I just don't know who to trust anymore!

Are those dang dirty pirates ruining life and taking away diamond-encrusted swimming pools from executives?!

Or does piracy give players a way to test game releases before buying, which also lets players decide on the quality, which means players will actually buy more of the good games?!

Do I side with the dirty pirates or the evil corporate overlords!?

EDIT: in seriousness, since I couldn't try Just Cause 3 or Tomb Raider, which both had/have performance issues on some hardware, there is no way I would buy them at release. Steam refunds isn't good enough for me since 2 hours is like 1 hour tweaking settings and only 1 hour actually playing.

This comment was edited on Feb 13, 2016, 14:24.

Brumbek wrote on Feb 13, 2016, 13:28:
I just don't know who to trust anymore!

Are those dang dirty pirates ruining life and taking away diamond-encrusted swimming pools from executives?!

Or does piracy give players a way to test game releases before buying, which also lets players decide on the quality, which means players will actually buy more of the good games?!

Do I side with the dirty pirates or the evil corporate overlords!?

Brumbek - there are exactly how many gameplay/let's play videos out there per game? Enough to check the quality of the game? I'd say so. In addition, there are boards like this one and plenty of others (like over at the steam - the boards are FREE) to check out the players' opinions. And the "But... but... maybe it won't run on my machine" reason has gone with the return policies over at Steam and Origin PLUS again, the videos and boards all over the web. No, pirates are no longer needed, BUT I still prefer GOG for the hassle free (mostly) no DRM games. Games for Windows Live (Rot In Hell!), Rockstar Social Club, and so on IN ADDITION to the already present DRM like Steam, UPlay, Origin, are a real pain in the ass.

El Pit wrote on Feb 13, 2016, 14:23:
Brumbek - there are exactly how many gameplay/let's play videos out there per game? Enough to check the quality of the game? I'd say so. In addition, there are boards like this one and plenty of others (like over at the steam - the boards are FREE) to check out the players' opinions. And the "But... but... maybe it won't run on my machine" reason has gone with the return policies over at Steam and Origin...

Hmm. Many of us don't want to watch others play a game. I don't want the intro and first few chapters spoiled by watching others play. These are games we, individually, are meant to play.

Message boards? Steam forums are a cesspool. It's full of trolling liars, idiots who will spoil the ending...I can't take that recommendation seriously.

Steam refunds are the best option...but Steam refunds isn't good enough for me since 2 hours is like 1 hour tweaking settings and only 1 hour actually playing. There are plenty of games with major issues past the first chapter or two.

I'm the type of guy who wants to know, KNOW, that if I spend $60 on something, that it works exactly as intended. I'm the customer; I don't owe corporations anything.

So for some people (I admit to nothing), pirating a game to play it a good 10 hours before making a purchase decision is the only way they'll buy it. But I respect that you don't have the same wacky convictions that I have!

Brumbek trying his best to justify what he intended to do from the beginning... Obvious.

Brumbek orders a pizza. The pizza is not okay, so he asks for a refund. Problem solved.

Brumbek buys a game from Steam. The game is not okay. so he asks for a refund. Problem solved.

But Brumbek says Nooooo, not good enough. I need to eat at least half of the pizza, ahm, play hours of the game.

Dear reader, judge for yourself.

There is actually one reason I can accept to pirate the game: if the game is not at all or only in a censored version available to you and cannot be gifted or in any other way activated by you. Which means: the idiots don't want to sell the game to you but to mostly everybody else. Then a pirated copy seems to be the only way you can play the game you would otherwise pay for.

honestly it seemed like someone at 3DM was shooting for some kind of white hat job, with all that talk of "its too hard! its all over!"... theres pretty much no way piracy will ever cease, its more about the challenge and invention and r&D than anything else for the real leets

El Pit wrote on Feb 13, 2016, 15:11:
There is actually one reason I can accept to pirate the game: if the game is not at all or only in a censored version available to you and cannot be gifted or in any other way activated by you. Which means: the idiots don't want to sell the game to you but to mostly everybody else. Then a pirated copy seems to be the only way you can play the game you would otherwise pay for.

Under that example, I would call it a 'bootleg' version not a 'pirated' one.

El Pit wrote on Feb 13, 2016, 15:11:
Brumbek trying his best to justify what he intended to do from the beginning... Obvious.

Brumbek orders a pizza. The pizza is not okay, so he asks for a refund. Problem solved.

Brumbek buys a game from Steam. The game is not okay. so he asks for a refund. Problem solved.

But Brumbek says Nooooo, not good enough. I need to eat at least half of the pizza, ahm, play hours of the game.

Dear reader, judge for yourself.

There is actually one reason I can accept to pirate the game: if the game is not at all or only in a censored version available to you and cannot be gifted or in any other way activated by you. Which means: the idiots don't want to sell the game to you but to mostly everybody else. Then a pirated copy seems to be the only way you can play the game you would otherwise pay for.

A pizza game is a physical item, a digital game is not. Given the problems with quality, QA, hardware, etc. it's not an unwarranted complaint.

Brumbek wrote on Feb 13, 2016, 13:28:
I just don't know who to trust anymore!

Are those dang dirty pirates ruining life and taking away diamond-encrusted swimming pools from executives?!

Or does piracy give players a way to test game releases before buying, which also lets players decide on the quality, which means players will actually buy more of the good games?!

Do I side with the dirty pirates or the evil corporate overlords!?

EDIT: in seriousness, since I couldn't try Just Cause 3 or Tomb Raider, which both had/have performance issues on some hardware, there is no way I would buy them at release. Steam refunds isn't good enough for me since 2 hours is like 1 hour tweaking settings and only 1 hour actually playing.

Do you really spend an hour tweaking settings? I'm obsessed with getting at least 60 FPS while maximizing image quality and I spend about 5 minutes tweaking settings for any given game.

On a side note, I used to follow your philosophy. I'd pirate games to see if I liked them and bought the ones I enjoyed. That said, with the various refund policies and substantial discounts now offered by digital distributors, that approach seems outdated.

Cutter wrote on Feb 13, 2016, 16:07:

El Pit wrote on Feb 13, 2016, 15:11:
Brumbek trying his best to justify what he intended to do from the beginning... Obvious.

Brumbek orders a pizza. The pizza is not okay, so he asks for a refund. Problem solved.

Brumbek buys a game from Steam. The game is not okay. so he asks for a refund. Problem solved.

But Brumbek says Nooooo, not good enough. I need to eat at least half of the pizza, ahm, play hours of the game.

Dear reader, judge for yourself.

There is actually one reason I can accept to pirate the game: if the game is not at all or only in a censored version available to you and cannot be gifted or in any other way activated by you. Which means: the idiots don't want to sell the game to you but to mostly everybody else. Then a pirated copy seems to be the only way you can play the game you would otherwise pay for.

A pizza game is a physical item, a digital game is not. Given the problems with quality, QA, hardware, etc. it's not an unwarranted complaint.

I was gonna say "A game is not a pizza," especially when you factor in the restrictions of Steam/Origin/Uplay etc. making it impossible for you to resell a game after you've bought it. But seriously, can you really own a pizza? Then I said to myself "Mmmmm pizza." And I ate some. Yummy.

I don't believe anyone who says they pirate a game, play it, and then buy it if they are satisfied. Yeah, maybe they buy it on a Steam sale 2 years later when they want to re-play it, but they aren't slapping down $50-60 when it really counts in the first critical couple weeks of sales. It's too tempting to find excuses to not pay for it once you've already had it for free.

The bottom line is that people pirate because it's easy to do, usually doesn't get you caught, and if caught, only gets you a sternly worded letter from your ISP. And most importantly, because people like free shit.

I've always found the PC community's attitude towards piracy funny. If a developer or publisher complains about piracy, everyone freaks out and pretends it's not really a thing and there's no way it could impact sales and please oh god don't abandon the PC platform you assholes.

But then a few days later they are justifying why it's actually okay to pirate games.

Look, I don't give a shit if you pirate games. I've done it myself in the past. But don't try and justify your shit. You either just wanted free shit or didn't want to wait for a sale. There's no situation in which pirating a game is the moral choice. Sure, the consequences both to you and the developer are minimal and you're not exactly eating babies, and MAYBE you even pay for it later. But it's not justifiable.

Developers are putting out a product and asking a price for that product. Your choice is either to buy the product, or not buy it. If you're not comfortable with the price, or are not certain you'll be getting your money's worth, your only legitimate choice is to neither purchase nor play the title.

The developers are not entitled to your money, but neither are you entitled to play their game. Stop pretending otherwise.

NKD wrote on Feb 13, 2016, 17:56:
I don't believe anyone who says they pirate a game, play it, and then buy it if they are satisfied. Yeah, maybe they buy it on a Steam sale 2 years later when they want to re-play it, but they aren't slapping down $50-60 when it really counts in the first critical couple weeks of sales.

Well, lots of players do buy it at release if the pirated copy works well. Case in point is the Call of Duty games, which these days are notorious for being horrible PC ports. Plenty pirate the game (offline play only of course), test it, then if it runs well, they buy it so they can play online.

So many games that have Achievements, Leaderboards, Coop, or Multiplayer still have strong incentives to legally buy it even if you can pirate.

But yeah, a lot of people will pirate and never buy. Those people also would be very unlikely to buy in the first place. But that's the classic debate that has raged for decades.

El Pit wrote on Feb 13, 2016, 15:11:
Brumbek trying his best to justify what he intended to do from the beginning... Obvious.

Brumbek orders a pizza. The pizza is not okay, so he asks for a refund. Problem solved.

Brumbek buys a game from Steam. The game is not okay. so he asks for a refund. Problem solved.

But Brumbek says Nooooo, not good enough. I need to eat at least half of the pizza, ahm, play hours of the game.

I admire your attempt at creativity. And your liberal use of Brumbek.

I just think a lot of gamers aren't mature business-minded people. In business office settings it isn't uncommon to get a new printer/scanner/equipment and use it for a week or even a month before deciding on a final purchase decision.

And yet, I'm accused of being a greedy pizza jerk because I also want assurances the game functions as intended after 5 or 10 hours of play.

NKD wrote on Feb 13, 2016, 17:56:
I don't believe anyone who says they pirate a game, play it, and then buy it if they are satisfied. Yeah, maybe they buy it on a Steam sale 2 years later when they want to re-play it, but they aren't slapping down $50-60 when it really counts in the first critical couple weeks of sales. It's too tempting to find excuses to not pay for it once you've already had it for free.

I don't think you really get it, piracy is irrelevant. If what you said was true (aka piracy was really hurting the industry) that would mean the average gamer is informed and capable of punishing game companies. That isn't the average gamer though.

When MMO's Like ultima online and everquest first started, those games paved the way for online DRM. Let's be honest, the people who gave the green light to pay for a game you never own lead to the rise of things like league of legends and steam.

If we're honest with ourselves, for those of us who gamed in the 90's with level editors and open file gaming (aka doom, duke, descent, warcraft level editing, etc). Why the hell would anyone defend not pirating games? Our rights have been so pushed back by big money corporations we can't even get games going into the public domain anytime during our lifetime.

The average person is so stupid, historically illiterate and uninformed they've been basically giving away their rights to own their own culture they pay for, for 100+ years.

If anything we are subsidizing big business, too many people would rather be good little peons.

I'd rather see more of our rights restored. We can't get shit like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhAR8rWPluQ

... because most gamers are such bent over little anti-intellectual slaves.

Copyright extension act - assrapping us all

Why the hell would you not want more of things like Freespace 2 scp? Open source code for old games so we can modify them and updat them? Where might freespace 2, mechwarrior 2, and warcraft 2 and 3 be if we had the source to these old games?

The above old games outside of those ones whos source we have are frozen in time, they can't be updated by fans. It's a tragedy.

This comment was edited on Feb 13, 2016, 20:22.

I've always felt copyright is ridiculous in the first place. The extensions have been downright absurd. And with the TPP on the way they'll likely become permanent.

NKD wrote on Feb 13, 2016, 17:56:
I don't believe anyone who says they pirate a game, play it, and then buy it if they are satisfied...

Odd I've done exactly that, both with old games and new games, full price and discount price. I've even bought a game then downloaded the "pirate" version because in a number of instances it's quicker, easier and doesn't come with any strings. Also I know of many people who have done exactly that.

As for piracy on the whole I don't think it's worth getting to wound up about, while I can only pull general and generally anecdotal numbers out of a hole (like everyone else is ultimately limited to on this subject) there's no way the average "pirate" who pirates a lot could afford to buy everything they pirate. I'm sure there are instances where someone has missed out on money they deserve and otherwise would have gotten were it not for pirating, I don't see anyone disagreeing with something like that, though just as sure as I am of that I'm equally sure that the amount of time and money spend on combating piracy far outweighs the cost of piracy itself.

There are other factors to consider in the very eager fight against pirating, which is that these companies have and like control. Control through licenses (which are only legal in certain places which is worth keeping in mind) and enforced through DRM. It's the kind of control that limit a consumer who's purchased a song only to playing it on one device or through only a certain service, even make them pay for the same thing at a later date on a different media format because the old is no longer in use.

DRM is not about fighting piracy, piracy is collateral damage which they would like to stop anyway while also being a very convenient scapegoat. DRM is about control, control over the paying customers for a lot of reasons in their view.

NKD wrote on Feb 13, 2016, 17:56:
I don't believe anyone who says they pirate a game, play it, and then buy it if they are satisfied. Yeah, maybe they buy it on a Steam sale 2 years later when they want to re-play it, but they aren't slapping down $50-60 when it really counts in the first critical couple weeks of sales. It's too tempting to find excuses to not pay for it once you've already had it for free.

The bottom line is that people pirate because it's easy to do, usually doesn't get you caught, and if caught, only gets you a sternly worded letter from your ISP. And most importantly, because people like free shit.

I've always found the PC community's attitude towards piracy funny. If a developer or publisher complains about piracy, everyone freaks out and pretends it's not really a thing and there's no way it could impact sales and please oh god don't abandon the PC platform you assholes.

But then a few days later they are justifying why it's actually okay to pirate games.

Look, I don't give a shit if you pirate games. I've done it myself in the past. But don't try and justify your shit. You either just wanted free shit or didn't want to wait for a sale. There's no situation in which pirating a game is the moral choice. Sure, the consequences both to you and the developer are minimal and you're not exactly eating babies, and MAYBE you even pay for it later. But it's not justifiable.

Developers are putting out a product and asking a price for that product. Your choice is either to buy the product, or not buy it. If you're not comfortable with the price, or are not certain you'll be getting your money's worth, your only legitimate choice is to neither purchase nor play the title.

The developers are not entitled to your money, but neither are you entitled to play their game. Stop pretending otherwise.

There are 2 reasons I may pirate a game 1) financially unable to purchase the game at it's release or 2) That I may like the game but I already have quite a few games that taking up the play list do I need another game.
But I typically do use itt as a demo and to get a baseline of performance on my computer.

You cant see how the controls are in a lets play video, or how audacious and annoying the DRM is, and most reviews also dont mention it. That is actually the biggest reasons I return or dislike games nowadays.
And yes, it takes me 1 hour to just get controls right in games like GTA 5 or ArmA. I actually played ArmA 3 4 hours until I returned it with a red face full of anger. I really tried to give it a chance, still do from time to time. Main reason were things that I would have never seen in a video, and most reviews didnt even mention them. In games like Total War Rome 2 you dont see how bad that game really is after 2 hours.

I think, and know from experience from many cases, that the vast majority of pirates wouldnt buy a game in any case, since they simply dont have the money. You can put up as much DRM as you like, they simply wont buy it, even if there is no cracked version for it for months. In some cases they can scrounge up money for a subscription game or 1 or 2 games a year, but thats it. There are several studies that support this too. If at all, piracy is actually free advertising.

well, i once pirated cause it is free. No moral justification for it, and it does not bother me. That money which would had been spent, went to beer to accompany said gaming session.

Brumbek wrote on Feb 13, 2016, 19:03:
Well, lots of players do buy it at release if the pirated copy works well. Case in point is the Call of Duty games, which these days are notorious for being horrible PC ports. Plenty pirate the game (offline play only of course), test it, then if it runs well, they buy it so they can play online.

Hahahahaha! You couldn't have given a more bullshit answer than CoD. The game engine is 7 years old, so of course it's going to run well.\\

Shorter Brumbek: "I'm allowed to drive the car off the lot for a week for free. A 30m test drive is not nearly enough to tell if it's a car I want to buy." Complete rationalization of illegal behavior. You're a sociopath.

I just think a lot of gamers aren't mature business-minded people. In business office settings it isn't uncommon to get a new printer/scanner/equipment and use it for a week or even a month before deciding on a final purchase decision.

The difference is you didn't illegally acquire the printer/scanner/equipment. The company lent it to you as a trial in hopes that you'd buy a whole bunch.

Suppa7 wrote on Feb 13, 2016, 20:09:
The average person is so stupid, historically illiterate and uninformed they've been basically giving away their rights to own their own culture they pay for, for 100+ years.

If anything we are subsidizing big business, too many people would rather be good little peons.

I'd rather see more of our rights restored. We can't get shit like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhAR8rWPluQ

... because most gamers are such bent over little anti-intellectual slaves.

Copyright extension act - assrapping us all

Why the hell would you not want more of things like Freespace 2 scp? Open source code for old games so we can modify them and updat them? Where might freespace 2, mechwarrior 2, and warcraft 2 and 3 be if we had the source to these old games?

The above old games outside of those ones whos source we have are frozen in time, they can't be updated by fans. It's a tragedy.

Just a few problems with your argument.

1. Yes, copyright is badly broken, but even if it were fixed it would not allow wholesale copying of days-old, weeks-old, or even months-old games.

2. Yes, our rights are eroding, and we're becoming (in the USA if not most of the world) and corporate oligarchy. The solution to this however, is not to break the law. We have yet to make a serious attempt at changing the system from within. Get involved. Back a candidate. There is only one serious candidate for president who opposes the pro-corporate slant (at the expense of the citizenry) our country has been moving toward for the past several decades. Donate and campaign. Put your money where your mouth is.

Also, "assrapping?" Can you name some rappers?

NetHead wrote on Feb 13, 2016, 21:25:

As for piracy on the whole I don't think it's worth getting to wound up about, while I can only pull general and generally anecdotal numbers out of a hole (like everyone else is ultimately limited to on this subject) there's no way the average "pirate" who pirates a lot could afford to buy everything they pirate. I'm sure there are instances where someone has missed out on money they deserve and otherwise would have gotten were it not for pirating, I don't see anyone disagreeing with something like that, though just as sure as I am of that I'm equally sure that the amount of time and money spend on combating piracy far outweighs the cost of piracy itself.

Links or you're just making shit up.

There are other factors to consider in the very eager fight against pirating, which is that these companies have and like control. Control through licenses (which are only legal in certain places which is worth keeping in mind) and enforced through DRM. It's the kind of control that limit a consumer who's purchased a song only to playing it on one device or through only a certain service, even make them pay for the same thing at a later date on a different media format because the old is no longer in use.

DRM is not about fighting piracy, piracy is collateral damage which they would like to stop anyway while also being a very convenient scapegoat. DRM is about control, control over the paying customers for a lot of reasons in their view.

Oh, no doubt. So instead of buying Battlfield or CoD, buy games that don't pull that kind of bullshit: ArmA, The Witcher, Shadowrun Returns, etc. etc.