I think it's as simple as the usual reason - to save money?
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I know some people do it because "I'm low on cash" but what about the people who do it because some games have certain things put into them that warrant pirating.
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yar harr, you will nevarr undaarrrstand teh pirate way of life
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If you don't like something, don't buy it. This sends the message that consumers won't buy games with that thing in them.
If you're pirating the game, you're saying "I don't like this thing, but I still want to play the game and can't exercise self-restraint to keep from getting your game, so I'm just going to steal it instead of paying for it." This sends the message that publishers need to use even more severe DRM.
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Actually that should send the message "you are doing something wrong" but publishers don't get it :D
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The only thing publishers see is "people are pirating our games" and their logical conclusion is "we need to protect our games even more".
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This. If your game is being pirated more than average, that means there's interest in it, but you're failing somewhere else, like pissing off your potential customers or charging too much for it. Or maybe it's a hyped game that lots of people want to play but it isn't actually good enough for them to go and buy it afterward. So, you know, maybe spend less money on hyping sucky games and more on actually making good games.
If the game companies don't get this, it's entirely their fault. To blame the pirates for it is nonsense.
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If the game companies don't get this, it's entirely their fault. To blame the pirates for it is nonsense.
Umm, not my point exactly. I'm 100% against piracy.
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When "they are doing something wrong" people don't even pirate the game. Like Mass Effect Andromeda - I've downloaded it, played 30 minutes and deleted, and laughed that my friend preordered it =))
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Because EA fucking everything
Ok, Seriously some people couldn’t afford it, some people think it’s ridiculous to spend money on games, and some people just take advantage of everything
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You might actually be on to something about EA. It could be that some (not all) pirate games because they feel like the company doesn't deserve their money (because they feel they messed up a franchise, disagree with their overall policies, that there are expensive DLC's, etc.). I wouldn't be surprised if some people decided to pirate Mass Effect Andromeda because of the bad press it got. They might have wanted to play the game, but at the same time not spend their money on a game they didn't hear much good about.
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Or they could just not pirate Mass Effect Andromeda because of the bad press. If they feel that EA messed up the game, they could just not play the game.
Not buying or playing the game tells EA that they need to change their approach if they want people to want their games.
Pirating the game just tells EA that people do want their games, and they need to figure out ways to keep them from pirating so that they'll pay for them instead. This just funnels more money away into DRM.
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True. I assumed the thought process was that if they pirate the game, they don't pay so no funds to their hated company . It isn't that I mean that their reasons are valid (if a game seems not to my taste, I will have no interest in playing, so never mind pirating or buying it) or well thought out, just that some might think that way.
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+1. I wanted to answer something, but you read my thoughts very well.
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The same reason why people pirate music, see if the money is worth it. Other times because the game is not available any other way, has not had a re-release or has not become available in any of the modern platforms, or there isn't a PC port yet. There are many reasons why people pirate stuff.
PD: Name is non-related to the topic. lol
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Cost, convenience, quality, in roughly that order. Cost is obvious. Convenience is nice, and one convenient thing is to be able to try something and then delete it without a trace - no steam account to clutter if you end up hating a game. Quality... well, a stretch, but cracked versions are often more convenient (no disc checks, no forced online checks), and sometimes if rarely even prevents DRM related bugs and issues.
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Most people pirate something to try it before buying it. A ton of people in the case of games flat out say they will pirate a game if it has bad DRM like Denuvo. Some people pirate it just because or they can't afford it. There are too many reasons to list really.
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I feel like Denuvo gets a bad rep as horrible DRM from pirates who don't like Denuvo actually having some success in the past stoping them from pirating it. There hasn't been any real evidence of Denuvo ruining a game. Look at DOOM, a pretty high profile game which had Denuvo fro a couple of months before it was cracked. The devs then patched the game and removed Denuvo (since it had done it's job of protecting the launch window) and there wasn't any visible difference in the game's performance.
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You can never successfully stop piracy. They will always find a way to crack it eventually. People said it was RIME that did it. I have no interest in Doom. That seems like it would play better on a console anyway. I rarely pirate games now because of how much of a pain in the ass it is. I'd rather just have the game on Steam so everything is in one place. The last 2 games I pirated I would buy anyway too if I had the money and both are on my Steam wishlist.
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I never said that. Neither does Denuvo claim it. Its job is to protect the launch window of a game from piracy, so the developer can maximize sales during that initial period.
Doom was just an example that I knew offhand that had Denuvo, was cracked, had Denuvo removed with no noticible improvement in performance. All I'm saying is there isn't any evidence of the DRM being obtrusive or "bad". Rise of the Tomb Raider was another. I don't know about RIME?
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https://kotaku.com/pirates-say-rimes-drm-slows-down-the-game-but-denuvo-d-1795738625 There's some more out there about it.
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Again, no real proof that Denuvo causes a measurable performance impact. The article itself says it.
Side note, RIME looks cool!
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That was the only one I linked. There were other articles claiming it too. I also heard Denuvo doesn't uninstall.
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I feel like Denuvo gets a bad rep as horrible DRM from pirates who don't like Denuvo actually having some success in the past stopping them from pirating it.
As I said earlier, it's all hearsay.
Denuvo isn't a separate application that installs on your computer alongside the game. It's part of the code of the game. You can't "uninstall" it without uninstalling the game. That's kind of the point. When the game eventually gets cracked, it's the game devs' choice whether or not to release a patch to remove Denuvo, since it no longer serves a purpose.
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you misunderstand. denuvo gets built in the code. which means it's part of the game's exe file. if you uninstall the game, denuvo is gone as well. the problem with denuvo haters is that they spread lies all over the place. they did that from the beginning. they even made fake screenshots ans videos to claim denuvo destroys your hardware...
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One massive problem with it is what happens after the company running Denuvo eventually goes under. With no server to connect to, any Denuvo game that hasn't had it patched out becomes unplayable. For customers only though, not for pirates.
And we all know how "good" big publishers are at maintaining their back catalogue. So it's a safe bet that some years from now we'll end up with dozens or hundreds of games suddenly becoming unusable for people who paid for them, with most remaining that way forever. So those customers would have to resort to downloading pirated copies of the games they bought. And if some of those games were never cracked? Well, sucks to be you, gullible/uninformed customer!
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That's a fair concern. If the devs don't patch the game at that point (they very likely have a master copy without denuvo lying around - all they have to do is push an update), I don't have any qualms against pirating it, as in my view its now obsolete unsupported software. You have bought the software, and as long as you pirate it for your personal use only, nothing wrong. There are 7 games with Denuvo that haven't been cracked yet, with only Battlefront being older than 2016. That's an online only game so, lack of dev support would kill it anyways.
Until that happens though, "bad DRM Denuvo" is a pretty poor excuse.
I remember when Games for Windows Live went down. No such issues occurred. Hopefully devs with Denuvo have taken the same precautions.
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Most people pirate something to try it before buying it.
i don't believe that for a second. i am sure most people pirate to get free stuff. there are people who actually pirate, then buy shortly after that if they like the game. but i bet that's the minority. most people pirate to get the games for free. and i also bet some of the people who claim they buy the pirated games they like, actually buy them a lot later during sale. it really doesn't count if you pirate the game, play it and then buy it for 2.5€ during summer sale a year later... ^^
that's not to say i am completely against piracy. absolutely not. if people can't afford it, i don't see why they shouldn't pirate games. i only have a problem with people who could buy their games, but pirate anyway.
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Tell me how that doesn't count if they still buy it anyway? I was only referring to the pirates who were already thinking about buying it. I shouldn't have said most like that. In reality most pirates wouldn't have even bought the product in the first place so they don't cause a lost sale.
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Tell me how that doesn't count if they still buy it anyway?
i said it doesn't count if they buy it like a year later for 2.5€. you know, if people claim to pirate only to test games before the purchase, you would expect the following:
- pirate the game
- play it for a few hours
- if you like it - buy it for full price (/current price) and continue playing with the bought copy
that is what i would accept if someone told me he pirates games to test them before buying them. what i will not accept is this:
- pirate the game
- play it for a very long time or even finish it
- buy it years later in the summer sale when it's dirt cheap
if you do that, you are not pirating games to test them! you are pirating to play games without paying for them! you still can have good reasons for that (for instance no job, no money - good enough reason for me). but don't go on the forums and tell people you pirate games only to test them. because that's clearly not what you're doing, if you're doing it like that. not talking about you personally
I was only referring to the pirates who were already thinking about buying it.
sure, people who actually think about buying the game and really do that after a short test are very different from what i described. i just feel they are the minority, just like you say. i don't think many people who pirate games really buy them after testing them.
I shouldn't have said most like that.
yeah, i think it was inevitable that people misunderstand what you wanted to say. ;)
In reality most pirates wouldn't have even bought the product in the first place so they don't cause a lost sale.
that i think is also true.
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No in that case they still buy it. Regardless of the price if they still buy the product then it doesn't matter. Also a person would say they don't have the money if that's the reason they were pirating. When people say testing they usually mean more in a demo way anyway.
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No in that case they still buy it. Regardless of the price if they still buy the product then it doesn't matter. Also a person would say they don't have the money if that's the reason they were pirating. When people say testing they usually mean more in a demo way anyway.
yes, when they say testing they mean in a demo way. and what do you do if you are interested in a game, play the demo and like it? right, you buy the game. what you do not do is somehow magically finish the whole game with the demo. but that is what pirates do.
again: it does not matter if they buy the game years later for pocket change. not at all. they did not just test the game, they played the pirated copy and did not buy the game as a result of that copy. they bought the game way later, when it was extremely cheap anyway. price absolutely matters. you cannot tell me you pirate just to test/demo games, if you don't buy them for the price they have at that time. you then pirate games to play them. if you buy the game at -90% years later, that doesn't change anything. you make up for 10% of the original cost. wow, what a fair transaction that was.
again, pirating for demo purposes means downloading the game, testing it and then buying the game. not finishing the game and possibly buying it years later for an extremely high discount. that is really not the same thing. not even close.
maybe that makes it more clear: let's say everyone on earth plays Hellblade. it's a great game and people love it. but everyone on earth also just pirates it "to test it". everyone beats the game with the downloaded copy. they do not support the game at that time. Ninja Theory goes bankrupt, because they have exactly 0 sales. 2 years later some of those people buy the game for 1.5€ instead of 30€. Ninja Theory is still bankrupt and long gone. the sales at that point don't really matter. congratulations, you destroyed a great indie dev. you claimed you would buy the game after testing, but what you really did was pirating it with the intend of buying it dirt cheap at some point later. i hope you can see the difference. :)
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I haven't seen a demo for a game since Kingdoms of Amalur. Like I said it really doesn't matter since they're still buying it. Your argument would be valid if the person said they would buy the game but chose to pirate it instead and never bought it. Also it's impossible to buy a game for the price you pirate it most of the time since game prices change constantly. Your example is something that will never happen either since there will always be somebody buying the product. The people who pirate like that never intended on buying it so to claim they had an effect on any bankruptcy is asinine. I already mentioned this in a different post but it's like people blaming pirates for ADR going bankrupt when what actually happened was ADR overextended themselves with buying far too many licenses.
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Like I said it really doesn't matter since they're still buying it. Your argument would be valid if the person said they would buy the game but chose to pirate it instead and never bought it
so you don't see any difference between these two cases:
-
pirate, then buy for 50€ and play
-
pirate, play and buy for 2.5€ 2 years later
this is the same thing for you? i honestly cannot understand how you can say that. of course it matters. it matters a lot. the first one really pirated the game just to see if he wants to buy it. the second one did not. he pirated the game to play the pirated copy, and not as help for his purchase decision. isn't that really obvious?
btw, no idea what ADR is. ^^
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Again it doesn't matter because there's still a purchase being made. Your argument might be valid if that person bought a used copy of a console game instead. As long as the pirate still buys the product then they are supporting the devs. Also you ignored where I said prices change all the time. I mistyped ADR. I meant ADV. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.D._Vision
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the argument was not if they support the dev with pocket change or not. the argument was that many people who claim to pirate games just for demo purposes are actually lying. and that buying the game years later for small money does not validate their claim at all.
Also you ignored where I said prices change all the time.
show me one game that dropped from 50-60€ to below 5€ within the first 2 months after launch. sure, prices change. but they do not change that rapidly. the typical case is that someone pirates a relatively new game "to try it out". relatively new games have relatively stable prices. and it is highly unlikely that such a game drops in price during the supposed "demo phase". because that's what the pirate claims he's doing, right. he wants to buy the game and therefore downloads it to see if it runs well and he likes it. if that takes a week, or even two or three - price will not change dramatically during that time. not at all in almost all cases.
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Nobody is going to buy a game years later after pirating it. They definitely wouldn't say they were demoing it. I never said they dropped that much either. I said prices change in general. Usually during Steam sales.
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Nobody is going to buy a game years later after pirating it.
yes. people do that, actually. i've heard that so often over the years.
and not everyone who says he buys the games he "demos" really does that. as i wrote you before, i even found someone right in this thread. ^^
as for the prices: we are mostly talking about newer games anyway, right? those are the games people want to play a demo of. and those prices don't change dramatically during the first months. that's just a fact. even during sale.
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You ignored the 2nd point to what you quoted. Also again, I never said the prices change dramatically. Even Fallout 4 went on sale during steam winter sale right after it came out.
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funny, i actually found one of these people we were talking about just now. ^^
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This thread may interest you - it covers a lot of different opinions regarding what's right/wrong in pirating, as well as a few people admitting why and when they pirate games: https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/fUwKJ/illegal-downloading-of-games-is-there-some-wiggle-room
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Because they can.
It's not the price - people pirate $0.99 games too, and most games come to "deep" sales in a year. It's the ideology. It's the rebellion. It's a fight against "the man". Then they grow up and realize they wanna fight the man by supporting developers whose games they like.
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Well I know bunch of people who told me that, word for word. They refuse to pay the "spoiled western developers who swim in money" and they just pirate games. Then a few years later some of those people decide they wanna pay for games they like, even for those they pirated before. So how is it not even close when it is exactly like that? Maybe your own personal story is different, but you didn't talk to these people like I did so you can't claim the exclusivity on pirating reasons.
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I definitely wouldn't say "it's not the price" so generally. Maybe it's the case with some of the people you encountered, but I'm almost sure price is the #1 reason.
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Number one reason is being willing to pirate stuff.
You might have two people, A and B. They both work similar jobs, have similar households, similar amount of money and all... Both wanna play brand new game X. Person A looks at the price, decides to wait for 75% and read more reviews and look at playthroughs at the time... and person B just pirates it immediately.
Was it the price? If it's just the price, why didn't person A pirate it too?
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Willing to pirate stuff seems just way out of scope of this discussion to me. You could basically say that #1 reason people are pirating is because they are alive.
So let's speak about people who actually do the pirating. They are obviously willing to if they are doing it. The question is, why do they do it?
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No, there's bunch of alive people who don't pirate. Also, not sure dead people (don't) pirate.
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There's also a bunch of people who are willing to pirate but don't do it. What's your point?
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People are complicated and any generalization is bad.
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Somehow I don't think this is the point you were trying to make. I agree with this comment, yet I don't agree with your previous ones.
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OP said what are the reasons. I name one with a simple explanation. Not "the reason", one of the reasons.
In 2 minutes 2 different people tell me "not even close" and "that's not how it works at all". What else to do but to stop taking them seriously. People are really taking every weird thing online personally these days.
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Trying before buying is closely connected to price. A person who wants to wait for a 75% sale isn't going to just do what you said unless that game happened to be in a series they already played. Like the new Life is Strange game.
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Those bunch of people you talked to are the very small minority of game pirates. Piracy in all media types like game, music, softwares, plugins and all kinda stuff are the result of very complicated economic issues. Why do people pirate stuff exactly is a very long topic, certainly I can't cover it in few lines, but as a a person who owned a handful of popular pirate blogs for 7 years, I can safely say that most pirates are not downloading stuff illegally just for the sake of being edgy rebel "pirates".
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omg calling the police on you! POLICE! POLICE?! Damn, why don't they hear... oh well, you got away this time.
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Do you have any evidence? 😡
Not gonna lie, after reading a story about a polish teen guy who's dorm was raided due to being an owner of a pirate website, made me feel uneasy. After the sopa/acta etc drama in 2012 the laws regarding piracy were going crazy.
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Don't you think that steamgifts is absolutely not the place to ask this question?
Here you can read gazillions of posts, opinions, questions, answers about it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/search?q=why+pirate&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all
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Been there.
I just wanted to grab some opinions from here as well. Link is appreciated though!
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Talking about it doesn't automatically make you a pirate. I see no reason why it shouldn't be discussed.
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Wow, you don't say?
The reason why it should not be discussed here is most members of SG community is always buying their games AND extra copies to give away, most of them never even pirated a game in their life. Which means most opinions/answers might be biased and ignorant. It's like asking about "why do people eat meat" in a vegetarian community.
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Your question was a start to a dumb discussion in first place. So let me answer you simply. No, Steamgifts isn't a bad place for this discussion.
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No, you just missed my point.
But of course, this is the absolute best place to discuss it if you like an echochamber of "hurrdurr piracy is bad"
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It's more like your point doesn't appeal to me.
"hurrdurr piracy is bad"? People actually posted valid and interesting reasons here. One good example is that companies are lazy to make demo versions anymore and if you treat the pirated game just as a demo and are willing to buy the game later, it's not bad at all.
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Actually, this could also bring up responses like "I used to pirate but now I buy bundles" 👀
I have a rather high amount of games in my library, some of which AAA, and I don't think I ever paid full price for a single one of them...
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It's like asking about "why do people eat meat" in a vegetarian community.
That would be a pretty interesting conversation to have, as long as someone doesn't say "I don't know, go ask the carnivores!". Some people like hearing different and unique perspectives, some of which you can only get by asking unlikely (I doubt SG is unlikely, more likely proportionate to gaming population) groups.
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The reason why it should not be discussed here is most members of SG community is always buying their games AND extra copies to give away, most of them never even pirated a game in their life.
LOOOOOL
Have you ever read other topics about piracy? There are lots of pirates in SG.
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i personally buy games but sometimes i get an itch to test a game without paying. and if there is no demo or test version i pirate it and if i like it i buy it if not, i dont waste any money.
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Other than what others already said: Waiting to buy the game at lower price and pirating it because of impatience.
Most of the games don't have demo versions anymore, which is shame in my opinion. It encourages pirating the game first to "make your own demo".
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- the other convenience
- cost effective
- no stigma
- its not stealing, its copy pasting outside the boundaries of the terms of neverhavereadments, and yes if you could, you'd download a car
- legally mostly grey area or depending on the country, source ... extent
if most people weren't so dumb and in addition lazy, the industry would've changed into what is today way sooner ...
as it turned in an eu report out, game piracy doesn't exactly hurt the sales ... *
i'd still support the few dozen or so franchises/games i'd remotely give a fuck about, for obvious reasons
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I used to until i had this IT teacher that made me super conspiranoic, also i guess im more patience now so i dont really care wait until games are at an affordable price
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The most common reasons seem to be:
- To avoid paying money for it, especially for new releases that may go as high as 110 dollars for the initial full version of the game (not counting potential additionally paid DLC).
- To try out the game, since demos seem to be a lost art now.
- To circumvent some issues with the DRM: people fearing Denuvo eating up their SSDs; older methods like Tagés or StarForce not working anymore, requiring cracks…
- Because they really hate the distribution platform tied to it, for example, they really do not want UPlay or Origin on their systems. (Bethesda launcher and Battle.net seem to be exceptions, it seems most users would readily sacrifice their first-born children if Battle-net asked for it as an additional login step.)
- Because they are just used to it and society as a whole never even really tried to attach any kind of guilt or negativity towards software piracy. Seems to be the #1 reason in and around China (where even corporations do not care about using pirated stuff all the time).
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Out of curiosity, why do you think that demos have become a little more scarce?
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Because I rarely see them nowadays, for most anything. I honestly cannot name the last larger-budget game I played that I knew it had a demo somewhere. Maybe Doom 4 had one, I vaguely recall someone posting a cheat table for its demo once.
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Extra Credits made a video on demos a few years back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QM6LoaqEnY
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I could understand if it's because people don't buy the games if they don't like the demo, but people seem to buy games, then just refund them from steam.
Isn't that the same thing? Or is it another reason? >.>
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Refund on steam is fairly new, demo vanishing goes many years further back.
Refunding kind of replaces it now, though Valve says not to use it for that.
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Refunding a game because you didn't like it/want to test it? Valve be weird if they think the refund isn't meant for that o.o
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At least not in high amounts, you'll get blocked and the warning you get says not to use it as a demo-service.
Valve be weird
nothing new here ;-)
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What makes you think that? It's one of the valid reasons when asking for refund: "It's not what I expected".
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Streamers are a better substitute. It's a time and cost effective method to hand out early copies to those with strong followings than put together a team to chop the game into smaller version with most of the assets still intact, put that through testing, and then deal with distribution. Use that saved money to buy another game company, cut their teams, and put the remaining devs under slave labor to put out a mediocre game with a previously strong IP for nostalgia. Repeat far after negative brand recognition on the publisher.
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Let me add "issues with the publisher", "region-locks preventing legal purchase", "not currently available for sale", and "Purchased version is broken and torrented version offers fixes". I think after adding those to your list, we've pretty much got all the standard reasons covered.
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i was broke. i have money now so i buy games, simple.
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In my case, two reasons:
I can't get hold of the game (i.e. long out of print game)
I can't get the original game to run for one reason or another (games with earlier generations of StarForce or certain versions of SafeDisk, plus games that only comes on floppies).
I've ended up buying a few games that have got re-released on steam or GOG to make up for my past sins.
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I have never pirated something myself but I take an educated guess that it's about money.
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You've never ever used Napster, Kazaa, Limewire, Torrents, VHS or cassettes to record stuff, absolutely nothing?
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No, everything I got is paid for including software, music, games, pdf and epub books and the upgrade from shareware to full version like Doom or are within the tos like irfanview, Java, Adobe, Stellarium,...
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I've never ever needed to use this GIF before.
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You cared enough to respond so you do care a little.
Sorry I don't have any meme for my reply so have this smiley face instead :)
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That is actually one of the better ones I've seen most seemed to be too silly or over the top.
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Torrents
You can use torrent without pirating, that's how I usually download Tails and other distros. It's usually (much) faster than HTTP mirrors.
(Just wanted to state the obvious, as entertainment industry lobbies like to perpetuate the confusion that a technology can be inherently evil)
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I know you can use Torrents legally. I like to seed the Soundtracks that Humble Bundle gives out sometimes.
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They want to plant their seed in whoever uses them, always wear protection while on the internet to avoid serial seeders.
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pirated games when i was student.
Now im collecting as much as from steam, gog and origin just for old days.
This is why my collection mostly from 2000-2010 games
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Oh god... I can't deal with this topic again. Mentally draining the other one was...
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For me...
1.Demo ppl demo,remember Doom?First FULL lvl FREE(ofc i have all legit editions floppy,cd etc etc)
2.DLC what the F are you thinking!Just put it in the F game...GOTY my ass
3.I'm old school,I have games from amstrad 6128 with the BIG boxes with a lot of cuties inside NOT Special Edition,Just the simple edition some of you may remember,now to get some of that and not the simple dvd box i have(and you)to pay about 70 euros and up and yes i have done it a lot of times but...always there is a but ppl and here goes....PROTEST!
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-no money
-parents wont let them buy games
-no legal normal copies in country
Actually...when i think about steam sales, sites like kinguin, steamgifts etc-its a real shame to pirate...
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When Steam Refund system don't existed, I pirated game like a big demo: before buy I must know it's interesting and second - my PC can normaly run this game. And when Refund launched I forget what is torrents :)
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For me, its mostly about price. I dont have much disposable income, so putting 60$ down on a game that may or may not be any good is a lot to be asking when it could be put away for a future vet bill. As in, for 60$, if I need to trap a cat, or rescue one somewhere, that 60$ can pay for their checkup, shots, spaying/neutering, with enough left over for a prescription if needed.
Steam refunds are pretty awesome though, but personally, I just want to be able to test a game without worrying about playtime limits. If I run into errors, or I want to take my time getting my own feel for a game, that can eat up your refund grace period pretty quickly.
My own personal rule is that if I pirate a game and I feel its been worth my time playing, then I owe it to the dev's to support them and buy the game soon as I can, which I do. Hell, if it werent for pirating the the Witcher, Id have never ended up buying all 3.
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I am long time waited new Wolfenstein, but price what we have now is abnormal hight for corridor game for a couple of evenings. So I just not buy it and not pirated (saved money and time).
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I'm totally with you on price. I never pay $60 for a game because that money could go towards something else. But I don't pirate either, I just wait for the game to go on sale. Between sales and bundles, it's easy to get games on the cheap, and even AAA games can be bought for $5-10.
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Add one more factor to all above: Impatience of current (and probably future) generation.
The speed of everything nowadays from tech and internet to finding and consuming goods lowered the bar of acceptable wait time- no wonder Hype is now higher then ever. In design and marketing theres some very real numbers, stuff like loading animations and perceived performance and satisfaction for example- no one ever liked loading progress bars but nowadays anything above 2 seconds seens 'taking a bit long' while decades ago half a minute loading a software would be acceptable.
Ever wonder how people managed to surf the web with cabe modem? How could they? Seens almost insane and impossible to suffer all that slog from the time it took to connect to the time it took to load anything. I remember in my preteens how slowly porn models jpegs opened little by little on my screen, all the anticipation... today we can download a movie in 1080p at that same time frame (if your internet is beast).
And turns out money don't generate as quick as consumer wishlist. Simple like that.
Someone may be willing to or will buy a bunch of stuff but all at the same time and on release? Most can't.
We count days for a steam sale. We're paying to get Early Access before a game is even ready!
Missed star wars on the cinema(how could you?) - of course you can wait until its available for streaming/dvd.Right? That sort of thing.
Im patient. Way more nowadays and its improving as i get older. I don't bother with piracy, if i can't buy it this month i will buy next or next year...
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We certainly do get more impatient. Grown up with a c64 with casette tapes, when it took 3 minutes just to load a game.
Now whenever you see a (long) loading screen, and you tend to yell at your pc to hurry insert swearword up...
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to be honest, game prices are very high, people dont wanna pay even 30 euros for a 3-5 hours long story, not many people can afford that.
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So you wait for a sale. If you can't afford to spend more than $10 on a game, I understand. So wait for a sale, and pick it up on sale. Between all the sales, bundles, and free to play titles, it's never been a better time to be a gamer on a budget.
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So, on average, you wait 3 years or just 3 hours? Yeah, you're really selling this idea.
I don't even pirate, but jeesh is that an awful excuse.
Sure, bundles are a good thing, I agree. That's the main reason I don't pirate anymore. But if people want to pirate and lack money, then saying "wait for 3 years for something that you really really want" is a bit much to expect of them.
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Yes, if I can't afford something, I wait until a point in time that I can afford it. I didn't think it was a radical new idea in need of being sold.
Stealing something because you "really really want it" seems like the awful excuse to me, and very entitled. This isn't food or water or some other necessity, it's a game. If you can't afford to buy a game, replay a game you already have or one of the many free to play games available.
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But what you have to realize is that piracy, while technically stealing, isn't seen as such in the public's eyes.
Take for instance shoplifting and piracy. One of them has a real stigma while the other one doesn't. People don't get charged often. It's often seen as a right for people and not to mention those statistics that came out of the EU, basically backing up that piracy helps sales.
I'm not saying piracy is good. Legally, it isn't. Morally, I don't know.
So, yes, it is something that you need to sell to people. It's like jaywalking. People will do it and keep doing it. All the lawmakers/game devs/whoever else is to make a compelling argument to counter what's actually happening in the real world.
With the games industry, as you mentioned, bundles are a thing. Steep sales are also pretty popular.
Those are things that have gotten people to buy games instead of pirating them.
Telling people to wait for sales for multiple years isn't a compelling argument for them. What you're telling them is to resist their urges, wait for a long time, get tempted time and time again and after that actually spend money, when they could skip all of that and do it... well, for free.
Piracy is easy. Buying games is not.
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But what you have to realize is that piracy, while technically stealin
Because it literally isn't stealing. Stealing, by definition, is taking an object from one place/person to somewhere else. Stealing is moving the original object from hand to hand.
Piracy is copying the original. The owner does not lose anything. And don't say "it's a lost sale", because music, movies and gaming industry haven't been able to prove that for 30+ years now.
I am not a pirate and I am not in favour of piracy, but please, don't BS people.
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Okay... does it really matter what the term means? It's still the same principle. Not to mention, my argument wasn't even based on it, so at best it's just you taking away the focus here.
... It can be a lost sale... just because it might not be a lost sale 100% of the time, doesn't mean jack.
Do you think getting a bootleg DVD of Shrek 2 is a lost sale then? Because it's a physical copy? No, of course it isn't, because people might not have bought the product regardless..
But saying "it's a lost sale" is very misleading. Technically, sure, some wouldn't buy the game regardless, but in many cases, people get it earlier by pirating and then buying at a cheaper price at a later date. See... that isn't a "not lost sale". It in fact, could be a lost sale. See, prices vary and people aren't as strong-willed as you make them out to be.
If they couldn't pirate, do you really think that they would have the willpower to wait around a year for something that they desperately want just for a $15 reduced price? I mean, I'm guessing you don't, but if you do, it's pretty naive.
Piracy is an impulse decision. Buying during sales can be an impulse decision. Buying a full priced game (given that $60 is a considerable amount of money for you) isn't an impulse decision. It's actually quite methodical.
Your two longer paragraphs are literally deflecting points about word definition and the last one calls me a bullshitter and says that you're not a pirate (which neither am I and I'm conflicted about the topic myself). It's funny that you don't really read my comment enough to actually get the context of literally everything I've said. Context which I've clearly written out... in the comment that you're taking quotes out of. This isn't irony, but it is still impressive in its own right....
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To be honest, I was only talking about the part of your post which I quoted. I wasn't addressing the rest of it, and I'm not doing it now either.
And no, it's not the same principle. Stealing creates a materialistic loss for the owner, piracy doesn't. That's a very important distinction.
... It can be a lost sale... just because it might not be a lost sale 100% of the time, doesn't mean jack.
It actually means everything. This isn't "some piracy is lost sales and some isn't", this is "none of piracy can be proven to be lost sales. We're not looking at a number between 1% and 99%, we're looking at a NULL value. In law, this difference decides between you going to jail and the case being dismissed on 1st hearing.
Every single independent study on this topic has one clear conclusion - there' is no quantifiable or clear relation between number of sales and piracy. It's as simple as that. And trust me, the music industry has been trying to prove otherwise every since radios got a "record tape" button.
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So you really think that people wouldn't buy their favourite game for the full price if they couldn't pirate it and just bide their time to buy it at a cheaper price?
I guess that Fallout 4 thing didn't happen for most of my friends :P
EDIT: The biggest issue here is that you're making these definitive statements that can easily be denied and when you actually go more in-depth, then you immediately make vague statements like "clear distinction" and "no quantifiable relation".
Also.. you call me a bullshitter (for my whole statement not just one word) because I didn't use legal terms and used colloquial language.
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Well, duh. There was a time where piracy was being stalled for 2 weeks to a month (when Denuvo got their first set of contracts), and overall sales didn't go up at all.
What FO4 thing?
PS: The difference between what I am saying and what you're saying is the number of studies that back our claims. Yours is 0, mine is... well... not sure, there are quite a few. Hell, there even was one last month. Some studies, including that one, imply that piracy has a minor, but positive influence - helps spread the word of mouth and lets people get a taste of the product.
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First of all sales or profit? You might sell the same amount of items, but you might sell them at a lower price because of people being able to satiate their urge to buy it and then buy it later at a better price, instead of having to cave.
Not to mention, if "stalling" means having strong DRM, then of course people can wait out the two or so weeks. Actually, that makes the sales usually worse because that DRM also affects legitimate buyers, veering them to pirate the game instead, which bypasses the DRM overall. It's a matter of convenience then again. Look at GTA 5, Watch_Dogs and Assassin's Creed 4 as examples.
I wasn't clear enough with FO4, I apologize. I was tired at the time.
My point was that people downloaded Fallout 4, played it and then when the prices went down a lot (down to 9-14€ or so in a year or so, unexpectedly) they just bought it. Those were Fallout superfans, by the way. They would've bought it immediately, but the price (60€) was too considerable and it was easier to pirate it and play the game, while waiting for a cheaper price. So they did. They all bought the game, but they just bought it at a cheaper price. Meaning that it didn't affect sales one bit, but instead affected the profits. Sales give you a figure which illustrates the amount of people that bought it, profit gives you the actual money they made.
I agree, piracy helps word of mouth. I'm just talking about profits, not sales figures. It's a different thing.
I can sell 50 cokes while someone else only sells 20, but if all of those people only buy my coke when it's $1 instead of $5 like my competitor, then they still did better than I did.
Pirates eventually tend to buy the product. They just buy it at a much smaller price on average.
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First of all sales or profit?
You realise that these two are inheritely joined at the hip, right? Ok, to clarify - the studies refer to sales, a much better metric than profit (budget varies on game-to-game basis, sales are relatively universal). Profit is subject to all kinds of fuckup on all possible ends, while sales are nearly pure, and affected by only a few factors (time of year, popularity, quality, price, etc).
Most studies don't track games past launch window - therefore eliminating the problem you mentioned, caused by drops in price.
Let me say it again. There's a strong case for piracy actually boosting sales.
I wasn't clear enough with FO4, I apologize. I was tired at the time.
My point was that people downloaded Fallout 4, played it and then when the prices went down a lot (down to 9-14€ or so in a year or so, unexpectedly) they just bought it. Those were Fallout superfans, by the way. They would've bought it immediately, but the price (60€) was too considerable and it was easier to pirate it and play the game, while waiting for a cheaper price. So they did. They all bought the game, but they just bought it at a cheaper price. Meaning that it didn't affect sales one bit, but instead affected the profits. Sales give you a figure which illustrates the amount of people that bought it, profit gives you the actual money they made.
Since the 60€ pricetag was too high for them to buy in the first place, then yes, they definitely wouldn't have bought it on launch. They would simply wait, but at a lower price, and then play. Vast majority of gamers live like that. There is a reason why games sell for months of years, and not just after launch window.
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"Since the 60€ pricetag was too high for them to buy in the first place, then yes, they definitely wouldn't have bought it on launch." - Yes, they would have. They could afford it. It's just that they got the pirated version first and then after the huge drop in price they finally bought it. Fallout's literally their favourite franchise, so they'd buy it. Not to mention, 5 of the guys that I had a chat with after writing that comment confirmed to me that if they couldn't pirate it, they would've bought it because they wanted the game after all. It's just that with piracy they were able to have their cake and eat it as well.
I just can't believe that being able to get games for free wouldn't affect sales numbers in any tangible way. Like, waiting until the game's cheaper to satiate their desire for the game or just by keeping the pirated copy. I mean, even I was able to save around 300€ or so by buying games after pirating them at first and then giving in after the prices fell.
I know my evidence is anecdotal, but for some reason I doubt that I'm that unique example of a customer.
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Yes, they would have. They could afford it. It's just that they got the pirated version first and then after the huge drop in price they finally bought it
You can't possibly prove that, regardless of what they say. If you can, hurry up and contact Activision, EA, and all the music labels. They'll make you a milionaire overnight, because they've been trying to prove that for DECADES and FAILED! What part of that don't you understand?
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Okay... does it really matter what the term means? It's still the same principle.
Can't argue like that in the court.
Again, piracy isn't stealing. It's wrong, but it's not stealing.
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How do you call taking something that does not belong to you?
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He's right, legally. Colloquially, I'd agree with you. The original conversation was colloquial as well and comments like this are only steering the conversation from the actual point to just nitpicking words as if it was a different setting.
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Piracy is not "taking". Piracy is "copying". The original owner doesn't suffer any materialistic loss, something that is mandatory for an action to be classified as "theft".
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"Can't argue like that in the court." - Your point? I'm not in court. This is a casual conversation.
This wasn't even a conversation about the term. The user took one word from my whole statement, said that I was completely wrong and bullshitting them just because I used a legal term wrong in a colloquial conversation.
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You realize that it isn't just a legal term right? Even the actual dictionary definition of stealing would show you're wrong.
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Topic ^
(Just going to preface this that I realize the topic is subjective to each persons morality and personal justification but I just wanted input on reasons why people might pirate without going into what is or isn't morally right...especially with some of the latest triple A titles)
With all these triple A games with "stuff" in them that people are complaining about, many people say they're just going to pirate them. Same thing with Denuvo, some people hate the fact that such-an-such game has it, they pirate it.....but why? Protest?
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