Game Piracy: Your Opinion

[codrx]

I wanna know your opinion about game piracy, which was briefly discussed by Luke and Linus on the Jan 15th WAN show. I'm from India and if you take a look at the state of my currency (INR), you will understand why most people here who know how to pirate games do it. I agree that by pirating games, we are doing a BIG disservice to the development studios who make them and that's important (I know because I'm a game developer myself), but every AAA title these days costing along the lines of 60 USD, it's very difficult to actually buy these games on Steam or Origin or whatever other platform. To put it in perspective, as of today (Jan 16 2016 in India), 60 USD is about 4070 INR. Paying that kind of sum is not easy, especially as India is a pre-dominantly poor country (even though it's listed as a developing nation). Physical discs do cost less, but there have been instances where I have bought a retail copy of a game just to find that it gives me some sort of read error (a good example would be the 7-disc box for GTA 5 which is currently sitting on a shelf gathering dust and which I blew 3000 INR on). So I wanna know, what do you guys think about it?

[Indus Monk]

inb4 lock

[Kobathor]

I don't care. It's not like the publishers are losing any significant money. 

 

I don't pirate games, I don't have a need to. If people do, I don't care. There will always be pirates, you can't stop them. 

[Darkscooty]

I think no, people shouldn't do it but i can understand why it is done.

[Chris_R.]

Same I think no as well. People will always still do it though. I'm with Linus on like ripping a DVD I bought so I can watch it elsewhere whenever I want thought. You know what I mean? If I bought it, it's mine.

[MatthewEnderle]

I: used to pirate the game to essentially try it. If I got sick of it or hated it in an hour or two then I didn't get it. I had gotten fallout 4 this way. I wanted to see if it would run on my PC without a GPU. it did but it sucked. So I then bought a 390x on my next check then bought fallout 4. I think I only game I didn't buy was spore because it was too boring. other than that I've bought every game I've acquired using the Trial-before-I-Buy method.

[Drunkaroos]

I pirated Witcher 3 to try if before I bought it. I found it fun, so I uninstalled the pirated copy and bought the game off Steam. The developers do not lose money, and I got basically a demo of the game. It seems fair.

[airdeano]

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/95599-linus-tech-tips-forum-code-of-conduct/

 

6. Piracy, Copyright Material, Cracks and Product Keys

• "Copyright Material" is any material protected by legally recognized copyright;
• "Piracy" is the unauthorized copying of software or any material subject to copyright;
• "Cracks" are programs that disable copy-protection technology;
• A "Key" is a combination of numbers and/or letters required for software installation.

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