thoughts on piracy?

[Greenkitten]

you should all go directly to Jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

[Lambdanaut]

Nobody has any business telling me how to arrange the electrons in my computer.

[naturally]

I don't pirate a game to demo it and see if I like it. I get the word of fellow gamers and reviewers and I based my decision on that. I guess I'm old school when it comes to that stuff. It's funny, with all this technology using advanced communication, people still don't have the ability to learn about something that's within reach.

i find that a vast majority of the time reviews are useless to me and i personally don't even like the idea of them. a lot of the time people will come up to me in my store and ask me "hey is this a good game?" or "which one of these is better?". i always find this really frustrating to respond to because i know in the end you do not give a shit about my opinion. if i say this game sucks, and you like it, you were going enjoy it regardless of what i told you. if anything your expectations are raised or lowered further ruining your experience with a game you've never played before. i also get a lot of people asking "did this get good reviews?" as well. almost every one of my favourite games has a cult following of some sort and is something i had usually heard of somewhere on the internet and felt like checking it out.

the best example i can think of right now is when skyrim came out. it was just about everywhere getting 9/10s and 10/10s and i was like hey now i really want to play this game i mean like damn everyone is playing it. so i decide i want to play this game no matter what, but i also really don't ever feel justified spending $60 on any game, so i decided to pirate it. played it for about 10 hours and never played it again. it may be a great game and a lot of people may enjoy it, but it is not for me and i have never felt better about pirating a game knowing the feeling of regret i would've had if i had spent money on it.

[ZennyPLUS]

I don't pirate a game to demo it and see if I like it. I get the word of fellow gamers and reviewers and I based my decision on that. I guess I'm old school when it comes to that stuff. It's funny, with all this technology using advanced communication, people still don't have the ability to learn about something that's within reach.

i find that a vast majority of the time reviews are useless to me and i personally don't even like the idea of them. a lot of the time people will come up to me in my store and ask me "hey is this a good game?" or "which one of these is better?". i always find this really frustrating to respond to because i know in the end you do not give a shit about my opinion. if i say this game sucks, and you like it, you were going enjoy it regardless of what i told you. if anything your expectations are raised or lowered further ruining your experience with a game you've never played before. i also get a lot of people asking "did this get good reviews?" as well. almost every one of my favourite games has a cult following of some sort and is something i had usually heard of somewhere on the internet and felt like checking it out.

the best example i can think of right now is when skyrim came out. it was just about everywhere getting 9/10s and 10/10s and i was like hey now i really want to play this game i mean like damn everyone is playing it. so i decide i want to play this game no matter what, but i also really don't ever feel justified spending $60 on any game, so i decided to pirate it. played it for about 10 hours and never played it again. it may be a great game and a lot of people may enjoy it, but it is not for me and i have never felt better about pirating a game knowing the feeling of regret i would've had if i had spent money on it.

Contradictory, if they didn't give a shit about your opinion, they wouldn't ask in the first place. Before the days of pirating, people would rent games to find out if they wanted a full purchase or not. Even if you did buy the game (a physical copy), you could still sell it. And I'm not talking about Gamestop or EB or whatever, if there's a blight on the gaming industry it's that company. Gamemarket, Ebay and half.com are a few places where you can sell games to others.

BUT, since you didn't buy the game, oh well. No one was hurt in this process. Other than... you know.

[naturally]

Contradictory, if they didn't give a shit about your opinion, they wouldn't ask in the first place.

my point was that i believe that people just want to feel justified in their purchases. they don't really care if i think it's a good game or not, they just want to hear me say it is.

i don't really want to reiterate myself 'cause i thought i communicated that well enough.

Before the days of pirating, people would rent games to find out if they wanted a full purchase or not.

i did this when i was a kid a lot but i still don't really feel like this is as viable of an option for me considering it does no better than piracy and is costing me money either way. plus a lot of the time i'll just end up beating the game within the week i rented it and didn't enjoy it enough to want to purchase it and play through it again. two of the only games i ended up purchasing through this were tales of the abyss and dead rising.

Even if you did buy the game (a physical copy), you could still sell it. Gamemarket, Ebay and half.com are a few places where you can sell games to others.

myself and (probably) most consumers would rather just avoid that scenario entirely. i don't understand why someone would want to buy something with the mindset that they have the option to sell it. plus you will have to end up selling this game at a low enough price to actually have someone consider buying it, and even then they are going to have to consider that they are paying for shipping on top of this (unless you want to pay for their shipping which is just going to reduce your profit from this whole ordeal further) as well as having to wait for few days for their package to be shipped to them. they might just find the easier option to go to their nearest gamestop and buy a used copy for a few dollars cheaper.

without condoning or condemning this it's how i understand most people operate when it comes to used games and it's why the gaming industry has reacted the way it has. although i believe there are ways to go about preventing this, i find most companies just don't really know what they're doing. ea has now made it so every copy of all of their multiplayer games such as nhl, fifa and battlefield 3 include codes that allow you to go online and play multiplayer. this means that every time someone goes to buy a used copy of battlefield i get to tell them that they can't play online on it 'cause 9.9 out of 10 times it'll already be used. and hey, it actually works most of the time considering battlefield 3 is a pretty solely multiplayer game but i've also seen a lot of people turn down buying the game entirely because of the $15 price difference. saints row 3 did this as well.

And I'm not talking about Gamestop or EB or whatever, if there's a blight on the gaming industry it's that company.

whenever people bring in their games to my store a few different things will happen. sometimes they'll be pissed 'cause the price i give them is so low, which is usually why i tell them to sell their stuff to a friend or something or on ebay. most people will respond by saying they don't believe it's worth the trouble and would rather just take the few bucks they get from eb than go and find someone else to sell their games to. it may be sad but whatever's easiest and most efficient for them is exactly what they're going to do, and i can't blame them. there'll also be a lot of times where i'll talk people into just keeping them anyway, even if we both know it's something that's going to sit on his shelf and never be touched again.

i don't appreciate what eb games/gamestop does for video games at all but as long as a company is able to resell a product for no one else's profit but their own, they will do it. they have no reason not to.


people will do what is convenient because it is convenient. rtil made a good point in saying that valve seems to be one of the only companies that understands the consumer in this way.

[ZennyPLUS]

Contradictory, if they didn't give a shit about your opinion, they wouldn't ask in the first place.

my point was that i believe that people just want to feel justified in their purchases. they don't really care if i think it's a good game or not, they just want to hear me say it is.

i don't really want to reiterate myself 'cause i thought i communicated that well enough.

Before the days of pirating, people would rent games to find out if they wanted a full purchase or not.

i did this when i was a kid a lot but i still don't really feel like this is as viable of an option for me considering it does no better than piracy and is costing me money either way. plus a lot of the time i'll just end up beating the game within the week i rented it and didn't enjoy it enough to want to purchase it and play through it again. two of the only games i ended up purchasing through this were tales of the abyss and dead rising.

Even if you did buy the game (a physical copy), you could still sell it. Gamemarket, Ebay and half.com are a few places where you can sell games to others.

myself and (probably) most consumers would rather just avoid that scenario entirely. i don't understand why someone would want to buy something with the mindset that they have the option to sell it. plus you will have to end up selling this game at a low enough price to actually have someone consider buying it, and even then they are going to have to consider that they are paying for shipping on top of this (unless you want to pay for their shipping which is just going to reduce your profit from this whole ordeal further) as well as having to wait for few days for their package to be shipped to them. they might just find the easier option to go to their nearest gamestop and buy a used copy for a few dollars cheaper.

without condoning or condemning this it's how i understand most people operate when it comes to used games and it's why the gaming industry has reacted the way it has. although i believe there are ways to go about preventing this, i find most companies just don't really know what they're doing. ea has now made it so every copy of all of their multiplayer games such as nhl, fifa and battlefield 3 include codes that allow you to go online and play multiplayer. this means that every time someone goes to buy a used copy of battlefield i get to tell them that they can't play online on it 'cause 9.9 out of 10 times it'll already be used. and hey, it actually works most of the time considering battlefield 3 is a pretty solely multiplayer game but i've also seen a lot of people turn down buying the game entirely because of the $15 price difference. saints row 3 did this as well.

And I'm not talking about Gamestop or EB or whatever, if there's a blight on the gaming industry it's that company.

whenever people bring in their games to my store a few different things will happen. sometimes they'll be pissed 'cause the price i give them is so low, which is usually why i tell them to sell their stuff to a friend or something or on ebay. most people will respond by saying they don't believe it's worth the trouble and would rather just take the few bucks they get from eb than go and find someone else to sell their games to. it may be sad but whatever's easiest and most efficient for them is exactly what they're going to do, and i can't blame them. there'll also be a lot of times where i'll talk people into just keeping them anyway, even if we both know it's something that's going to sit on his shelf and never be touched again.

i don't appreciate what eb games/gamestop does for video games at all but as long as a company is able to resell a product for no one else's profit but their own, they will do it. they have no reason not to.


people will do what is convenient because it is convenient. rtil made a good point in saying that valve seems to be one of the only companies that understands the consumer in this way.

I'd make an informed reply, but I don't think I have more to add to this. Overall, our discussion was off topic since has nothing to do with piracy, heh. This generation of gaming has highlighted many flaws within the industry. Your reply has also highlighted what's wrong with modern society in general.

[Sinitron]

well i don't fucking care what you noobs think TRIBES ASCEND is a good fucking game and it is free GOOD NIGHT

[naturally]

yes sinitron ok

[sev]

you know, i think most people would pirate things if they knew about it/knew that people don't usually get busted for it. i don't think anyone has like, a moral issue with getting entertainment for free unless it's something they want to support. i think the only reason the entire world doesn't pirate is because either they don't know how to (casual inexperienced internet users) or because they think the feds will immediately find out and bust down their door (casual inexperienced internet users)

[ZennyPLUS]

you know, i think most people would pirate things if they knew about it/knew that people don't usually get busted for it. i don't think anyone has like, a moral issue with getting entertainment for free unless it's something they want to support. i think the only reason the entire world doesn't pirate is because either they don't know how to (casual inexperienced internet users) or because they think the feds will immediately find out and bust down their door (casual inexperienced internet users)

If something like SOPA were to pass, those casual inexperienced users actually have something to fear.

[Gladius]

yes sinitron ok

holy shit blasé reply FUCKING OWNED SINITRON GET OUTTA THIS FORUM

[Gladius]

oh and piracy is crappy and amoral stop doing it YOU ARE DESTROYING THE MEDIA

unless it's machine-made garbage like anime who really cares about that anyway

[Lambdanaut]

It's more immoral to give cash to assholes trying to take down free services than to pirate movies, imo. If I ever have kids I'm going to buy them icecream for every movie they pirate.

[Kött]

First of all I'd like to say that this is a nice topic, mainly because I have to create a movie featuring some intervies about exactly this issue in the upcoming days and it gave me a lot of new ideas and knowledge.


I think in most points (music, games, shows) I do share the general opinion of the majority of you guys.

In some instances, I think, we are not even given any other choice but piracy if we actually are interested. I know many friends and fellow students here in Germany who watch American shows and movies because they usually take a while to be released in German (as the German market usually never releases shit without dubbing it first for the plebs and many people who are not just dumb karauts and do unsterstand English are usually prefer the original language anyway).

In my case, the best example would be anime, which is an even better instance of the reason of release delay mentioned above. If you just consider the amount of Madoka fans on websites as MAL (and that surely isn't even close to the total amount of international non-Japanese fans), it is easy to imagine how many people actually did pirate it in order to watch it and I think it is amazing how something that shouldn't even be known outside Japan has already reached such a high level of popularity. Now, I may not count to that group, but this expansion of the fandom actually leads to a major increase in the field of merchandising. (Yes, those people who buy those pvc figurines with water proof colors and put them on their fucking bookshelves) But still, it does support the original creators.
There are way more instances of good shit that has never been released internationally yet (*cough Toradora) and shitty shit that has (*cough strikewitches), but pointing that out would probably make me look like a faggot and be too far off topic.
Anway, no media without piracy for those instances.

piracy exists partly because ease of access to entertainment has not been fully modernized or is inhibited in a way that does not consider the consumer first. take steam, for example, and how easy it is to buy games on steam and how much money people spend on steam. why do they do it? because it's easy. no region locks, no third party, no wait times, no restrictions, no ads, no loopholes.

Counter Strike Source - censored german version

[BluPhoenix]

There are way more instances of good shit that has never been released internationally yet (*cough Toradora)

that's actually a really good example because it's one of the few animes i've actually torrented and vowed to buy when it gets localized IF THAT HAPPENS EVER

piracy exists partly because ease of access to entertainment has not been fully modernized or is inhibited in a way that does not consider the consumer first. take steam, for example, and how easy it is to buy games on steam and how much money people spend on steam. why do they do it? because it's easy. no region locks, no third party, no wait times, no restrictions, no ads, no loopholes.

Counter Strike Source - censored german version

ok?

it's not like steam's at fault for that, the BPjM are calling the shots there

also it's the same game with shitty "death" animations, i don't see why people would bother to torrent a game just to remove that meager cosmetic effect

[Kött]

It is simply because there's so much brutal shit on German television and in movies and it doesn't get censored at all. In fact we are even some steps ahead of America in most instances as we are allowed to say the nasty words on television and show tits on tv without causing scandals... and then this happens because some conservative shitheads think that violence in games makes everyone a spree killer.

Regarding Counter Strike (and some other games) of course it doesn't really change the concept of the game but it's just annoying and ridiculous and that can completely ruin the feeling of a game... at least that's what it does for me. I acquired a gifted version from a Swedish guy, which bypasses the usual censorship but other games that I purchased myself just felt so unreal that I immediately lost interest in them and I think that is the sad thing: I would have gotten an original if I pirated the relative games while actually paying for them only gives me a downgraded piece of badly executed censorship. And still, they wonder why people pirate games...

[Sinitron]

fuck counter-strike it is bad and realistic games are boring and not fun get TRIBES ASCEND it is the future

[BluPhoenix]

fuck counter-strike it is bad and realistic games are boring and not fun get TRIBES ASCEND it is the future

counter-strike is the best and most 'realistic' game imo because

no regenerating health
no grape jam smeared over your screen when you get shot
no killstreak rewards
knife does reasonable damage
no horribly imbalanced weapons (since the awp was removed)
getting kills is legitimately gratifying
still fun to play after 11 years

also YES tribes is a bundle of skill-based fun EVERYONE GO PLAY IT

[W.A.C.]

The only games I pirate are rom files which is partially because I prefer playing older games in emulators more than anything else. I use Steam all the time and have bought a ton of games through it. Very fantastic service and I love giving Gabe my money. >_> When it comes to entertainment like movies and TV shows, I rarely watch those forms of media outside of South Park for new episodes and election related coverage so I don't have much of a reason to pirate those form of media very often.

With music, I am a dirty pirate. Ever since I started pirating music back in 2008, the only albums I've bought are two albums by Secret Chiefs 3 which is an indie artist I would have never gotten into if it weren't for piracy. Music piracy vastly expanded my musical tastes. I used to be so closed minded about music and didn't listen to music very much because I didn't want to spend such ridiculous prices. Now I listen to music all the time and that would have never happened if it weren't for piracy. It should be noted that I do buy band shirts and one of the shirts I own is something I wouldn't have ever bought if it weren't for piracy.

I would like to support the music industry more but nothing can compete with the awesomeness known as What.CD. >_> I can download so many different editions of the same album in usually any format I want. Absolutely nothing that has come out has features like that. There's also just no real benefit to owning music legally unless you own a physical copy. I live in a small house with space issues, I don't need anymore CDs. Another thing worth bringing up is that I listen to barely any indie artists and rarely go to concerts because most of the artists I like are either dead, their band broke up, or they don't play live anymore. That, and most of the major concerts in California are in the bay area, near LA, and or near San Diego. I don't live anywhere near those areas.

[naturally]

In my case, the best example would be anime, which is an even better instance of the reason of release delay mentioned above. If you just consider the amount of Madoka fans on websites as MAL (and that surely isn't even close to the total amount of international non-Japanese fans), it is easy to imagine how many people actually did pirate it in order to watch it and I think it is amazing how something that shouldn't even be known outside Japan has already reached such a high level of popularity. Now, I may not count to that group, but this expansion of the fandom actually leads to a major increase in the field of merchandising. (Yes, those people who buy those pvc figurines with water proof colors and put them on their fucking bookshelves) But still, it does support the original creators.
There are way more instances of good shit that has never been released internationally yet (*cough Toradora) and shitty shit that has (*cough strikewitches), but pointing that out would probably make me look like a faggot and be too far off topic.
Anway, no media without piracy for those instances.

there's actually a large amount of people who will just import blu-rays/dvds from japan because almost all of them have english subbing anyway and you can just buy them off of amazon japan just as you would from any other amazon. they even make 'global editions' for some which have tons of different languages for sub and even dubs.

the fact that it hasn't come out of japan doesn't really stop a lot of people unless there's no box set and it's just a bunch of really expensive volumes or something.


but yeah of course all the people who actually do buy stuff like that have already watched it fansubbed somewhere on the internet