Gonna add this to the OP of my thread, if that's ok.
My opinion is that I will not pirate anything unless it is literally impossible for me to get a copy by legitimate means (for instance, I would feel justified in downloading a copy of Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii), but pirating something like NSMBW is stupid and unjustifiable)
My opinion is that I will not pirate anything unless it is literally impossible for me to get a copy by legitimate means (for instance, I would feel justified in downloading a copy of Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii), but pirating something like NSMBW is stupid and unjustifiable)
It's illegal, and if everyone did it, there would be no monetary incentive for developers to... develop.
I'm fine with it if you must, but I support something like what Min Liang Tan (CEO of Razer) did, because honestly, financial situations are different for everybody.
I'm fine with it if you must, but I support something like what Min Liang Tan (CEO of Razer) did, because honestly, financial situations are different for everybody.
The topic of piracy is a tired one. The conclusion is this:
Developers and publishers of a game should be paid for their work. Games are not created using free or slave labour...
On the other hand, games were and still are often overpriced for what they offer. Also the fact that you buy based on a promise for content, before actually experiencing it, combined with the blatant corruption of the game press, means that the gamer needs some kind of protection.
The "scene" offers this kind of protection. It gives you the choice of trying before you buy, and of opting to pay for the actual value of the content. If a game isn't worth 60$, just wait until it hits 30 or 20...
The thing is, this kind of thing needs some kind of ethics and matureness. Plenty of really good companies have closed because not enough gamers supported their efforts, and this is a shame. With great power, comes great responsibility, says Spiderman, and i tend to agree... With the power to pirate, also comes the need to be responsible and still pay to support those devs that actually tried to entertain you fairly...
So, in the end, piracy is not right and is not wrong. The real question should be: Do you support the hardworking devs, or not?
Developers and publishers of a game should be paid for their work. Games are not created using free or slave labour...
On the other hand, games were and still are often overpriced for what they offer. Also the fact that you buy based on a promise for content, before actually experiencing it, combined with the blatant corruption of the game press, means that the gamer needs some kind of protection.
The "scene" offers this kind of protection. It gives you the choice of trying before you buy, and of opting to pay for the actual value of the content. If a game isn't worth 60$, just wait until it hits 30 or 20...
The thing is, this kind of thing needs some kind of ethics and matureness. Plenty of really good companies have closed because not enough gamers supported their efforts, and this is a shame. With great power, comes great responsibility, says Spiderman, and i tend to agree... With the power to pirate, also comes the need to be responsible and still pay to support those devs that actually tried to entertain you fairly...
So, in the end, piracy is not right and is not wrong. The real question should be: Do you support the hardworking devs, or not?
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... And he died. See the problem here?Actually, Uncle Ben said that
Want my take on the situation? I don't care about games that companies no longer generate profit from and therefore as such, I download old school games anywhere from Snes to Gamecube. There I said it.
That's pretty much my view as well. This is Yuber from the ZSNES forums(what's up dude) but yeah, downloading abandonware hurts nobody and emulation is the only thing keeping games like Seiken Densetsu 3 and Mother 3 alive/known outside of Japan. Games are art and they need to be preserved, but I'm also not gonna pretend to be some honorable game historian who only downloads games for the sake of preservation, lol. I like emulating games and I don't really give a shit if people object to it because emulation(and burning Dreamcast games in the past) has allowed me to play games that I never even knew about before, especially Japan-only games with awesome fan translations. Without MAME and other arcade emus, many old arcade games would have been completely lost, plus emulating arcade games that I dreamed of owning as a kid just kicks ass.
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Oh hey there, glad to see you joined the Temp
Yeah, I mean, for old software, or abandonware, I see no moral dilemma seeing as no revenue is generated, much less given to the companies who made them. Many companies have gone defunct, including Argonaut Software (the people who made the Super FX/FX-2 chips, Irem, etc to name a few. Sure, Nintendo has their eShop/VC service, but they don't have all the games we truly want on there and the Wii U catalog is paltry at best. So, yeah, old ROMs, no one makes money off of them save secondhand retailers, but so do used games, right? To some, there's no difference, and to me, I don't care.
I used to be ok with it, but then Cing went under due to piracy and I flipped my opinion on it. Seeing one of my personal favorite companies go under because of piracy has made me realize that there can be real damages thanks to it. So I am against piracy because I see that it can cause real damages.
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Addendum: Piracy of games that are being actively sold can have a severely adverse affect on companies' profits, whether they go under or not, it can still very much do damage. For games that don't give any party money, there is no real loss in revenue at all. Summary, old games that make nothing and are hard to get, yes, for new, actively produced and sold games. no.
my opinion is it isn't wrong if you weren't going to buy the game anyways because they aren't getting money they weren't going to get in the first place
But how can you justify pirating a game if you weren't going to buy it? If it's worth your attention, you may as well buy it to support the company. If you don't like it after you've bought it, make sure you've kept the receipt and just return it to the store. That argument is one that has never made sense to me, because that's pretty much like day after day stealing a sandwich and justifying it because you weren't going to pay for it; if it's good enough that you keep coming back for it, it damn well better be good enough to pay for
Well... You're honest, I'll give you that
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I am 40 years old, I and my friends have been pirating for years. When 8-track record ables came out, people ran out and bought them and everyone had boot leg albums in their 8-track cases.
A few short years later, we got 16-track which released as record able and we were happier! Along with this also came Beta and VHS which again were released as record able, and again we thanked the corporations for putting this power into our hands, and though they warned us not to violate copyright, they continued on selling without issue and were happy with their profits, hence the reason you can still buy all of these but Beta and 8-track, in stores today.
The trick is though that in 1985 Macrovision was created to prevent the duplication of commercial VHS tapes, though this didn't begin to be included in about every VCR until around 1987. Thing was though that Macrovision is easy to bypass with signal enhancers and scramblers.
Skipping over the amazing Laser Discs along with BBS history, we go on to CD-R and eventually DVD-R, which were released some years after their read only counter part, though for what reason I am not sure.
Once these were released, everyone began making boot legs of audio CD's, and eventually, thanks to DVD Decrpyter and the like, of DVD's as well. During this time the Internet was just starting to hit middle America, though it was not worth pirating on as dial up was horrible slow (like wi-fi can be), unless you had access to a College lab or something.
It was not until the turn of the century when Cable Internet and the like really began to catch on, and during all this time prior there was little to no talk about the threat that piracy has upon the industry. No major reports done by companies, the government, etc. Though during this time Disney did change the rules on Public Domain, and somehow managed to make it so corporations such as them selves could buy things out of Public Domain and capitalize off of it, just like with the song Happy Birthday, though I don't believe I should have to spell out the evils of the "Corporate Person" vs the Flesh and Blood Person as it should all be obvious. Not to knock on capitalism on a whole, just what it's become. Capitalistic/Socialist/Communist Technocracy something or other.
On that note, back during the Dreamcast days, Sega put out a letter stating that Piracy really has not hurt their sales, nor was it the cause of the Dreamcast's low sale. In fact they said it worked more as free promotion for their product. The old owners of Sega were really lax on the subject, just like certain Government reports I have read, even from a few years back.
With this in mind, and the long standing history of piracy, and the fact that we have ALWAYS had a means to buy thing used such as at thrift stores, garage sales, pawn shops etc. We have always had the ability to watch a movie without buying at a friend's house, or via rental, borrowing, or library loan for that matter.
On top of that if there is or was anything we wanted to pirate, we could always inter-library loan and duplicate anything we rented.
The only thing that has been moderately controlled well in this domain is video game piracy as most people don't know how to hack consoles let alone know where to go to get games. Amazingly enough, most people don't know how to do much beyond download MP3's on their computer if that. And most of the easy ways are plagued with adware so a plagued computer results in slower downloads, slower computer speed, and therefore impact the speed at which they can pirate and therefore amount.
I could go on, but if you think about it, it is not a threat, never has been, it is merely about control and profit. Trust me, men and women in high places will always fighter harder to preserve their own piece of the pie, than they will to preserve the American Dream, or any more than they tried to preserve the ways and history of those who were here before them. People are out there without food, shelter, natural free resources, or even access to natural free resources to shelter them selves should they find them selves hopeless within the system some day. Everything is privatized and the rope is getting tighter, and they have the nerve to pretend that it is they who are the victims, the poor poor power elite.
A few short years later, we got 16-track which released as record able and we were happier! Along with this also came Beta and VHS which again were released as record able, and again we thanked the corporations for putting this power into our hands, and though they warned us not to violate copyright, they continued on selling without issue and were happy with their profits, hence the reason you can still buy all of these but Beta and 8-track, in stores today.
The trick is though that in 1985 Macrovision was created to prevent the duplication of commercial VHS tapes, though this didn't begin to be included in about every VCR until around 1987. Thing was though that Macrovision is easy to bypass with signal enhancers and scramblers.
Skipping over the amazing Laser Discs along with BBS history, we go on to CD-R and eventually DVD-R, which were released some years after their read only counter part, though for what reason I am not sure.
Once these were released, everyone began making boot legs of audio CD's, and eventually, thanks to DVD Decrpyter and the like, of DVD's as well. During this time the Internet was just starting to hit middle America, though it was not worth pirating on as dial up was horrible slow (like wi-fi can be), unless you had access to a College lab or something.
It was not until the turn of the century when Cable Internet and the like really began to catch on, and during all this time prior there was little to no talk about the threat that piracy has upon the industry. No major reports done by companies, the government, etc. Though during this time Disney did change the rules on Public Domain, and somehow managed to make it so corporations such as them selves could buy things out of Public Domain and capitalize off of it, just like with the song Happy Birthday, though I don't believe I should have to spell out the evils of the "Corporate Person" vs the Flesh and Blood Person as it should all be obvious. Not to knock on capitalism on a whole, just what it's become. Capitalistic/Socialist/Communist Technocracy something or other.
On that note, back during the Dreamcast days, Sega put out a letter stating that Piracy really has not hurt their sales, nor was it the cause of the Dreamcast's low sale. In fact they said it worked more as free promotion for their product. The old owners of Sega were really lax on the subject, just like certain Government reports I have read, even from a few years back.
With this in mind, and the long standing history of piracy, and the fact that we have ALWAYS had a means to buy thing used such as at thrift stores, garage sales, pawn shops etc. We have always had the ability to watch a movie without buying at a friend's house, or via rental, borrowing, or library loan for that matter.
On top of that if there is or was anything we wanted to pirate, we could always inter-library loan and duplicate anything we rented.
The only thing that has been moderately controlled well in this domain is video game piracy as most people don't know how to hack consoles let alone know where to go to get games. Amazingly enough, most people don't know how to do much beyond download MP3's on their computer if that. And most of the easy ways are plagued with adware so a plagued computer results in slower downloads, slower computer speed, and therefore impact the speed at which they can pirate and therefore amount.
I could go on, but if you think about it, it is not a threat, never has been, it is merely about control and profit. Trust me, men and women in high places will always fighter harder to preserve their own piece of the pie, than they will to preserve the American Dream, or any more than they tried to preserve the ways and history of those who were here before them. People are out there without food, shelter, natural free resources, or even access to natural free resources to shelter them selves should they find them selves hopeless within the system some day. Everything is privatized and the rope is getting tighter, and they have the nerve to pretend that it is they who are the victims, the poor poor power elite.
But how can you justify pirating a game if you weren't going to buy it? If it's worth your attention, you may as well buy it to support the company. If you don't like it after you've bought it, make sure you've kept the receipt and just return it to the store. That argument is one that has never made sense to me, because that's pretty much like day after day stealing a sandwich and justifying it because you weren't going to pay for it; if it's good enough that you keep coming back for it, it damn well better be good enough to pay for
Well... You're honest, I'll give you that
i wasn't saying it was morally correct, i was just saying that in my eyes it doesn't really harm the companies that much if i wasn't going to buy it
But the point is that you have it in your possession, and because you are keeping a game that you have absolutely no license to have you are draining upon the sales of said game, no matter what point of view you look at it from
Looking at the list of games they put out, looks more likely they went under due to mostly putting out niche titles that would have been hard to sell enough copies of to stay afloat no matter what people were or weren't doing to obtain the games without paying. You liked them, sure, a lot of people liked them I bet. But not relative to the size of the market they were competing in.
You see, that is true. At the same time, piracy still didn't help them stay afloat. I was actually able to find their games at stores like Wal*Mart, which means there was a demand for them in some form or at least enough to draw the attention of major retailers. Then after flashcards started becoming more common and cheaper, demand started to drop for them. Maybe it was a mix of bad marketing moves on their end, but piracy still didn't help them out.
Piracy may not've helped them out enough, but it generally is free advertising, with the 'responsible pirates' that enjoy the game enough and have disposable income, buying the game and/or telling their friends about it. This can be true even of pirates in regions where games cost astronomical sums - perhaps they know someone in the US or EU, JP, or AU online that might enjoy the game. They can spread the word.
The issue I think here is that there wasn't much demand for these games. Hardly anyone had heard of the dev, there wasn't much if any advertising, and a lot of people probably saw the cases and thought the game looked uninteresting based on the cover.
DS/PSP may've been a bit of an exception, but the general thing with piracy is that it's usually only 10% or so of the total users of the hardware. Let's be generous and say for DS it was more like 25%, since it was dead-simple to grab a flashcart and go. Maybe 5% of the total userbase knew of Cing, so I'd guess 5% or less of the pirates knew of them. And I imagine maybe 1/3 of that 5% of that 25% were responsible pirates and bought the games after discovering they liked it.
We're getting into very small numbers now. and these are all just numbers I'm pulling out of my butt but they are educated guesses.
Anyway it all boils down to them being a small developer, making games that not that many people will play, that aren't getting properly advertised or really making rounds with popular review/preview sites/blogs/magazines. Maybe they were even the type of games that the end-user would enjoy, but they'd figure their friends wouldn't be into it...
It's not surprising that they flopped but blaming piracy for it is rather short-sighted.
Mm... no. Not really. How do you not understand that if a pirate wouldn't have bought it anyway, be it because they don't have the money or because they don't enjoy it, they're not really hurting sales. Let me put it this way - It's called a sale because you buy the game.
If user has money to buy game and does, that's +1 sale. If user cannot or will not buy game because reasons, it's not -1 sale. They're not missing the sale because they wouldn't have got it to begin with. I might download a game, find out it's crap, and delete it. They're not missing my sale because I wouldn't buy it in the first place. I'm not going to make an uninformed decision to buy a game. Let's say... I won't buy games. No one is missing a game sale from me because I pirate everything. I would not buy a single game ever, so they're not missing the sale because I would fundamentally not buy games.
The only case where they might actually be missing a sale is if the pirate has disposable income, enjoys the game thoroughly, but will still not buy the game. That's called the pirate doesn't understand economics or they think the company whose game they're pirating is huge enough that it won't matter.
Your analogy is incorrect btw, you can't make a copy of a sandwich appear out of thin air. Copying is not theft.
As for me, I pirate when the media is a generation or more old. I pirate when I can't afford to buy it. I pirate when I know the company is going to get huge sales regardless of whether I pirate or not.
If it's a game that doesn't sell many units, I might pirate it, but If I enjoy it and I know it won't sell much, I'll buy it at some point. For example, The Atelier Series. It keeps getting localized, I started out by pirating Ayesha.. now I own Ayesha Escha and Shallie Digitally. I'll be buying rorona+, totori, and meruru soon.
Let's say.. An Eminem Album, a pokemon game, Assassin's creed or CoD (not that I'm into all those) I'd be fine with pirating them. Huge sales.
If a company does something stupid, like releasing a game, then releasing a new edition of said game a year or two down the road, and I bought the first one? I'd pirate the crap out of that (I'm looking at you Dark souls II).
If the game's a bug-filled mess, I might buy it when they fix it, but not until then.
small artist/dev/movie maker, that I enjoy? Pretty much a guaranteed buy.
Importing games? lol no. I'm not gonna waste cash to play a game in moon runes that the company thought not enough US people would want. I've got copies of a few gundam games because of this. But that's not true with music.. I've got a few imported Albums from Japan. Not sure why that is.
Haven't bought any japan-only anime or manga yet, though.
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