This is irrelevant for a number of reasons. Unless you used the companies bandwidth to download the pirated copy, or used the companies computers to make a copy of the pirated game (which would consume company electricity), then the number of copies in existence is 100% irrelevant. The only exception to this is if the game has a online multiplayer component which is hosted on company servers (LAN and private servers do not count in this case, because only servers hosted on the company's end would be related to using company resources), but all modern games require unique CD keys and accounts and what not so this point is basically also irrelevant. And even in these cases, the amount of money that it would cost the company would be pennies on the dollar, if that, though that still counts as something rather than nothing.

There is no physical good that was produced, and thus no production costs were lost during the act of piracy.

And to reference your book example: You sold a story that someone else wrote to a friend for half price. The price you charge your friend is actually completely irrelevant. Charge him a penny, charge him double, it doesn't matter. Now two people have experienced someone else's story for the price of one copy as far as the actual owner of the story is concerned. I don't see a whole lot of difference between that and stealing. I'm not criticizing you here because I've already admitted in this thread that I pirate older games that aren't legally obtainable somewhere, but I'm just pointing out that as I see it, there is little difference between the two.

Not to hijack the thread but the question of language patches legal or illegal has been picking on me for a while, being the only questionable content i have left for a few of my PC games..

I bumped a thread on Steam just now, link : http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1513648

My approach in a few words :

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nekomancer
Mostly they are not legal since they're ripped from a different version of that game. Since you don't own a license for that version you're in fact pirating. So be cautious in using language patches unless they are 100% fan-made.

Me:
Necrobump because i find the thread interesting and rarely discussed, and i have another thing to add..

Even 100% fan-made it is still using the licenced script, so basically stricly legally any language patch would be banned..

Though, there are little to no history of cease & desist about those, copyright holders turn a blind eye for years, so i guess it's OK!

Yaaaarhhh Matey! This world needs more Pirates!

To you it's irrelevant, to me it's not.

To me, it is about the number of people who can simultaneously utilize the copy of the media.

If I SELL my book, and later want to re-read it, I have to either borrow it from a friend (who then can no longer re-read it until I give it back) or go buy it again.
If I COPY my book, then while my friend can re-read it all he wants, so can I.

So if we assume both my friend and I are the sort of people who do not pirate items, then me giving or selling him a used copy of a game, while maybe technically against the EULA, is not really any different than me buying the game for him for Christmas. I just kinda played it first >.>

Likening buying used books to stealing is... I'm sorry, it's more idiotic than likening piracy to stealing. Even if we want to use this idiotic notion though, let's look at it on the grand scale:
Resale market: 2-10 people experience the content for a single purchase price
Piracy: 2-10,000 people experience the content for a single purchase price.

There are two things you're not considering though that prove that the book and music industry are fine with the resale market though, the video game industry is the only one being cockbags about it:
Libraries, used book/cd stores. In both instances, plenty of people can utilize the same copy of whatever media for only one being sold- however, only one person can utilize said piece of media at any given time. If book publishers were as bad as game publishers, used book stores woulda been shut down ages ago. :p

In a similar notion, what about the local stores or big chains like Blockbuster that for years allowed you to rent games? A store buys one copy while for that one copy 6-7 people over a 2 month span might rent it. So not only is money going to the store renting it out for each customer, after the first rental doesn't that mean that the publisher is losing a "potential" sale? Or does it just mean that those people would've bought the game if it was at a lower price point to begin with? Many games these days can be completed in a 2-3 day rental period, or a 5 day rental period for the longer games like RPGs.

So lets say several years ago Blockbuster got in 5 copies of Fallout 3 for the 360. We can assume that's about $300 (probably a little less) spent for those copies of the games. These are all rental copies. For lets say, a 4 month span in which the price stays at $60 to buy the game about 50 people rent out these 5 copies over that span. What isn't the issue here is how much money Blockbuster is making off the deal, as with rental businesses breaking even takes a small bit of time and profits are about long term rental value. What could be the issue is out of all those people that rented the game, how many of them would a publisher equate to a lost sale? Would they subtract only the first 5 people for the 5 copies and consider it 45 lost sales?

Be a pirate and save the Earth!
http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2011/10/pirateday-2010.jpg

All hail his noodlely appendages!

First off, I must clear up the fact that I was talking in general about MOST(not all) people who say they're against piracy when I said that. That said:

Maybe you could, but I doubt it. That same moral set that makes you/others think all/most piracy is wrong usually also keeps one from committing said act...even if said act has a low risk factor involved.
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How does some people hacking free MMO points have anything to do with me saying that many people against piracy are (partially or solely)jealous that someone got something for free that they paid for/would have to pay for?
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Yeah, the way that guy turned in his friends to save his own skin was kind of dickish(And possibly hypocritical of him, seeing as how he was doing the same thing that he turned them in for.).
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Imo, if someone pirates/pirated a game copy(after buying a legal copy) to get rid of/remove the DRM(Or if they pirate a game with DRM they hate/dislike and buy the game later on in a sale) I have no issue with them doing so. To me, doing the former seems morally ok, and in the case of the latter....well it's not much different(morally, imo) than buying a game on deep discount(or used) if one had issues with the DRM the game used.
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The funny thing is that's EXACTLY what most people do when they buy a game on sale for whatever reason(Dictating the price at which they're willing to buy a game a seller has on offer.). The only major differences is one is legal and one isn't, and one is more morally acceptable to some people.

Also a buyer has more options then buying a game at whatever price the seller asks for or not......they could wait for a sale, or buy the game from a different vendor.
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1. Actually, imho I DO have the right(morally/etc).....just because you/others think I don't doesn't mean I automatically don't or can't/shouldn't think or act as I do regarding such matters.

2. Not all pirates dislike it when antis call piracy theft because it makes them feel bad/worse about what they're doing.

The real reason some pirates(including me) don't like it being called theft is because it isn't theft.......and hearing people against piracy constantly stating(sometimes to unfairly gain the upper hand in a piracy argument or to make their side look better) that it IS theft-stealing/that it is akin to stealing food from artist's & game maker's mouths(Or physical product from stores)/etc over and over again gets a bit irritating sometimes.

C. (Once again) NOT ALL PIRATES DO SO TO AVOID PAYING FOR THINGS. (I wish those against piracy would stop parroting the "All/most pirates pirate to avoid paying for stuff or because they're cheap." line as if it's fact.)
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Actually, the whole "lost sale" argument has a fair bit of evidence(direct/anecdotal) that proves it false. Not all people who pirate a game/movie/etc would have bought it were there no means of getting it illegally(Maybe they're broke/near broke, and couldn't have paid for what they pirated even if they wanted to[Note that I am not advocating this as a reason for piracy, but rather using it as an example of how the lost sale argument has been proven untrue.].).
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n/a

(BTW I wasn't trying to argue whether all/some types/instances of piracy are morally right or not, but rather to illustrate that there are "shady characters" slinging around generalizations/opinions presented as facts/etc on both sides of the debate[Not just on the side of the pirates].)

Go on, if you think that ad hominem arguments will help you prove your stupid "piracy is better than second-hand" point, go for it. It just makes you look even more like an idiot.

I guess you didn't read my first reply to you. The same thing you mentioned here happens to every single second-market product on the market, thus, your proposition is false.

Laws are the basic pillar of every nation in the world, buddy. If you think laws are meaningless, i am the one who pity you. I'd like to hear you say "i don't care about legality" if someone stole something from you or raped someone you like (and before you make fucking dumb assumptions, i'm not comparing rape and stealing to piracy, i'm questioning the i don't care about laws argument). You say that "legality doesn't matter" because it's convenient for you in this particular case. If it wasn't, you wouldn't. You just want to believe in what seems more convenient to justify piracy. It's very easy to say that laws don't matter when violating them benefits you, but i would like to see the same phrase if violating a law damaged you somehow.

The "i don't care about legality" is a rather dangerous argument, it could be used to justify even the biggest atrocities. It's a very dangerous way of thinking. Laws are the only real objective norms we have to guide the human conduct that we can enforce. Morals, religion, and every other source of norms is subjective. So yeah, laws DO matter.

And that wasn't even my main point either. Even morally i still think that buying a second-hand product is a much better solution than getting an illegal copy. I'd much rather acquire a product from someone that paid for it once, than to get a copy that came from a torrent tracker seeding the same file to millions of users. Just think about the logic: a second-hand sale will generate one sale, only one copy will be transfered by the sale; a copy uploaded on a torrent will generate millions of copies that only one guy ever paid for (maybe he paid for it, most of these pirated releases come from leaked copies when the game goes gold).

Of course nothing is black and white, there is the eventual System Shock 2 or Albion case, but you don't always have to resort to piracy. Most second-hand games are actually affordable. I imported my Thief complete collection for 10 dollars, and that was before GOG's release (it wasn't even second-hand, it was a brand-new copy from ebay). If i went by yout logic, i would have pirated it.

There's also something that you don't understand. A second-hand sale doesn't generate multiple copies of the same game, only one person will be able to use it (the one who owns it at that time). Only one legal copy can be used at a given time. If someone sells, lends or gives away his copy, he won't be able to use it anymore. With piracy one copy generates an virtually infinite amount of copies. Many users will be able to use it at the same time.

Zolgar explained it better than me with a great example:

If i went by your logic i would have to pirate most games out there. Most game companies except for Microsoft, Ubisoft, EA, Sony, Blizzard and Valve don't give a flying fuck about brazillian customers. In fact, they don't care about third-world countries.

Yes, you can abuse something that is good. There is something called "abuse of right" to prevent the abuse of a legally obtained right. The ownership right, for example, can be abused. In fact, the main case that started discussions about this subject was about the abuse of the right of ownership (the famous Clement-Bayard case http://www.utexas.edu/law/academics/centers/transnational/work_new/french/case.php?id=1205). There are no absolute rights. Even the right to life can be relativized in special cases in most countries (during war, for example). According to Bobbio, the only absolute right is the right to not be enslaved.

Explained above.

You can't calculate something such as the interest in online play. You can't calculate whether someone will or will not stop playing, or whether or not he will sell his copy and how many times it will happen. This is within their business risks.

And if they do make an online experience worth playing, most people will not sell second-hand games, trust me. Online gameplay doesn't end, it doesn't have a limited lifespan like the singeplayer experience. If people keep selling their games and are not interested in the online experience, than they failed in making it interesting.

As far as i know COD and Halo don't have online passes (at least i'm sure Halo doesn't). These games don't need it.

To be honest, i think that second-hand sales are just an excuse for publishers to try to get even more money. And we know how experienced they are in getting as much money as possible.

I'm not totally against online passes, but i am against blocking second-hand sales for physical games. If the next generation does block second-hand, as the rumours seem to suggest, it'll be a dick move.

I'm discussing the subject with rational arguments. But feel free to post more ad hominem arguments if that makes you feel better.

The book industry is mostly definitely not okay with libraries, we just created libraries long enough ago that they're an established cultural "right". Trust me, if libraries were a new idea, today, there would be screams and moaning and it'd be sued right out of existence.

The Author's Guild is renowned for their douchebaggery, just look at the Kindle text to speech feature and the epic bitching and legal shenanigans that brought on.

There's no way this is unique to the gaming industry, the gaming industry just happens to be "newer" and there's less precedence covering various scenarios.

I'm curious. Say, theoretically one does not want to support a certain DRM platform and/or does not want to pay the default price for a video game. Would it be difficult to make a donation to the organization that made the game?

Well, I don't think that would be welcome by a publisher. Even if they actually accepted your money, the major problem is accounting. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't want be bothered by accounting small amounts of money being "donated" to them. Not to mention they would have to pay donation tax = even more accounting...

Because it's a freaking busywork that isn't worth for that few extra dollars.

Eh? Did you read what I wrote? If someone donated ME a dollar I probably wouldn't bother cashing it in either, but being corporations they have people managing finances for them, so they do whatever "busywork" they're paid to do, regardless about how they feel about it. Understand now?