What's your opinion about piracy?

This might be the story of some of us living in poor countries. Several years ago maybe before Steam, I wasn't able to buy a single PC game, simply because there was not a single store selling them and things haven't changed with time. Maybe because it is not profitable, people can't afford them or maybe they don't need them. The worst part was that some poor countries also have higher internet prices vs rich countries, meaning that downloading pirated games wasn't an option either.

So, what I had to do to play a PC game? I had to buy pirated games from little stores on the street, and with time people got used to this and now is very common to find this kind of stores and nobody does nothing about this, it became part of our culture.

The funny thing now is that with all the bundles and sales available, games are cheaper than the ones being sold on these stores, but since people are used to buy pirated games they can't realise the damage they make to their own economy and to the ones related to the developing of the game they just bought. Hopefully things will change some day but this won't be happening in the next five years.

I don't really care if someone pirates or not, I just care about people supporting the product.

Some musicians have come to realize that no matter how hard they try people are going to pirate their work and they have their own way of dealing with it.

Some put their work at a Pay What You Want pricing strategy with not paying being an option, some leak their own albums, and some record labels put their entire catalog for free for a day or two and that's because rather than album sales there is another option to support them since they can go on tours and you can support them there.

But how can you support video games developers if you don't buy their games? Even though there are some video game related symphonies those really don't go to the developer if it's an official symphony, there's also gaming apparel but not everyone is a fan of those so they don't buy them, and again they don't really go to the developer if they don't own the IP.

I pirated before because a legal copy wasn't working too well and had glitches everywhere, but an illegal one I found worked just fine. I guess it's not 100% piracy since I already bought it, but an illegal copy is an illegal copy.

Also, sometimes I pirate games early on if I am 100% sure that I will buy it later. When I do buy it, I install the pirated version and hope that Steam will recognize the game files. Surprisingly enough, it works at least 75% of the time (based on 4 games :P)

They should hang from the highest mast those big companies that claim to lose money on piracy when they don't lose anything. And when they deliver faulty/unfinished/unsatisfying product they refuse to return your money. Or at least make it so hard that most give up....

I refuse to pay unless I'm sure ill enjoy my purchase. Hence i buy games after i played and liked em.

if you're pirating it you're stealing it. people like to argue that technically it doesn't take their copy away blablabla but it fits the spirit of theft if not the letter. language is flawed, fine. pointlessly arguing(usually about semantics) is one of the 3 pillars the internet is built on(1cat pictures, 3porn), fine. doesn't change anything though.
it belongs to somebody else. you've decided to "share"(a peculiar one way kind of sharing in which things interestingly manage to flow only to you and never out) it against their will because you have the power to do so and they cannot stop you.
(if you don't want to call it theft then you're like raping their intellectual property. so now which word do you like better?)

if you're pirating to demo odds are you're probably lying to yourself/others. but if not then thats cool.
(demos do end though, you don't play it through and decide against the purchase. a demo is something more like one level or 15 minutes. its a sip of wine not a glass or 3 its a testdrive not a grocery run/roadtrip. you can try on the pants you but can't take them to a job interview or stroll around town with the shoes)

if you're pirating a game you intend to buy but wish to play now while you wait for a sale...nope. too bad. theres a tradeoff to playing sooner and paying less later. if you want to play day 1 you pay day 1 price, if you want to wait for it to be $10 you should wait. playing skyrim for 2 years doesn't become ok because you paid $5 for it in last week's sale. have some self control or pay what its currently worth.

it doesn't matter if they're pirating something they would never pay for if they couldn't get it for free. doesn't matter that "it isn't a lost sale" you're just a dick.

if you're pirating a game you bought to escape oppressive drm that isn't really piracy, you did buy it afterall.
(why should the legitimate customers have to deal with bullshit when thieves get a superior version for cutting all that out?)

"i don't think its worth $70(optionally: and maybe I'll somehow send them the $20 i feel they deserve)"
"i don't wish to support the company and am participating in a boycott"
if its not worth the money don't spend the money. if you feel you're making some kind of stand fine thats your choice, but there are consequences you must deal with for any action/inaction, a boycott means you don't buy it.
you don't get to have the game. if your principals aren't worth that then you're just weak, hate the company all you want you don't deserve their work without compensation and as the suppliers they get to decide what they'll let it go for not you.(just as the consumers get to walk away and can't be forced to make a purchase. thats how economics work, its an inherent part of the process. deal with it) you don't get to snatch something off the shelf and toss a handful of coins at the counter based on what you think it should be worth.
"i can't afford it"
boo hoo. entertainment isn't some kind of basic requirement for life or inborn right. things aren't often fair, whatever.
"art should be free"
where do you think games come from? people take time and effort making them, they need to be paid or they can't afford to do so.
these aren't some prissy artists with a trustfund flinging poo at a canvas and exposing themselves to nuns with a chicken tied to their pecker/cock(or making a statue of spiderman with a boner, whatever). this is a job.
or what are you special? or maybe are there just enough suckers out there paying good money for free stuff to support your leaching? this one makes no sense.

In the past it was a way to have an "extended demo". Today, with bundles and sales, if I have doubts about a game, or if it seems to me that costs too much, I just do not play it. There are so many affordable games to play... :D

If I have to evaluate the piracy in a broader sense, I say that it may be useful. Most of today's professionals was formed with pirated software since students/unemployed would never have been able to buy a software license to gain experience.

I fully endorse it. Unfettered access to tools, knowledge, art and entertainment is simply too useful and valuable to allow to be smothered. And the current legal frameworks surrounding intellectual properties are a fucking fascistic joke. When the choice between greater prosperity with questionable justice and less prosperity with obvious injustice, the choice I think would be clear. Now, of course it would be beneficial to have both prosperity and unambiguous justice. But if piracy is more a less a win/lose situation for content consumers/creators respectively (I disagree with this somewhat but let's roll with it for now), shouldn't we be finding ways to make this a win/win situation rather than try to make the consumer lose instead?

Piracy is only really a thing because pirated content is typically superior to authentically purchased content. It's often unburdened with annoying advertising or DRM, more widely available and accessible, and of course significantly cheaper. On the market for IP content, the pirates have a massive competitive edge over content owners/creators. Now, there are two general answers to competition: try to crush it, or try to out-compete it. Current IP laws are designed overwhelmingly to achieve the former. But look at any other sector of an economy and you'll find that limiting competition invariably leads to higher prices for shit product. See: the American medical and telecommunications industries.

So yeah, I think content creators should strive to create a better product than the pirates can offer. And such solutions are available already. Content streaming, crowdfunding/collector's editions, online features/content/games, and even just low price points on digital stores (seasonal sales/bundles, etc.) are all ways that content creators can add convenience, value, or service that the pirates will be hard-pressed to replicate. And these all seem to be doing well for the industry so far. The video game industry is doing better than ever, and I've yet to hear of a game developer worth a damn going under explicitly because everyone had pirated their game while no one bought it, rather than poor product, poor marketing, or poor management.

The ability to publicize, distribute, acquire and consume the creative and intellectual achievements of mankind at next to no cost should not be viewed as a problem to be repressed or shamed. No, it's one of the great triumphs and opportunities of the modern age. For the cost of an internet connection and a bit of time an average person today has within a few minutes of searching and downloading more art, entertainment, literature and tools than was ever available to their ancestors only a few decades prior. This allows them to be more informed, more skilled, more creative, and more fulfilled than they could ever be otherwise. Yes, I believe content creators should definitely seek reward for contributing to the noosphere. But, as was always the case, it's up to them create something worth rewarding.

But...but...I'm a poor kid who can't get money and I hate large corporations/publishers anyway, so I should be able to download what I want for free with no repercussions! I wouldn't have bought it anyway, or I convinced myself I will if I enjoy it enough, so it does NOT equal a lost sale! And...and...so on and so crap.

If you can't afford it, save up. If you want it now, too bad. It's always funny watching all of the silly justifications thieves come up with while supporting illegal/unauthorized distribution in the name of all that is self-benefitting. In the end they're just filth polluting the creative world where people hope to make a living off of their products.

And the sad part is that you don't even have to pay out of pocket to get all of the games you want legally. But the concept of working for things or waiting for them eludes the callow.

What is this thread? Some sort of blacklist honeypot?

I would download a car.

I was a pirate, then steam appeared in my life and made games affordable for me

Since then I've been buying games that I enjoyed a lot back then when I was a pirate and obviously new games too c:

Anyway, if you pirate a game, you're stealing it, that's all :v

I won't even read the comments in the topic, because this subject can get me annoyed easily. But I read your post OP, and I pretty much agree with what you said, except the "don't own a credit card" thing - I got a free VISA internet card from my bank, and whenever I want to buy something, I take a walk to the bank and put some money on the sucker.

I would add that I consider it ok for people to pirate if they really can't afford the game (i.e. the only other option for them is to not buy it or play it at all. Poor people deserve entertainment, their lives are already bad, so why make them worse?). I live in a poor country myself, and for a long while I didn't know that steam had such big sales, so I pirated games instead of buying overpriced boxed copies that were very rare to find anyway (basically it was impossible to get new games even if I had the ridiculous amount of money they were charging for them). I now own a ton of games on steam that I played while I was a pirate.

Also I think piracy is ok even if you can afford the game, but only for testing purposes. Take Watch Dogs for example, I mean you have to try a game like that on your system before you decide to buy it because it's completely broken and unplayable for so many people.

If you pirate because you're cheap, it's not so good.
If you have a shit computer and want to see if the game will even run because there's no demo, that's okay.
If you already own the game but are too lazy to get the CD/lost the game somehow, then it's also okay.
If you can't get the game where you are or can only receive censored versions, it's okay.

Well. If i'm poor, am i allowed to do something bad like stealing?

i only pirate things oler then me 2600

Real pirates

I pirate when not sure about game. Watch_Dogs for example. I wasn't sure about buying it so I tried to play a little and I didn't like it. In my opinion if developers would do demo version for every game there would be less piracy.

A lot of games have a tendency to make me want to throw up after just a few minutes. There's whole bunches of games out there that I simply CANNOT play. Because of that, I'm very VERY reluctant to spend more than a few bucks on any game unless I've tried it first.

Just bought Skyrim from the GameFly sale. Even with a bunch of anti-motion sickness mods, doesn't look like I'm gonna get to play it. If they'd just make rent-able PC games (ironically, console games are a hell of a lot worse-though a lot easier to test), I'd go that route instead. Funny thing is, with my 1.8 Mbps internet connection, pirating's not much of an option either. Takes ALL FREAKING DAY to download anything.

what about pirating movies, tv shows, old games, etc.

Piracy is wrong, but because it's such an easy thing via the internet, it makes us take it. Everyone loves taking shortcuts in order to get something.

I'm so happy to see that many of the people I respect most on this site are decent, non-pirating human beings (not that everyone who does pirate is necessarily bad).

Seriously, if you have the ability to purchase a game in the country you live, yet you still pirate it, you're breaking the law and violating one of the central morals of human society. No justification overcomes that fact.

I'm sorry if you're poor, but a lack of money doesn't justify theft, and piracy is most certainly a form of theft, no matter the semantics and logical gymnastics you'd like to throw at me. In the end, though, it's not my place to tell you how to live; do what you'd like--it's your life--but at least be honest with yourself and everyone else about what you're doing.

There are some games I think are okay to pirate
The devs don't get the money like Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines.
No longer sold
Games you bought but can't play due to DRM or needing a patch to run on newer systems

Games are insanely cheap as it is. I have more games on Steam than I'll ever have the time to play and I only spent a few hundred dollars over the last few years.

I couldn't be bothered to pirate/crack/virus scan/manually update/etc games from some shady torrent when I can just buy games for a few bucks on Steam.

Try before buy unless you really know you would play it. Especially on games without demo (makes me mad!).
Also if you can afford it then go for it.