Ethics are irrelevant. If one walks into a normally barren field one day, and finds an acorn, he will eat it if he is hungry. Maybe he wasn't even looking for an acorn, but that is what he found.

Policing human nature never works. Copyright holders simply need to either give consumers a reason to pay for what they can get for free, or find new revenue streams, and that is the reality. Getting angry about it, or debating the merits or lack thereof do nothing.

The Samurai wanted to outlaw swords to preserve the old ways, and look how that turned out. You can't stop progress, and free access to art is progress, whether you like it or not.

FYI/PSA: I rarely pirate anything, but this is more out of a lack of interest, and an already overflowing media backlog in every genre.

I'm not a software pirate, because I'm too lazy. Download 15 GIGs of game, having twice that amount of free space for installation, maybe unpacking the zip files, cracking the game, not being able to play the newest version at the moment the patch goes online, etc etc. Nobody have time for that! I pirate games only from abandonware sites or in any reason the game is not avaible for purchase at all (like Silent Hill 2-4 on PC). Buying on eBay doesn't matter for me, just like it doesn't matter for the developer - they already got their money for that copy, they won't get any money more from me buying it from some random dude over ebay

But I do pirate TV shows. Few reasons:
- there is no equivalent of Netflix for Poland
- american tv shows are either not shown here at all or are shown with like a year delay on some crazy hours like 12:00AM(midnight)
- complete series on DVD can cost like 20% of average salary
- and yes, I am addicted to TV series, if I wasn't able to get my fix, I would start mass murdering people :P

btw. when I can pay for premium TV, I do that. I have HBO + HBO GO, Canal+, Cinemax, Filmbox, FOX HD and some other shit, but usually I pirate their series anyway. I paid for them, I just want to watch them earlier. (they don't have any commercials during the show).

Also, I think american TV stations don't really care about pirates from outside US. I am not their advertising target - even If I've watched their series with commercials, it doesn't matter for them and for their advertising companies - their commercials are targeted on Americans. It would be even worse, actually, if they could count me as a legal viewer, because it would falsify their estimations they present to advertising companies.

No, in this case, null sales justify the means. Most pirates would not purchase the product if it was not available for free. Piracy has changed our attitudes about the value of things irrevocably.
As long as laws line up and are in sync with human nature, and focus on violent crime and corporate crime, instead of petty drug possession, prostitution, and especially civil matters like copyright infringement, they are fine. Problems arise when the law tries to police morality, which is a thermodynamically inefficient endeavor.
Not exactly, but to a degree. The key is not that "everyone is doing it anyway", but that "everyone WILL do it anyway". Again, progress cannot be reversed. You would not expect a sick person to not seek the most modern treatments available, nor would most people not shop at walmart because they have destroyed small business. Progress is a temporal juggernaut.
Piracy typically = convenience. As studies have shown, pirates are often the biggest users of the itunes music store and their competitors.
Creators who rely on the old fashioned business model of GPM points on retail transactions through a publisher and distributor arrangement are trending towards self-publication to enable full convenience (ala Louis CK, Rob Halford, Metallica), or are being forced to diversify their revenue streams, much in the same way that loom operators had to when the weaving machine made them obsolete. Again, this issue has absolutely nothing to do with ethics or morality, despite the propaganda that tries to place it in that realm. It has to do with art consumption and technological progress, nothing more.

Why don't you wait for the inevitable price drop if you don't want to pay full price for it? Unless you're an anxious teenager i'm pretty sure you can wait till it gets cheaper. In a few months it'll go on sale on Steam for at least half the price.

And i assume you're refering to the PC version, because there is a DmC demo for Xbox 360 and PS3.

To be honest i still don't get your logic. There is an inherent of risk in every purchase you make, not just entertainment. When you want something, you have to pay and only then you get the product you paid for. That's how commerce works.

I agree with you both! At least if I can define myself "the industry" that I am supposed to support.

In my case, "the industry" that I want to support refers to the publishers who release their games DRM-free. For DRM-games, I continue to pay as little as I can legitimely (which rules out pirating them; I still do feel that if I want to play a game, I should pay the price the publisher wants for it at that time the urge hits me, and with their conditions, DRM or not).

So, Steam games only from 75-85% discounts etc. I don't really want to support the DRM in games, hence I try to restrict the damage. Voting with my wallet.

............

I hope you never bitch about free to play, always online and microtransactions.

I once borrowed a game from a friend. I didn't know I was being a dick though....

Why not wait? In this particular case, I honestly doubt in a few months I'll have a controler available, which means there will be no point in buying the game at that point. There's also the impulse buy thing, which I already mentioned here.

My logic focuses on reducing that inherent risk to as low as possible. I may be willing to risk 4$ on a GOG game for sale, I'm not willing to risk 60€ on a day 1 purchase/preorder. I need to be sure if I spend 50+€ on entertainment, it will be quality one. So I can either never ever spend that kind of money, or try it first and spend it sometimes. When I go to the supermarket, I don't expect the chicken to be rotten and even if it was, I would be refunded. This won't happen in entertainment, so I need to be extra careful.

StingingVelvet: "Support the industry as much as you are able and I have no issue with you.

That includes as many week one full price payments for your favorite games as you can fit into your budget."

That is ludicrous on so many levels.

1) Capitalism is not a socialist system. Consumers spend their money with value as the primary concern, not corporate welfare.

2) Why would you buy any game until the first opportunity immediately before you intend to play it? A friend of mine purchased the Xbox 360 limited edition of The Witcher II for $90, and I bought the same edition from the store he works at, used, which he shrink wrapped for a gift for my nephew, for $25. He laughed, and commented that we both had the exact same product, but I had $65 that he didn't.

3) You are not a shareholder in these game companies, and they don't feel anywhere near as much devotion to you as you seem to to them.

4) Spending more than you should on retail products is the miasmatic zeitgeist of modern times. Get a good nights rest, go to work, spend time with your family, exercise a bit, and fill the remainder in with a hobby. Buying a slew of $70 games every month is not going to get you anywhere but materialistic hell.

5) What about gamers who view gaming as a tertiary hobby? What about those that would rather wait for an absolutely rock bottom price on a given game, because they don't feel the urgency to purchase?

Personally, I bought several lengthy games for very cheap when I bought my Xbox (all used), and as such, I have had a backlog from day one. Because of this, I always have an "open book", so there's no reason to pay anywhere near retail for new additions to the shelf. I am your inverse, I try to pay as little as possible, preferably under $15 for new releases.

The very thought that consumers should feel some ethical/moral compulsion to dutifully pay full price for a plastic disc that costs over twice what a new release bluray does, despite films having astronomically higher production costs is absurd. We have all been deluded into thinking videogames should cost this much because at one time, they did, back when they came on cartridges. In the media disc era, there is no justification for paying more than $40 for any game, and $25 for most.

Let me try to refocus, and reply also to your post at 151.

1) So you don’t think I’m ignoring some of your points, I’ll just say this is not just about art consumption or entertainment, and I don’t stipulate any transcendent value for anything except human dignity.

2) I want(ed) to address you personally, because the way you jumped in seemed to me to carry a lot of frustration with the status quo. My argument is an appeal to your idealism, in spite the fact you strongly dismiss idealism as an effective/desirable social dynamic. ;)

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We disagree on what to do about piracy – and part of it comes because you conflate the progress (technological) with the regression (moral).
Can’t we have one without the other? I think we can, but it requires an ethical distinction.

I have no beef with technological progress per se. And I certainly agree with you that the digital communication revolution impacts hugely on intellectual property realities.
I disagree that piracy is a necessary evil and see no logical principle to tolerate it.

At its core this is a difference of opinion whether capitalist systems must be anarcho-social dystopias/utopias.
There is a respectful, ethical way of attempting progress, through unforced and respectful exchange.
And there is a “might makes right” way of getting what you want - the only subtlety is that with piracy you don’t coerce the copyright holder yourself, you just (cowardly?) benefit from disrespecting his choices.

To conclude, piracy is a banal expression of power corrupting.
I also see it as a very strong signal that the pendulum is turning away from centuries where liberalism and personal liberty increased, and regressing to social structures where “might makes right” and pragmatic / materialistic realpolitik becomes dominant.
Quite ironic actually, as many of its defenders see themselves as paladins of personal freedom.

PS: Notice how you define the law as being a direct reflection of existing or past morals, whereas I would include idealized aspirations in its fundamental attributes. If we were face to face this is where I'd push to try and get you to contradict yourself logically - you seem to have a core of anarchic idealism - and that's an ethical position :)

Nearly everything that's available for purchase outside of the digital world can be returned if you are dissatisfied with your purchase. So there is very little risk in most of our purchases. I think that's one of the problems with digital media is that, due to piracy concerns, it can't be returned.

You've missed the point, the hypothesis is thus: Week one revenue on a game determines what publishers will fund and what developers get to stay in business.

It's not some "morality" crap that you're banging on about, it's about influencing what games get made. If you want to argue against something argue against his actual point (and aside from anything else SV has brought up this is ALWAYS the core of his thesis).

Bullshit. Total orders for week one is driven,by.retailers holding inventory, and even,if,your assertion,was trur, used/cheap game sale prices drive.new.game sales. Also, I don't care about.corporate welfare, gaming could all go.away tomorrow, not that it would, and I wouldn't care. Stop bleeding for these publishers, they won't for you.