A talk about piracy (not about where to go for links)

[Aphexis]

I have pirated stuff, and it's always games i cannot actually get at all.

Games so old that either it's way too expensive to buy and is not new meaning the devs get no money anyway, or it's so old it's rare as all hell.

 

What are peoples opinions on this part?

 

It's not always on Steam, GOG, Uplay or Origin either.

 

An example of a not rare game, but devs get no money if you purchase it or not is Wolfenstein from 2009 which was removed from Steam and is not available digitally.

Prey is another game that's not that old but again cannot be purchased digitally.

 

Both games are not available new, so devs as i mentioned are not paid.

 

?

[Billy_Mays]

13 minutes ago, Aphexis said:

I have pirated stuff, and it's always games i cannot actually get at all.

Games so old that either it's way too expensive to buy and is not new meaning the devs get no money anyway, or it's so old it's rare as all hell.

 

What are peoples opinions on this part?

 

It's not always on Steam, GOG, Uplay or Origin either.

 

An example of a not rare game, but devs get no money if you purchase it or not is Wolfenstein from 2009 which was removed from Steam and is not available digitally.

Prey is another game that's not that old but again cannot be purchased digitally.

 

Both games are not available new, so devs as i mentioned are not paid.

 

?

Only games I pirated is Minecraft I know but I was younger but I didn't know much about pirating and it basically broke my family's desktop and it very slow and after that I wont pirate any more because I find its stupid to do because you can go to jail for it

[2FA]

If it's not available legally anymore, then I guess it's acceptable in my book. Otherwise, I don't really approve of piracy that much.

[typographie]

A game not being available for sale doesn't suddenly make pirating it legal. Publishers still have the right to decide how, where, and if to sell something they own. It does make pirating it harder to argue against on ethical grounds, though.

 

5 hours ago, Aphexis said:

Games so old that either it's way too expensive to buy and is not new meaning the devs get no money anyway,

Why do you think that? As far as I know, the developer makes money on the game even if it's not "new." They aren't throwing the money into a furnace, it's going somewhere.

[Aphexis]

Just now, DeadEyePsycho said:

If it's not available legally anymore, then I guess it's acceptable in my book. Otherwise, I don't really approve of piracy that much.

No i definitely do not approve, but i have had to in order to play the game again.

 

A point i forgot to mention is i bought Prey used, and i torrented Wolfenstein 2009 which i bought when it originally released but lost the copy i had.

 

And then i'm left wishing i just torrented Prey because i'm not supporting the devs either way.

 

Digital stores are a god send, but they have also completely messed up older games when you cannot purchase them new digitally.

[danomicar]

24 minutes ago, Aphexis said:

I have pirated stuff, and it's always games i cannot actually get at all.

Games so old that either it's way too expensive to buy and is not new meaning the devs get no money anyway, or it's so old it's rare as all hell.

 

What are peoples opinions on this part?

 

It's not always on Steam, GOG, Uplay or Origin either.

 

An example of a not rare game, but devs get no money if you purchase it or not is Wolfenstein from 2009 which was removed from Steam and is not available digitally.

Prey is another game that's not that old but again cannot be purchased digitally.

 

Both games are not available new, so devs as i mentioned are not paid.

 

?

How can you just assume that whoever owns the game doesn't get paid?

[Aphexis]

Just now, typographie said:

A game not being available for sale doesn't suddenly make pirating it legal. Publishers still have the right to decide how, where, and if to sell something they own. It does make pirating it harder to argue against on ethnical grounds, though.

 

Why do you think that? As far as I know, the developer makes money on the game even if it's not "new." They aren't throwing the money into a furnace, it's going somewhere.

Umm 2nd hand, obviously devs get zero of the cash tendered.

 

The person buying the game does not own the software, it is simply a license.

 

So selling it on, and for years this has gone on, is also a grey area and can be in the same pit with piracy, because the devs are not supported when that game is purchased again.

[Aphexis]

http://kotaku.com/5743755/is-buying-used-video-games-worse-than-stealing-them

[cluelessgenius]

when i was younger i used to pirate as many games as possible because i wanted to play everything and didnt have money for anything but with time my gaming hours decreased and my income increased so now buying stuff is just way less hassle especially if youre playing online. sometimes i miss the good old days of downloading halo 1 for a week and then copying it too everyone at the lan party on the weekend. but now i mostly got time for a couple of hours every other weekend or so via discord and online.

 

pirating digital content is ethically tricky my thought always was when i leave my wallet lying on the street i cant get mad if someone takes it. i mean if i were to sell the copy thats something different completely but as long as i use it for myself i dont know. is it cheating if the teacher leaves the answers to the test right there on the board.

or even further am i wrong if the teacher is too stupid too realise the class wrote the answers behind her on the board? its tricky

[typographie]

3 minutes ago, Aphexis said:

Umm 2nd hand, obviously devs get zero of the cash tendered.

 

The person buying the game does not own the software, it is simply a license.

 

So selling it on, and for years this has gone on, is also a grey area and can be in the same pit with piracy, because the devs are not supported when that game is purchased again.

I must've misunderstood, I didn't realize you were talking about the used market.

 

You're right about that, but I would point out that most publishers still probably track used sales to gauge interest for a game. Even if used sales don't get them any money, they may contribute toward the decision to create new games, remasters, or just returning old games for sale again.

[Tasuma]

I know personally I will pirate triple A games to make sure they run on my system. Sure they have benchmarks but with everyone having a slightly different setup no benchmark is perfect. If it runs like crap I just won't buy it and uninstall. If it runs well and I enjoy it I will gladly throw my money at devs. Witch 3 is the most recent example of this for me. Torrented, ran well enough for me and bought it. 

 

Edited: word

[crzyces]

26 minutes ago, Tasuma said:

I know personally I will pirate triple A games to make sure they run on my system. Sure they have benchmarks but with everyone having a slightly different setup no benchmark is perfect. If it runs like crap I just won't buy it and uninstall. If it runs well and I enjoy it I will gladly throw my money at devs. Witch 3 is the most recent example of this for me. Torrented, ran well enough for me and bought it. 

 

Edited: word

Not calling you a fibber, but I do not know anyone that has pirated a game, had it fully functional (online, patches etc.), and then purchased the game. Not once. Same with software. Someone torrents a $3700 usd graphics suite, lo and behold, it works great, so they go out and buy it. Yeah, that happens. They may dl a crap version, like it, and buy a better version though, I have seen that, especially with editing software.

 

I pirated a game from 1997 I believe. I still have the old floppy disks for the C64 and the snazzy box. No idea who owns the rights, if anyone at this point. I did look, and no one sold it, but there were tons of sites that had it for free download. (No torrent use, just normal sites).

Edited April 26, 2017 by crzyces
I do think if you owned a game and the disk scratched, your hd died, w/ever then it's acceptable. I think you should be able to make a backup copy of games/software anyway. It is no different than RAID persay.

[Aphexis]

9 hours ago, crzyces said:

Not calling you a fibber, but I do not know anyone that has pirated a game, had it fully functional (online, patches etc.), and then purchased the game. Not once. Same with software. Someone torrents a $3700 usd graphics suite, lo and behold, it works great, so they go out and buy it. Yeah, that happens. They may dl a crap version, like it, and buy a better version though, I have seen that, especially with editing software.

 

I pirated a game from 1997 I believe. I still have the old floppy disks for the C64 and the snazzy box. No idea who owns the rights, if anyone at this point. I did look, and no one sold it, but there were tons of sites that had it for free download. (No torrent use, just normal sites).

I did that with Fallout 4.

 

Guess what?

 

I bought it and supported the devs.

 

http://steamcommunity.com/id/maikaru/

 

But it's rare i ever torrent a new game, and it's only to demo the game if one is not available which is also a problem of modern gaming.

 

A good read.

 

https://www.destructoid.com/lionhead-used-games-worse-than-piracy-201343.phtml

[TheBestFakeWords]

Talking for a friend of course; Used to pirate most games in younger poorer days.

As him or her started getting more money, started paying for games, simple.

Some piracy might not hurt as it builds up a loyalty for the brand and a will to pay for later iterations when your personal economy is better.

[typographie]

4 hours ago, crzyces said:

Not calling you a fibber, but I do not know anyone that has pirated a game, had it fully functional (online, patches etc.), and then purchased the game.

Surely you knew that by posting that we'd swarm out of the woodwork.

 

You can choose to believe me or not with no way for me to prove it, but I've done exactly that from time to time. Sometimes I honestly just need a risk-free way to see if I'd get along with a certain game that I have major concerns about. I don't claim it's any more holy to pirate for that reason than any other. But being that it has resulted in a few sales that factually would not have happened otherwise, I don't feel too badly about it.

[knightslugger]

5 hours ago, Aphexis said:

What are peoples opinions on this part?

I say if you want it that badly, pay the piper.

[Mira Yurizaki]

My opinion on the matter:

• If the game is no longer sold at any store, that's a sign the publisher (developers get money at the mercy of their publisher) isn't actively trying to make money off it, so I don't care if it's pirated or not.
• There are some people you can never convince them to stop pirating. These are people who will mooch the system in any way they can.
• There are some people pirate because they're "sticking it to The Man." Well the joke's on them, because as far as The Man is concerned, they still need The Man.
  • Boycotting doesn't really have much of an impact if you still use the thing in some way or another.
• There are people who pirate because there's no other way of getting it, like being in a country that while not really oppressive, doesn't seem to get the game for some reason. I'm fine with that because the publisher is clearly not seeing their gold mine there.
• There are people who pirate because they can't afford the game. In some respects, sure, games can be expensive. In others, the game will drop in price anyway and if gaming is too expensive of a hobby for you, you should really think about your financial situation and if gaming is something you should really be doing. Or at least, "keeping up with the Jones."

Overall though, I don't really care if the game is more than a year old. After all, most of the game's sales are made within the first few months.

[Andreas Lilja]

11 hours ago, Aphexis said:

Prey is another game that's not that old but again cannot be purchased digitally.

Retail copies can be activated on Steam.

 

G2A sells keys for like 5$. 

[plsno]

I couldn't care less that people pirate. I just find it amusing the lengths that some go to justify their actions( this wasn't aimed at the op).

 

11 hours ago, Aphexis said:

http://kotaku.com/5743755/is-buying-used-video-games-worse-than-stealing-them

What a stupid article. Could you imagine how  someone would sound if they went on about horrible it is to buy used furniture because Ikea isn't getting a cut?

[Scruffy90]

From personal experience, if it weren't for me pirating software in the past, I would've never been able to learn some of the software I now use for work (and pay for personal use). Was I wrong in doing it, probably, but I wouldn't have been able to learn it any other way. As far as gaming is concerned, I used to pirate when demos started disappearing. I had a crappy machine at the time and I needed to make sure that I could run the game before buying it. Some of the games, I wouldn't buy, the bulk I would or simply wouldn't play the game. I've had no need to do it now seeing how I could now afford what I need to buy and with gaming, I'll buy it on steam to test it out, and if I don't like it or it runs like shit, i'll refund it. 

[Princess Luna]

Nowadays I play all legit but going back 6 years ago when I was still in middle school completely broken and only rocking a modest Core2Duo + 560ti that was a gift from my grandparent I would torrent games since Brazilian taxes on games are ludicrous, believe me I would have loved to support who made the game but when my greedy government is having 76% of the final price you pay on the originals making the cost sky high it's really hard.

 

Nonetheless college and study hard and all that stuff seems to have actually work out, now that I have a good decent salary I do my part, also nowadays Steam and GOG did make things hella more easy and cheap then back in the dvd days.

[Not_Sean]

If It wasn't for my Lan and Cracking games days I wouldn't even have a career, and the same for 3 friends of mine, all of us with BSC in computer Science and few other things, Getting a game to work, learning reg hacks and all that was where we all grew a deeper love of computers besides just casual gaming, That said, we where children trying to play games on horrible systems, and even download was a mission back than (taking 2003-2006) 

 

Now days I only Pirate for select things, like I own all three Mass Effects on Steam, Recently pirated them so I could mod them with graphics and enhancements that steam would have freaked out on, I have not taken any profit from the devs so would this be legal. 

I would still pirate games today, mainly to see if they are worth it, Sick of the Crap dev's are shoving out these days as well as the Pre order BS, I got burnt badly by One Mans Lie, But game like Doom, Pirated it, Loved it, Bought it so its in my Library so years later I can play  

[flibberdipper]

Generally speaking I just pirate shit until I can actually get my hands on a real physical version (unless of course you can't really buy it anymore or it becomes borderline impossible to do so).

[thegoogler]

I have pirated premiere pro because I wanted to learn how to and thought it was cool. I don't generally pirate games because I can actually afford them but like others have said before if it is old and hard to get then piracy is a good option it is just new games where if you like it so much that you pirate it you are relying on others to pay properly and support the developers so that they can make more content for that game. I can't say anything because I have pirated software that the developers still profit from but it costs soo much and per month I couldn't afford it just for learning.

[thegoogler]

13 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

The only question I have there is if the dev even exists anymore.  A lot of older devs have died out.

yeah if it is any of the Crysis games it is fine because crytech went bankrupt... i think