Yeap Software Companies don't also "copy" their products, they need to work to make the copies as well, and sell them at prices that appeases everyone.. not.
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Essentially piracy is used as a scapegoat to push through whatever new and creative ways companies want to dick their customers around with. Example, Ubisoft's 95% piracy rate which is complete bullshit, and they will probably use for some new sort of retarded DRM that they so love to do. It's like when the Music Industry complains about lost sales when their business is actually booming, and when they do complain about a loss they make the number so astronomically huge that it actually dwarfs the total that the industry ever made. They don't even try to make their crap sound legitimate.
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Oh, you don't believe 99.98% of all music is pirated!? No!~ You just don't understand sales! They only make 200 billion a year, they deserve so much more from those filthy pirates!...
It seems the people that complain most about it are people that aren't favored by the market (ehem ubisoft and terrible DRM on every game, ports ect.) and the music industry mostly complains about artists that are on a decline because they changed their style of music. Not much is actually based on piracy rates, but rather their current stop seller under the label.
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The store needs funds from apples to get other fruit in stock. You can get copied apples, but you are also risking that there will be no oranges in the store, and the pirate can't get them from elsewhere besides copying the ones from the store. Sure, he can for instance copy bananas from another store, but the same principle applies to that other store.
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yes, but that also assumes for every apple pirated it equals a loss of sale.
that's the big argument. because it makes an assumption that a pirated copy is a loss, and that's how they justify all these drm and evil intrusive policies against PAYING customers.
the fact is, not everyone wants to buy your game. some might think $60 is too much for a phoned in "AAA" title that had half it's content cut out so it can be sold as DLC. if it's not on sale, they might not buy it at all. how many games do you pass in the shop if they're total junk and over priced? I'm not defending the act of piracy, but you can't just simply say that it's costing the companies a sale. not every pirated copy is a lost sale so that comic is a bit misleading.
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Another point also is that there are people from some poor 3rd world countries who can't even afford the game , or even have a way to buy it even if they needed it or could afford it.
So they resort to piracy and that contributes to the lost sale number , however the thing is it was NEVER going to be a sale anyway , and I bet most of these numbers come from that.
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there is no "lost sale" since these guys wouldn't have bought it in the first place.same with some pirates in "first world" countrys,they D/L games they would not buy (cause they dont really like it,think the game is shitty or whatever).
Again: 1 "pirated product" doesn't equal 1 sale
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That makes perfect sense. High-speed Interned connection actually isn't needed for pirating games. I gather that "piracy" in this case is not referring to bootleggers, which leaves sneakernet is the main means of the type of piracy being discussed. Those who do have internet are spending all their money on internet and thus don't have enough left over after that. Those who are priviliged enough to barely afford a 384kbps uncapped ADSL (this is referred to as "fast ADSL") line probably don't have enough left over to buy games habitually, but they can pull 4 gigs a day from bittorrent, thus keeping the sneakernet seeded. And the computer? Well, you'd have more money to spend on games if you didn't buy a computer, but then how would you play them?
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Not very many games are avil. in Argentina. I have a friend who lives there, and quite literally CAN'T buy the games in his country, mostly due to the import trades that the country forces. He can't buy on steam because it's region locked out for him, and he can't buy it in stores because companies don't want to deal with the country for software.
So what is he left with? Piracy.
It's strange, but the companies actually include people in the piracy numbers as a lost sale, even when they don't sell to their country, meaning they can't even buy it if they wanted to.
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Not everything. For example: this.
On a similar note, DRM. Legitimate users have to rely on an internet connection, and third party servers to be functioning if they want to play their games. Pirates don't have any of these restrictions and are free to play any of their games, whenever they like. For instance if their internet goes down for some reason.
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I've had to download cracks in the past to actually be able to play games I'd bought just because the DRM wouldn't recognize the protection on my disc. The publisher's response? Buy a new drive... because we can't bother to get our game to work with the one you bought 3 weeks ago.
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Misleading. Selling meager products like apples has no even remotely similar necessary investment to something like a game. A farmer doesn't need to spend $100m over 3 years to get the product out, and what he has at the end of each seasons isn't just one apple.
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Yet the analogy is still valid. The pirate is giving away your product for free. A bunch of people who probably wouldn't have bought your game will get it there. Some people will try it from there before buying from you. Some people are lost customers because they'd rather get it for free than pay. And some people are still gonna buy the game because they don't know how to pirate, don't want the hassle of patching, are loyal customers or just don't believe in stealing stuff. You will lose some sale to pirates, but you have to consider than the majority of those people wouldn't have bought your game in the first place.
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Does free media apply to any of that? Why would I go to a theater to watch something, when I have hulu, youtube (and slightly less free) netflix? Sure, your sales went down, but it's not because I pirated the product. It's because I have no interest in your product.
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I am just tired by amount of stupidity of some ppl.
If sb say piracy is not stealing, there will always be some retards, that start to imply that he says "PIRACY IS NOT BAD".
No, nobody fucking said that. You lost all your arguments and you have to fight with imaginary ones.
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The thing this image is missing, is the line of people buying oranges. Oranges that cannot be easily copied by the copy machine. It also ignores fails to mention that apples must be sold to fund the continued production of apples for both stores.
Piracy as a mechanism to try games is fine, but very few people use it as a demo. Many players will download and play games, then not bother picking up a copy later because they're done with it. Sure, conceptually I like this, in practice it doesn't happen often enough to justify defending piracy.
If you are someone who pirates games, then buys them, congratulations! Pat yourself on the back! But you are a member of an incredibly small minority of pirates, and you are being used as a counter-argument by far more shameless pirates.
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Missing a few things like:
1) Sometimes that copy of the apple has a worm in it that gives you a nasty infection
2) Sometimes that apple may look like an apple, but is really a harmless pear, which you really didn't want
The problem here is that either of these can erode consumer confidence in the person that originally grew and marketed the apples, causing even more POTENTIAL lost sales; I agree that there is no way for them to prove or estimate damages caused by piracy, but do know that there are indeed damages. I forget which game it was, but pirates put out an unfinished version of it before it even launched - bugs and all - a lot of the online forums were bashing the game before it came out and I'm certain many held off of buying it at launch as a result.
Despite that, I've had to use cracks on games I've purchased in order to do things with them that weren't intended, i.e. play without the disc, play on a newer OS, play with different graphical settings, etc.; there are very legit uses for going this route.
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Piracy is wrong except in situations where you could not otherwise obtain the program legally. As someone who produces and sells software, piracy (games, software, music) does cut into profits and frankly is a giant buzzkill to inspiration for making more. As a user who sometimes CAN'T get what I need or want, if there's no other way to get it, go for it.
EDIT: Addendum: If the company which produces the thing you cannot get is small enough, try to email them first and explain your situation - They'll be understanding and they'll probably send you the product for free anyway, and you'll certainly respect yourself for it.
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I agree, piracy is wrong, with a few exceptions. I have tried finding a few obscure songs, which simply are not sold (anymore, or never was, because it was part of a old tv movie, etc.). That is when I believe it is okay to search if someone happened to have ripped it.
But if you can obtain the product just fine somewhere, even if it is difficult, I believe it is wrong to pirate it. If it is out there and available, I won't be a greedy cheapskate and go pirate. Respect the product and creator, I'd say.
I wouldn't want people to steal money I am trying to earn from a product I created or helped create and probably feel invested in. It would be very demotivational if sales would drop, not because people don't want it, but because people who can pay, just want to get freebies when it is readily available for purchase.
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If every company made a Demo of their game, or made it DRM Free, some people would pirate less probably.
Sometimes people pirate in protest of said DRM or other circumstances.
In some cases like with the Wii, some people want to play their games with the Dolphin Emulator for High Resolution graphics. But backing up your game requires modding the console and some other stuff you may not have or be comfortable doing.
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It's not something I condone, but, to be honest, I used to pirate when I was younger, simply because my parents really wouldn't let me invest on games, retail or through Steam.
I don't think the PC loses more sales due to piracy though, most pirates would usually never pay for the game they pirate, even if piracy was not an option. And console piracy is also quite prevalent, at least where I'm from.
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Funnily I was like that with cheating and hacks. When I was 7-12 maybe I used to play always on the easiest difficulty use every cheat and hack (even in online games) but after that I started playing for the challenge. Now I never use cheats or hacks (except for GTA fun or random stupid fun in any other game, but I never save those or at least not on my main save) and I always play on normal difficulty except if it's too easy. Also it' probabl worth mentioning that I'm 16 now.
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And, sadly, playing outside became uncool when I turned 14 ._. Thank God I was in a blocked section filled with geeks though, lol.
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What can I do alone outside? All my frineds live far but we meet every week (except now because they're on vacation)
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There is plenty of stuff to do outside if you are still a teenager..
Doing a sport (could be all from football to cycling) but you are right, if you are in your late teens you can't crawl up in the trees etc anymore..
I normaly make a rule (play 1-3 hour - train ½-1 hour) as a minimun (some days I train alot more)
I am not Teen (I wish I could be again.. but its so long ago).. I can tell you most of the boys on the team I am coaching is doing alot of active stuff outside. they do game also.. thats normal but they do it in sessions :)
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You tell me. When I was young the summer always felt so long, and now! It's just so short. From my experinced the older you get the faster time goes.
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It's a lousy excuse made up by people who can't adapt to technology and a changing industry.
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Yes, I love TF2 that much. Great game. Unlock to do well what now? By using TF2 as an example your point just got obliterated.
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Don't know how you do it, but i was never able to pirate the exact product the company offered but always a copy with worse quality: Rarely the latest patches, searching for working cracks without downloading viruses, no multiplayer, random crashes because of the crack...
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I usually download the game from Torrents, if it's good - I buy it. There's nothing wrong with that.
P.S. We need to do what Russia did. Pirate so many games that Steam would give away games almost for free.
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Great, this hasn't been argued to death enough times already.
Also, here is what the community had to say eight months ago.
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All industries have been martyring themselves over piracy for as long as there has been an industry for a particular thing. And piracy has ALWAYS been killing that particular industry: http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86135/pic-music-industry-angry-over-piracy-from1897/
I can't find the source, but I read an article where merchants (industry people) were getting together with Kings, sheriffs, etc (law enforcement) to prevent certain people who didn't have the "rights" to particular patterns of cloth in medieval times. Unfortunately, searching for those keywords gives results for Renaissance fair and Pirate costumes.
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Good comments. Interesting opinions and which are not are simply funny.
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I dont leech a single game since I have installed Steam
"Do you think it's wrong that you pirate?" - I bought NFSU2 and the damn protection worked too good, random crashes at random times
leeched the game and it worked like a charm
as for the music I give mine away for free and pay hard cash for legal software by entering music contests where I get enough for it
so I dont really feel me grabbing some mp3 will do much harm, I do pay for originals (also too bad amazon uk dont alllow mp3 to be sold outside uk)
EDIT: oh and I let you know I am a Silver supporter for the Defense Grid 2 Kickstarter
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It isn't possible to stop piracy, so the whole angle of going with it is wrong. The real solution is just to ignore it and aim to make products that people want to pay for. There is things that can be done like providing physical goods and such. If the model is broken you fix it, and not shout foul and get someone else to pay. But this doesn't apply in even bigger cases...
Personaly I see the current way of enforcement quite strange and moraly wrong. I accept that with sufficient proof one should be fined for copies he made and distributed, but the current model of also counting further copies and imaginary "losses" doesn't seem to be much related to reality.
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I confess to having pirated Minecraft, Terraria and Plants vs. Zombies. But I did buy all three of them afterwards, so I guess that makes me even with the devs. There are cases that piracy is bad, but in this case, if I hadn't pirated Minecraft I probably would never realized how awesome it truly was, and thus, would never have bought it.
I do believe the existence of Steam and all those indie bundles helps a lot to reduce piracy though. At least in my country, games used to be pretty expensive, but on steam, they're things you can easily afford without thinking that you spent 1~2 weeks worth of groceries on.
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1st part GOOD, try before you buy (without limitations) and ending up buying original (I used to do that)
as for the rest you are SO right, less greed, more sales
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Piracy will always exist. Attempting to stop them only hurts sales. Yes, yes, glitchy games for paying customers, but imagine a game where the DRM effects none of the paying customers. the cracked game will often be buggy due to the DRM removal. Given that many people say that they pirate just to try a game, and if they like it, they buy it (I've done this twice now, Civ V and Oblivion), a buggy cracked game can result in lost customers because the pirate assumes that the legit game is that buggy as well, and not worth the buy.
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And why no demo its no gamers problem. I have not one piece of shit called game like Syndicate. P.s. lots of bugs in games 90 % not crack problem. You remember first Skyrim realyse no HD textures and 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 bugs.
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Perhaps developers need to work with the cracking groups to help iron out any bugs in the pirated versions?
Win-win?
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perhaps devs (this just might even for indie devs) just need to make a pirate copy that is the same as the game, but politely asks the player every time it is loaded up to consider buying the game if they like it. hell, that'd probably be the best DRM method. add some splash text to every loading screen politely asking the player to buy the game if they like it.
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Yea no one would pay then they'd just click no and not feel guilty. Doesn't solve anything.
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One thing if companies like Ubisoft or EA making overpriced shit-games this is not piracy problem (Ubisoft favorite explanationto PC games)its companies problems nobody want to pay for non interestig bad quality things. And for music artists they don't blame pirates its greedy corporations who have bigest part of money .
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well yeah, they are busy feeding the software protection companies
and it takes not long to cracked versions be all over the internetz, I still don't get that
as for artists the more you leech, the better for them (there are exceptions) as they get popular and go play some lives/concerts, they earn their cash from there, not from selling the music
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If you listen to Ubisoft, 93% of the market worldwide.
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Piracy in my opinion isn't bad, maybe you hate Ubisoft and don't want to pay and buy their product pirate it if you enjoyed it buy it. Pirating is just for trying out games than going out and buying it after you play it for a bit.
I hate ubisoft quite alot.. :l
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Ubisoft and EA enforce me to get their games on console only
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oh well... you should see the prices (if not FREE for members) on PSN :D
i.e.: Am I Alive 7eur
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Using the "I only download it to demo it is kinda BS. How many people do you know actually paid for it after they download it? I can say most probably beat it and say "oh I'll get it on sale on steam." -_-
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I haven't "pirated" anything in a very long time but I used to regularly buy legal copies of anything I enjoyed and/or spent significant time with.
Ad hominem dismissal is not an intelligent argument. Now as to the exact stats on how many people do that... well I have never seen any credible ones but we know it isn't everyone.
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For acting like you understand the process of debate, it seems like you're missing the fact that the argument is BS, because how many people do you know that actually pay for a game after downloading it? Without numbers and statistics to back up the argument that people do use it as a demo to buy the game after trying it, the argument is invalid, there is nothing to support that theory.
Plus an Ad Hominem is attacking the person, this argument is in fact, attacking the credibility of the argument, not the person that made the argument.
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Quite a bit, but than again few people can't afford it.Most wiil beat the game in one sitting.. Than they'll be thinking i want to play Multi-player and run out and buy it(i wish). Plus "i'll get it on sale" is utter bullshit. Most of the time the game doesn't even go on sale till WAY LATE -.-
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Well..
I personaly buy my games but.. "yes the big but" some devs are pretty stupid and actually force some people to pirate, think about some of the games where they punish legit buyers with stupid drm, that sometimes makes the game unplayable/not able to function. But a pirated copy works without any stressing drm... Another thing is demo's I can understand why some people wanna try out the stuff before buying.
Also prices of some games are crazy...
If only all devs was like Paradox. No DRM and good support/community also mostly fair prices.. if the devs scratz customers backs then they will scratz them back.
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Yeah, it's quite interesting case. The publisher demanded the DRM. They had to add it, and it turned out not to work too well... So later just removed it...
Anyway, what was the point when there was DRM-free copy on GoG.com anyway. And what I understood the pirated game was cracked copy...
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Force people to pirate? hahahaha is that what people who only download games believe? Holy shit how stupid can you be.
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You clearly didnt read my post AvidWriter.
I said I buy all my games.. I just said why some don't want to buy and trust me those are valid reasons.. I've bought a game "lets not pick on the deve just yet" and I could not play my game for 6 days without getting booted from the game etc due to DRM problems, but all the pireates sure had no problem.. see my point.. I will and have not bought any game from that dev since ^^
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I agree completely. I believe that the best way to mitigate pirates is to take resources out of excessive DRM (anything more than steam is unnecessary) and put those resources either back into development, so a company may release a better product for the same price, or release the same product for a lower price, having saved x dollars / time / blood and tears on that game, making it more feasible for people to make the purchase in the first place.
The best salesman is the one that respects its customers. Treat a fanbase like shit (EA for example), and people will react with shit of their own.
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My teacher used to say the same thing too.
"It's only forbidden to cheat when you get caught".
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I'm really curious about the opinion of the community. How bad is piracy? Is there a factor where piracy is not bad anymore? Do you pirate? Do you think it's wrong that you pirate? And any other thing
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