http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=HmZm8vNHBSU#t=5s

lol.

And this in response: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=xuxO6CZptck#t=7s

Have you actually read read what I've written on the thread? Because it looks to me you just have an idea in your head and ignore the rest.

Once again: No, I don't need it on day 1. No, I won't buy die if I don't play DmC. In fact, I've already not only said I didn't really need to play, but even stated I won't play it. Because, as you said, I don't need to. I just felt like it. This is not in question.

However, this doesn't mean I am "a tad too greedy by wanting the game here and now". This means, I'm giving them a chance to convince me to buy the game. Because in a few months, I won't have the chance to play it, and so I won't buy it. If I were to play it now, maybe I pay full price, maybe I pay 20 or so € when it's half price. If I don't play it now, I won't buy it until it's dirt cheap a few years from now. So I don't feel greedy, because not playing it is actually cheaper to me than playing it.

Like I said, if I always wait I will never pay full price for a game on the first week, which as others have brought up is very important for the studio. I do want to pay full price for my favorites, which is why I try them beforehand. But feel free to push your thoughts onto me, I don't particularly care if you don't believe me.

Wow four pages, at 50 posts per page, mind.

All I can say is: scurvy's a bitch.

Eat your lemons.

Exactly. That's why your initial argument (which i answered to) is a logical fallacy.

BS. Second hand games don't create multiple copies of the same game. If you buy a pre-owned game, you're using the multiplayer slot that the original owner would use if he still had the game. There is no additional stress on the system.

Also, first-sale doctrine applies here.

Second-hand sales don't hurt publishers. The problem is that there are big retailers that abuse the second-hand market, which is why we have online passes now.
LOL, do you really care about what publishers say? EA once said that Steam's sales hurt the game's industry, and 2 weeks later launched Origin's sale with discounts up to 75%. Fuck the coherence.

Also, claiming that piracy is better than buying second-hand games is just too fucking stupid. You really believe getting an illegal copy of a copyrighted work is better than purchasing a legal copy off someone else?

If you came up with valid rational arguments i would agree with you. Searching and buying second-hand copies from ebay is not convenient, especially for those of us that don't live in US, it's much easier to pirate stuff. But you're just trying to sugar-coat piracy.

No. You just are a zealot that doesn't understand basic things.

It doesn't matter if you buy a second hand copy or you pirate a game - in both cases, publisher doesn't get a single dime from you.

And I don't care about legality. If your main reasoning against piracy is the law, I really, really pity you. I usually don't pirate games (have around 1,000 purchased titles and around 30-40 pirated games, maybe more, I would have to count, but it's still a small fraction of all games) because I want to.

My approach is simple - if a publisher isn't interested in my money, I don't need to buy it. The same thing is with TV series - if a producer isn't interested in me watching it - it doesn't matter if I do, he doesn't earn on me anyway. And I will say it again - I don't care about legality when it concerns piracy.

How can you "abuse" something that is good? First sale doctrine doesn't apply to shop keepers or what?

"Second hand market isn't harming publisher as long as 1000 people sell 1000 copies not 1 person sells 1000 copies" , yeah, makes sense.

Also, there is no such thing, as "slot". I will explain this to you on abstract example - a game may be played but only one person online, two cases:

a) when a person stops playing it, another person buys it and plays, and when he gets tired of the game, another one buys it
b) only one person buys a game and then sells it to another, and another.

In B case, the company goes bankrupt even though in both cases only 1 person plays a game at the same time. Second hand market costs them money.

Companies don't create "slots", upkeeping servers isn't free. It's calculated, that person A will play a game for a certain time, and then probably stops. And if another person wants to play, it's ok, because he paid for a game to us, so we have money to operate. Online passes exist because publishers clearly don't want second handers to play online, because it costs them money.

But I know you will say that everything here is a bullshit, and you're the bearer of the ultimate truth, so you know. Do your thing.

Pirating a game is stealing, no matter how you want to church it up. I don't really give a shit though, there are cases when I will pirate a game (old games that are no longer for sale anywhere). But, that's not necessarily the issue here. When it comes to second hand sales, financially speaking, they are exactly the same as pirating. As far as the publisher/developer is concerned, an individual who is not the original owner will get to experience their product without paying them a dime. Now like I said up front, pirating is stealing, but regardless of that fact, both second hand sales and piracy have EXACTLY the same effect to the IP owner.

You have to keep in mind that gaming is a non-tangible product. It isn't a car, or a table, or a spoon. It is an experience -- an experience that for most people is one-time use. If I sell a car second hand, chances are that I still need a car, so I will be in the market for a new one and while the dealership may not have gotten a sale from the person I sold my old car too, they could potentially still get a sale from me now that I've sold my car. With a video game, if I sell Mass Effect to a friend, then I will not be re-entering the market for a new copy of Mass Effect.

Clearly, second hand sales are every bit as damaging to a publisher sales as piracy is. In fact, one could make the argument that they are actually more damaging, as someone who pays for the game second hand may have been willing to pay more for the product, since they were willing to pay in the first place, whereas a person who steals the game probably had no intentions of buying it under any circumstance. And as kevveek pointed out, if publishers were okay with second hand sales, then they would not have started selling online passes and what not in order to retrieve that lost revenue. Second hand sales would be just as illegal as piracy if it weren't for the first sale doctrine, which I guess currently does not protect digital products.

What about buying used games on Ebay or other places online? Technically my money isn't going to the devs themselves. Though with older games there probably isn't a way for it to go to the devs anyway. Still, if its a matter of supporting the industry legality isn't the biggest thing in question for me. Its a matter of principle and who I feel deserves my support and money. This is one reason I like the Kickstarter model. Its kinda like a glorified pre-order system, but for games that normally might never have a chance of fully being made and for games that I really want.

I never pirate and would never pirate a game I could get a copy of. Though that's with games and pirating oftentimes won't equate to a lost sale because that's assuming the person who pirated it has the money to support every possible industry they're interested in while dealing with their own basic needs and life situations. It simply will never be possible unless you are the 1% of rich people in your country. Its a bit complicated to explain though because I don't pirate so I don't have to explain a justification for it (since I don't do it) but what businesses need to do is change old and outdated business models to beat piracy. Make the service far better than what piracy can offer so no one will ever want to pirate ever again. Because issuing DMCA takedown notices again and again won't stop or slow down piracy, and in future generations of kids that are more tech savvy than this gen of parents the amount of people that will know how to pirate can only increase.

Also with games at least, buying games new at retail for $60 just isn't a viable option for me anymore. DLC, Add-ons, GOTY Editions, more affordable downloadable and indie games, used game market, etc., there are just too many things that don't make $60 worth the value and that's not even considering the quality of the games in the industry just doesn't seem the same that it used to be.

I think the 60 dollar price point is getting harder to sustain. The trouble is that as AAA games have become more complex and more Hollywood-like, they've become more expensive to produce. Too expensive, actually. Really, some games should cost more than 60 dollars because sales projections for many of these AAA games are sometimes unrealistic just to break even! And, setting fixed price points on this form of entertainment is horribly stupid. Not only is enjoyment subjective, but games are not created equally. For example, a game like Skyrim can be played for 150 to 200 hours easily, while a game like Rage only takes around 20 hours (including all of the racing side objectives). You'd have to decide for yourself whether or not, in this example, you'd value Skyrim at more than 60, or Rage at less than 60 (when it was new) -- but there's that subjectivity again!

And when you start throwing classics in the mix -- some of which you can get here for 6 bucks or less and provide many hours of entertainment -- how do you continue to justify a 60 dollar price point for some games? The issue is that production costs do not equate exactly to entertainment value. The majority of gamers are going to be younger people - often students - for whom 60 dollar purchases become a risky investment.

I'm not arguing that any of this justifies piracy, but I would be willing to wager it definitely effects piracy for the group of people who are willing to steal games but might be buyers at lower price points (for the AAA titles).

I disagree that ethics are irrelevant. Ethics are only irrelevant when they are disconnected from reality and don't push for the type of society when want to have.

Policing human nature works to the extent that the majority doesn't need to be policed, because they see the intrinsic value of following the rules. Actively policing 1% to 5% of the population works. Policing 90% of the population doesn't.

Free art looks nice on paper, until you realize that artists need to put food on the table too and that if you won't pay for it, then they won't provide and the movie/music/book/game industry will grind to a very very slow crawl (as those activities will be pushed to hobby time for those interested in pursuing them if they aren't too tired for it and no significant amount of capital will ever be invested in those activities).

What you want is not free art. What you want is art that is priced fairly.

Atm, the game industry functions because a significant percentage of the population recognizes the value of supporting games monetarily by paying for them.

Not quite, piracy has changed the attitudes of pirates about the value of things irrevocably.

I never pirated anything that was actively distributed by the IP holder so I never got into the habit of viewing games as something that you get for free.

Not policing copyright infringement would be a disaster waiting to happen.

If you think DRM is bad right now, wait until you see that crazy ass DRM they will pull off if copyright isn't regulated at all.

You might suddenly find yourself in a situation where you can only play games at fixed game houses and where you can only read books at a "bookstores" (where they strip search you at the entrance for electronic devices, pens and paper).

And you might find yourself in a situation where if you somehow acquire source material and sell it, you'll have a hitmen looking for you (if the content creator can't get legal retribution, there are always other means of getting it).

This I completely agree with.

You have a gaming budget in mind.

You hand it out to the most deserving for good value in return.

This in particular is gold.

By the way, in many cases, companies refuse selling the games, because they don't give a fuck. With digital distribution, selling oldies is simple and almost costless (I mean like on Steam where there is no compability work done, games are just sold as they were delivered by publisher). So, if a company doesn't give a fuck (like Konami and Silent Hill games on PC or Microsoft with Age of Mythology or Starlancer), why should I?

It's a gray area with no easy answer.

But like keeveek said, some older games have been neglected and forgotten by companies. One could argue in that case it's not so much about piracy as it is about preservation. But that's just one case, for older content that isn't commercially distributed in any way.

In brief response to Magnitus, I am not going to address this further, as I feel we are taling about different things.

I can accept, to a point, an argument that policing prostitution is a good idea, as it protects young girls from abuse, the possibility of sex enslavement, drug addiction, etc, but that is irrelevant. I can also accept an argument for banning the manufacture of combustion engines for personal use as of tomorrow.

I have no interest in how things SHOULD be, because things will never be as they SHOULD, they will always be as they ARE. Things tend to take the shape of least resistance, like a stream running over a slope. One might see a rivulet make it's way, meandering, and feel in hindsight that the stream could have taken a more efficient route. If that person had the perspective to see the twig that forced a right turn, the denser soil that led to a detour, etc, they could appreciate the overall inefficiency in life.

In our case as humans, the shape of society has largely to do with plateaus. We get to a certain point because of what happened before. This is not to say we ever make the correct decisions, that any structure or institution is optimally beneficial, or even that it is not harmful.

Ethics have no place in policing human nature simply because ethics must reflect, not shape, the society producing them. Ethics will change over time. Some might not think it ethical that a person be fired on christmas day, while the CEO collects a bonus equal to the yearly salary of ten men, yet we all work for these exact kinds of people.

Dreaming of what should be has no place in modern philosophy. Capitalism has largely drawn the line dividing us from the past, irrevocably. As Fukiyama said, this truly is the End of History. Piracy is simply a symptom of a transition period, as we move from the old world of commercial consumption to the new world of consumptive advertising. A week one album sales figure has now become a worldwide twitter trend.

As I already explained, trying to impose an old system, whether moral, ethical, or cultural, on the new reality is tantamount to trying to outlaw guns in order to maintain the supremacy of the Samurai. It did not work for Japan, and it will not work for modern global society. Anything that can be gotten for free will be, and consumers more than ever before, act as patrons of the arts, choosing who is worthy of their support and lack thereof, while still consuming the works of those who are found to not be worthy, or deficient.

About my "miasmatic zeistgeist", the theme of piracy is overconsumption. I feel that this is a transition period, where a new paradigm of excess availability leads to overconsumption in the short term. You can see this trend in general in all areas of consumer culture, from people buying the largest flatscreen they can afford, despite it often being too big to be comfortably viewed in their living room, to backlogs of digital videogames. Pirates are not a separate entity, they are just another facet of a consumer culture that is reacting to a shift towards opulence.

You will notice that those who pirate mass amounts of media tend to be younger, as the young will tend to get caught up in this transition period more easily. Older adults (late 20's-mid 30's) have witnessed the birth of this overconsumption, and have tended to rein themselves in to a point. Of note are services like Netflix that coopt this overconsumption, and twist it to serve the very film studios hurt during the initial years of torrenting.

I cannot forsee what this paradigm will transition TO, but I am all but certain that it will. I am also certain that the counterproductive legal action against infringers will seem archaic and desperate in hindsight, once the new media reality arrives.

The money for that copy of the game did go to the developers, just not from me.

The difference between re-sale and pirate is the number of copies that exist.

If we move to a more physical object for a moment, than something slightly abstract like software:

I buy a book. I read the book. I decide it's not one that needs to stay in my book collection forever, so I sell it to a friend of mine for half the cover price.
He now has the book, I do not.

On the other hand, if I decide I want to keep the book in my library, but I also want to give it to my friend, so I take and make a photocopy of the book and give it to my friend.. then he and I both have copies of the book we can read at any time, but only one copy was purchased.

In the first instance, if he passes the book on again, that's 3 people who've read it, but still only one copy.
In the second instance, if we both pass the book on again, now there's 4 copies floating around from one.. which then becomes 8, and 16 ... etc.

Sure, the book example doesn't really work, because how many of us would actually take the time and spend the money to photocopy a book on such a scale? Which is why the "war on piracy" has been raging on so hard the last .. what.. 10-15 years? Used to be that it took time and resources to distribute unauthorized copies of copyrighted materials and the further form the original you got the worse the quality was, now it just takes bandwidth for perfect copies.
There are some cases where it's not a lack of fucks given..
Sometimes the rights to a game are a muddled mess.. a game company goes under or re-forms or the like and the rights to it's games may not always go where you think.. or even if they DID, the company that got them may not even be aware, because it owns so many IPs that, according to their accountants and "market experts", are 'worthless and can't keep track of them all.

I imagine that's something of the case with Age of Mythology, to be honest. It was popular, there's been a lot of call for an AoM2 and digital release of the original. Maybe Microsoft just doesn't care, but it's also possible that they don't own the full rights.

Well, at least for titles I gave here, I'm fairly positive that they just don't care. MsRyz0n, dude representing Microsoft on steam forums said deliberately "I went to the managment, and they said that MS has no interest in re-releasing AOE2 and AOM). Also, I've contacted Konami, and they replied "Konami is not interested in selling SH games on PC anymore"

But you are right - sometimes rights for re-releasing a game may be scattered. But that's just another reason to download them - the chance of seing them to be sold is very minimal or none. BUT, if the game was re-released after some time and after rights for these games are settled and the game is sold, I will gladly buy it. (like I did for Bullfrog games)

The same thing applies for games I played because they are not sold first-hand - if they are re-released, I will pay gladly for them. A person who buys used games, probably wouldn't buy a new copy after re-release anyway, so it's another disadvantage of buying used games from publisher's perspective.


If a game is re-released but I don't like the service (like with Final Fantasy VII remake for example), I just simply don't buy it and don't pirate it at all.