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!?
El Pit wrote on Feb 13, 2016, 14:23: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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
NKD wrote on Feb 13, 2016, 17:56: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.
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.
El Pit wrote on Feb 13, 2016, 15:11:I admire your attempt at creativity. And your liberal use of Brumbek.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
NetHead wrote on Feb 13, 2016, 21:25:Links or you're just making shit up.
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.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.
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.