topic: Discussion on Piracy

[Align]

I'll just leave this here...
http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html


(skipped first few chapters, skimmed middle, got interested in the last four or so, feel vaguely guilty even though I rarely pirate)

[Hypershell]

Well, this is about PC piracy.  And I might give a damn if I actually cared about PC gaming.  It's not as if I don't see the potential of a device that can do pretty much anything, but to me, the PC is too unstable a platform to be desirable as a gaming machine.  Near every piece of crap you install these days tries to add a new toolbar, search engine, background process, quick-launch icon, or auto-update to further bog down your machine.  It's maddening.  I'd rather keep my games on a dedicated system so as to remain isolated from that crap.

[Tickle Buffalo]

You must install some pretty wacky programs. :/

And um now that I think about it I guess I don't really download games anymore. It's not that I'm morally upstanding or anything, it's just that pretty much all the games released recently either suck or have multiplayer that I'd need a CD key for. Man. I'm like a good citizen or something. Yeah.

[Sky Child]

I pay for what I can afford.

[Shiki Tohno]

Well, this is about PC piracy.  And I might give a damn if I actually cared about PC gaming.  It's not as if I don't see the potential of a device that can do pretty much anything, but to me, the PC is too unstable a platform to be desirable as a gaming machine.  Near every piece of crap you install these days tries to add a new toolbar, search engine, background process, quick-launch icon, or auto-update to further bog down your machine.  It's maddening.  I'd rather keep my games on a dedicated system so as to remain isolated from that crap.

Trust me, you only get that stuff installed if you have NO IDEA what you're doing. If you have a sliver of common sense and actually stop to read the setup dialog boxes, you can still install what you want without all the added crap.


And for me, personally, the PC is one of the best gaming platforms, if only for the fact that it's the only one for which upgrades come at a reasonably lower price than consoles (PC upgrade = new parts; console upgrade = entirely new console).

[RMX]

Still not feeling guilty

[Ramzal]

I pay for what I can afford.

Here. here!

The funny thing about pirating though is that it's different on every level. But in perspective, it's -barely- damaging. When it comes to games, a large amount of people buy them on the day they come out due to anticipation and thirty meter lines. The people who download games are the minority compared to the ones who buy them. More than likely a 8 to 2 split.

Some company's use piracy to their advantage. It helps get their name out there, through means of people obtaining their games for free, and the possibility of their popularity grows and can lead to talk about how good their games are, and even more purchases.


I find it hilarious because it's nearly no different from the debate about downloading music. People always has this idea that downloading music somehow hurts the artist... which couldn't be more wrong. In fact, it's the artists income. When someone gets a record label, they -never- see a penny of the money from album sales. All that money goes to the record companies.

Bands, singers, or rockers (METALLICA! WOO!) get their income from tour gigs, stage performances, and appearances on shows and commericals. Downloads make it possible for their names to get out there easier and more people are interested in going to see them play.

The only difference is that video game characters can't get income. Piracy---while it is bad, comes with a good side as well. Which is why there are -not- S.W.A.T. members kicking down your doors or Inafune kicking down your door with a plastic X-buster in hand when you download Megaman and Bass.

[Tickle Buffalo]

The funny thing about pirating though is that it's different on every level. But in perspective, it's -barely- damaging. When it comes to games, a large amount of people buy them on the day they come out due to anticipation and thirty meter lines. The people who download games are the minority compared to the ones who buy them. More than likely a 8 to 2 split.

You got any evidence for that, boss?

[RMX]

The only victims I feel bad for are small developer teams, any game mentioned there are big hits from big teams that got hugely pirated but sold well anyways (except perhaps Crysis). I couldn't care less about the Unreal Engine, either.

[Shiki Tohno]

I'd buy from French Bread.

[Flok]

I do not apply for PC piracy, but yeah, back when I first started using the internet, the first sites I saw were emulator sites. And In a way, emulating ROMS from video games is also a piracy, but not the obvious piracy we are talking about here.

I played many SNES ROMS especially until the end of 2003, when I started having money to buy my hobby's needs. Now I very, very rarely decide to play a NES ROM I have never played yet, but other than that, emulation is over for me.

I find it offending to the game industry that there are for example Nintendo DS cartridges out there with the latest games to have come out on the handheld. Like 200 games on one cartridge.

[Ramzal]

You got any evidence for that, boss?

Namely because of hardcore gaming piracy was at a low due to crappy emulations way back. The games that can mainly be pirated these days are the psp, NDS, and the GB-GBA games.

As far as the GB-GBA games go, most people didn't even know you could swipe games off the net nor did they have the patience to wait about two weeks for a game to download when they could just go to a gamestore and by the cart at the time, although around mid GBA era of gaming did the piracy level go high due to better emulators being developed.

As far as the psp goes, there are very good games for it, but in a small number as far as the grand scale of things go. Although, ever since the battery bi-pass was made people have been putting psx, gba, nes, snes, sega games on their psps. But in hindsight, those portable/console gaming platforms were made so long ago that purchases of the material couldn't even count due to the only way you're going to find LoZ is on ebay and with the cost of your liver.

Although, a good number of people aren't willing to go through with the bi-pass due to the fact that if they mess up, the could brick their psp or for that matter, mess up and ruin their battery.

The NDS is a different ballpark due to the flash cart. But everytime I go on the subway and see the ten people per sub-car with NDS's, they all have carts rather than the flash cart. Given the number of people who get on NYC train stations daily and I see at least sixteen people a -day- with NDS's it's safe to say that piracy is a minority. (Although, ProtoBlues can correct me on that if he's ever seen anyone on the subway with a flash cart.)

While this is an assumption, it's a logical one. Also, here's another fact about gaming piracy. If it were -actually- a critical problem, the stock in gaming company's would have crashed and BURNED by at least two years ago, but gaming company stock seems to be at a all time high and growing even more. That is why there hasn't been any actual hard core action against piracy in games, their profit from the games--dispite being pirated--has barely been scratched.

And again, living in the busiest city in the country (as well as the most unlivable one), has shown me the POWER of uber nerds with nothing better to do with their lives than stand outside in sufferable temperatures for SIXTEEN HOURS STRAIGHT, -just- for CoD 4. A line that went around the corner and down the street. No one, by any means, can say that pirating has been causing serious business damge to companies after seeing that.

[Tickle Buffalo]

You do realise that article's about PC games, right?

[Align]

Namely because of hardcore gaming piracy was at a low due to crappy emulations way back. The games that can mainly be pirated these days are the psp, NDS, and the GB-GBA games.

lolno
The games that can be mainly pirated these days are every game, usually within weeks of their release. Sometimes before they're even available in stores.

I don't think you read the last few pages of the article.

[Ramzal]

Oh, I was speaking of piracy in general. As far as PC gaming goes, I'm with Hypershell on that.

The games that can be mainly pirated these days are every game, usually within weeks of their release. Sometimes before they're even available in stores.

Which is what I meant by naming those platforms. Unless--you know that people pirate PS3 and Xbox 360 games. I've never heard of anyone being able to pirate MGS4 or little big planet, but that's me.

[Tickle Buffalo]

Why do I get the feeling you never read the article?

[Align]

Which is what I meant by naming those platforms. Unless--you know that people pirate PS3 and Xbox 360 games. I've never heard of anyone being able to pirate MGS4 or little big planet, but that's me.

They can, it's just more of a hassle, what with modchips or whatever the [tornado fang] they use these days, as opposed to just clicking Download.

[Ramzal]

Why do I get the feeling you never read the article?

I did. It simply just did not click with me. Main reason being that I'm not entirely a pc gamer. But what I was stating is that piracy isn't as bad as most make it out to be. It's blown past out of proportion and if it were as bad as people say it is, Video game industries would have fallen to the recession. And, what do you know---

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20081212-705104.html?mod=wsjcrmain

---they haven't. If piracy truely was a situation that caused gaming to decline so far, why is it that video games sales in the US alone grew by ten percent; all during a global economic decline? While it maybe a technical or moral crime to pirate games, it is still seen as a minor situation that doesn't need to be bothered or slightly even complained about on the grand scale of it. Frankly, it would -just- be a personal nick for someone because they either prefer to buy the games legit and dislike it when others do it.

Or simply because someone is angry that they took the time to shell out their hard earned money on a fifty dollar game while someone simply clicked a few buttons and got it. As RMX said, the only victims of this are the small development teams which have limited budgets and put out a game. Any game--as he mentioned again--we big named and large budget titles.

I personally believe that, Koroush Ghazi---while is fully entitled to his opinion---is one of those gamers who are upset because his hard earned money went into games and he feels he's earned it, and someone who clicked a few buttons gets it for nothing more than a monthly broadband bill. And yes, stealing is wrong, but point frankly, if someone is so worried about pirating then they should just not do it themselves, and leave the people who do to their own devices.

After all, they're no lawyers, but they play them on tv. (Which means that "You're trying to tell me something about legal complications--but you're not a lawyer and I don't see any credidation---so why the [tornado fang] am I listening to you?) And by that, I mean in general and not a direct attack at anyone.

And point frankly, if someone does have a problem with any kind of gaming piracy, it would be no different than having a problem with music piracy. So, it would only be fair for someone who's never grabbed a single soundtrack or theme song off a site or from a friend via IM'ing--or even downloaded PORN-- to actually have any kind of say against piracy IMO. Is there truely anyone aboard these boards of awesomeness who has not even downloaded the MM9 soundtrack or don't have a single pirated piece on their harddrives or iPods? >_>

After all. Piracy is piracy and stealing is stealing, so maybe Mr. Ghazi could think of that himself--as well as everyone else who's ever used the interwebs.

[Align]

It's pretty much entirely centered on PC gaming and piracy, so if you're looking anywhere else for sales figures, that's wrong. And if you're taking WoW into account, that's also wrong - as noted in the article, piracy won't kill PC gaming anymore than anything else, but it will reduce it to not so tasty stuff like MMOs and other online-only games, as those are by far the most resistant to piracy.

[Tickle Buffalo]

I did. It simply just did not click with me. Main reason being that I'm not entirely a pc gamer. But what I was stating is that piracy isn't as bad as most make it out to be. It's blown past out of proportion and if it were as bad as people say it is, Video game industries would have fallen to the recession.

What, because there can't be different levels of success? This is all in the article, dude.

There's one particular tactic which people commonly use in the piracy debate that absolutely must stop. This tactic involves the sarcastic use of the claim 'PC gaming is dead', and is based on a technique known as the Straw man Argument:
A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "set up a straw man," one describes a position that superficially resembles an opponent's actual view, yet is easier to refute. Then, one attributes that position to the opponent. For example, someone might deliberately overstate the opponent's position. While a straw man argument may work as a rhetorical technique - and succeed in persuading people - it carries little or no real evidential weight, since the opponent's actual argument has not been refuted.

Basically as soon as anyone attributes any negative impact on PC gaming to piracy, opponents will quickly say something like "Sure, PC gaming is dead lol, that's why we've got so many games to choose from." The implication is that just because PC gaming hasn't been completely wiped off the face of the Earth, or that games companies are still making a profit, this automatically means that piracy is not having a significant impact. This type of argument might appeal to the immature fanboy demographic within the PC gaming community, but doesn't address any of the very real and very complex issues we've tried to cover in this article for example.

Seriously, it's like saying someone with cancer hasn't died yet, so obviously they're gonna be fine!

[Ramzal]

No, it's not because Cancer is something that spreads quickly and will cause assured death to a patient unless they're treated. While you can try and deal with game stealing, the end subject is that there is no treatment. It's going to happen weither you like it or not. And this "article" is hardly written by someone who you can actually take any merit from in the first place. And there are three reasons for that.

1) He's stating legal reasons as he goes, yet I'm pretty sure he's not a lawyer. Again, since he apparently plays one on t.v why the [tornado fang] should I listen to him?

2) He's making the very quote you've taken into an attack against anyone who does not agree with him. And I'll double quote: ""Basically as soon as anyone attributes any negative impact on PC gaming to piracy, opponents will quickly say something like "Sure, PC gaming is dead lol, that's why we've got so many games to choose from.""

You mean to tell me that you're taking serious thought into someone who writes "articles" using "Lol", the narrowminded thought that anytime the subject is brought up, the only defense against it is "PC gaming is dead, lawl!", and implying that everyone has to listen to what he says because pc gaming is "having a serious impact".

Also, AGAIN--someone who's writing an -article- uses the term "Fan-boy". Which was created off a cartoon named Freak-a-zoid. This is the main you're giving credit to or even an ear to? Why not just give the hobo five bucks so he can train to fight the ninja's who killed his family and burned down his house? Well, guess what else is in an article? A man demanding to have DST -revoked- because he believes it's a terror to farm lands.

There's a saying and it goes, "don't believe everything you read." And yes, I will be rather blunt about the subject of PC gaming pirating in general. The "Fan-boys" he's reffering to are for the most part right. PC gaming -is- dead for the most part? Why? Because people have a big enough tiff about Windows updating constantly. How do you think your common gamer feels about having to modify their computer to handle the new releases for the PC?

It's gotten to the down point that pirating PC gaming subject is a nulled one because a large number of gamers just don't care for it because not all of them know how to even install RAM chips. And the ones who do, and download the games out of that low number in comparison to the console gamers is insignificant in the grand scheme of it all. Why? Because they are not high in numbers altogether.

The reason why PC gaming is dying has barely anything to do with piracy--because, hey. Even when it was soley disk + 98 version only, you can burn the data on another disk and hand it to a friend. Just as bad as piracy but that was about ten years ago and it wasn't a problem then.

And don't get me wrong, PC gaming is fun to do but not so fun to have to constantly pimp out your computer just to play one game for over 15 hours straight. Which---if someone is just starting in, CAN cost them more than a 360 does.

3) I've said this before but I'll say it again. He's -not- a lawyer. At least, even in the slim chance that he is, he's not one with competence. Again "lol"? "Fan-boy"? Again, you're seriously listening to "Very complex issues" and legal statements from this guy? No one, who'd address any situation with an unbiased and straight forward view would use so much as begin to write any opinion on -anything- the way he does. So, constantly going "Look at the article! Look at the article!" does not make it true nor foolproof just because it's called an article and on the internet.

It is right though in the sense that Align stated and quoted, although, this can -also- be caused by the main focus on PC gaming from the purchasers of software. Due to WoW and MMO's being the highest points in PC gaming then the makers of PC gaming are going to milk that above all else if they had to. So it's rather difficult to say that PC gaming going to that is surely because of piracy for the most point.

Edit: And I just got a look at this.

Tycho: ""I don't know why people ever, ever try to stop nerds from doing things. It's really the most incredible waste of time.""

So on a morbid note for PC gaming, it's going to happen either way. So sit back, lean back and enjoy the ride.

[Tickle Buffalo]

1)

Someone needs to be a lawyer to know that downloading games is illegal? :/

2)

AD HOMINEMS EVERYWHERE HELP also willfully misinterpreting the guy.

3)

Wait what this isn't a point at all this is just you restating 1 and 2.



But whatever dude you haven't seen people using flash carts on the subway so I guess you're an expert on this! I'll just I'll just leave this thread now so you can argue with other experts like yourself.

[Ramzal]

  Someone needs to be a lawyer to know that downloading games is illegal? :/

To make legal quotes when you haven't even had the least bit of professional experience in them makes you look like a moron. Due to the numberous legal loopholes there are in--namely old laws.

AD HOMINEMS EVERYWHERE HELP also willfully misinterpreting the guy.

Yes, because a guy who's putting something out as an "article" is using terms like "Lawl!" "Fan-boy" and "Lol". Yeah, real professional "article" there.

Wait what this isn't a point at all this is just you restating 1 and 2.

Out of sheer frustration at people believing just about anyones opinion that has large words that aren't usually used or legal terms that they don't understand--on the internet. And then feeling bad afterwards. And as I said before -how- is it that you can understand this man on that level when everyone on this board has commited a form of piracy one way or another and are -not- going to stop? Doesn't that make people--and I'm sure, your Superman who wrote this drivel-- hypocrites?

I never said I was an expert. Simply that I was debating an opinion with my own and attempting to get a logical answer out of someone (Align) and enjoy a debate over the subject. But, since you prefer to be a rude prick about it, who couldn't even add in your own personal opinion or input, and simply believe anything you read without digesting it or simply objecting to it at the -least-, then fine.

[Hypershell]

Trust me, you only get that stuff installed if you have NO IDEA what you're doing. If you have a sliver of common sense and actually stop to read the setup dialog boxes, you can still install what you want without all the added crap.

Oh, I'm aware of that.  Some of them get sneaky, though, in particular all those extra tools that come with Nero.  It just gets annoying is all.

That and I have a 6 1/2 year old computer that hasn't seen a single hardware upgrade outside of a DVD burner.

[Shiki Tohno]

Oh, I'm aware of that.  Some of them get sneaky, though, in particular all those extra tools that come with Nero.  It just gets annoying is all.

You use Nero? Please.



Get InfraRecorder and ImgBurn, they're both freewares and they can BOTH do what Nero does, and more. Plus, InfraRecorder has the added advantage of being available as a Portable App.