What I don't get is what the difference is technically (not morally/legally/etc) between waiting for a game to go on sale for 10 bucks and then buying it & pirating it when it's 60 bucks(for whatever reason) and then buying it also when it's around 10 bucks.

The only difference I can see is you might add to the piracy numbers if you torrent the game, and this won't even matter if you direct download a copy.

Wow, you actually made a point. ;-P

I agree with this. But I also don't see much of a moral difference.

I didn't want to bring up morals as everyone's morals differ on this particular issue/point......this is why I asked what difference there is TECHNICALLY to keep replies to that point focused on the technical aspect of it and not the moral/legal aspects of it.

Technically (from our point of view) there is no difference, beyond you get to bug test :) You are paying for what you played in the end. However I suspect many pirates wouldn't even consider doing this.

1. SOME feel self entitled and download whatever they can without paying, but this isn't the case for all pirates, so please stop generalizing when you mention them. ;\

Some download to bypass the DRM on their PAID copy(because they dislike DRM or because it interferes with the game on thier system or their system suffers in some way.)

Some download to test a game out to see if it works on their system when no demo is available(and before you say watch a Playthrough video or something else remember that many PC configs are different enough to lead to a game working on one PC on your block and not the next.).

Not trying to justify here just showing my point that not all download because they feel self-entitled.

2. High prices are one driver of piracy......others include onerous DRM(people buy a legit copy and download a cracked one for varying reasons), no demos available to test the game out on one's system, being VERY poor, etc.


You'd be surprised at how many advocate buying a copy if you play the game. Even cracking NFO files(Some) tell people to buy the games if they liked them to support the industry, and I believe many actually do buy legit copies after a certain amount of time. I was just trying mainly to illustrate that not all pirates tried and didn't buy like some here thought, not to illustarte that most pirates bought the games they pirated(which I couldn't prove even if I tried.).

The way you said it as "some folks" made me think you were saying that instead of the word pirates/etc.

Sorry if I misread that.

(I for one blame having to write up three long posts to my mafia game, adjusting said game's map to follow suit, and my just having woken up a half hour ago. :\...)

LOL - I figured it was something like that.

As I mentioned earlier, there are quite a few reasons (or are they causes?) for this to happen. For some it's simply, "I shouldn't have to pay." And for them, DRM, price, and other reasons are secondary since they'll pirate regardless. "One penny? Rip-off! Now where was that torrent site?"

--

Not sure if there's a valid way to measure this "pure" piracy versus the "try before you buy" that happens in the absence of a demo (or a demo that reflects the release state of a title), along with archival downloading after obtaining a license, etc. Thus it's difficult to substantiate, with accuracy, any claim that piracy drives pricing or vice verse. We can try to apply traditional supply and demand models but how does that come into play when the supply, once the title is complete, is virtually infinite? How can we claim huge losses when nobody really knows how many try-before-you-buy torrents turn into retail sales? 10%? 90% What percentage of these downloads are actual pirating without a software license for the title and with no intent to buy whether or not the pirate enjoys the game?

Cause, reason, I don't care. It's all moot because nobody knows the number of illegal downloads, how many turn into sales, how many are treated like a demo without a sale and are subsequently deleted after a short bit of play time, how many are actual piracy, how many are archival backups of titles for which the license has been properly obtained. All we have are semi-educated guesses as to the cost to the industry, and thus we only have guesses on whether or not piracy harms or helps the industry.

I agree on the last bit.....no one knows the correct numbers. It irks me though when anti-piracy groups and publishers flaunt the number of illegal "game downloads" and say piracy is hurting them when A: Those numbers don't show if a person downloaded the whole game or just a crack, or if they bought a legit copy beforehand or not, B: If they finished the download or had to start it more than once for some reason, etc.

Oh man this is so funny.

It might not make a big difference, but I doubt very much, that many people do it like this, i.e buying all of the games that they already downloaded.

For me the difference would be of using the market forces while waiting against just the law of the strongest, i.e. taking what you want.

You're still using the market forces if you pay for it at the same price as everyone else.

To me it all boils down to what another gogger said in here......imo it's more an issue of people being mad others get something before them/for nothing than anything else in some cases.

Big stretch of an example: If gamers want to support the industry then why not pay full price and not take money away from the publishers?

You can't just take those number like that.
In July, Crysis 2 had already sold 3 million copies.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-07-26-crysis-2-racks-up-three-million-sales

Also, piracy actually prove that DRM are useless. ok now: piracy doesn't cost anything to the game publisher or developer. You could consider it as an eventual lost of sale, but that doesn't make you lose any money.

They are obviously exception. I don't see why there would more games without piracy. Piracy doesn't prevent developers to develop. That could be true, if piracy was an "alternative".


Many peoples actually want a graphically great game. Just ask some random people (not on gog, obviously) That's ridiculous.
Space sims are completly different from any other sims. Another market. Another way to do them. Other genre rules.$ Enough for them to live, yes, but not to maximize an investment. Fly sims also are a WHOLE different genre. With it's own market also.
And from where do you get that they are less piracy in those genre? 1 pirated copy isn't a lost sale.


IMHO, 0.89$/€ is actually expensive for a song.
Also, music is different. Study shows that the money people save through piracy, end up spent in gigs/merch, which are at an all time high.
The Swiss government recently made a study to see if they should legislate or not:
http://www.ejpd.admin.ch/content/ejpd/fr/home/dokumentation/mi/2011/2011-11-30.html (FR|DE|IT) New releases still are 60$/€. Even in digital distribution, where costs are lower.

edit: damn fuckin bad quoting system.

Some new releases are $60 here. Those are the exception, not the rule. Likewise, today the price drops are happening much sooner than the days when I started gaming in the 80s / 90s.

The point about music (and GOGs offerings) is that it's cheap to buy a song (whatever the going price is these days - I still buy CDs) and you're no longer stuck buying a the entire CD for just the one or two songs that you want, and people will STILL pirate those files. In music, too, the try-before-you-buy pirate "market" should be almost nil since the major download sites tend to have at least a small clip of each song for the customer to sample before purchase. So there's more to it than price or DRM being the reasons to pirate music. What I was getting at is that some people are going to steal this stuff simply because they can get the product for free without repercussion, not because the price is high.

I don't pirate games, but I can understand why there are CERTAIN pirates who do download because of their issues with the industry (overpriced games, ridiculous DLC crap, etc.) I think these people have valid reasons to do so, even though it comes at the expense of the developers, I wouldn't say there are moral issues surrounding it.

If you look at the trademark/copyright rules in the USA, a creative person only gets to reap profits off their material during their lifetime plus 75 or 100 years, I can't remember. After that, open market. So all those copies of Shakespeare, all the Jane Austen stuff, Frankenstein, etc, none of the sales of those works of art are generating any income for the families of the people that made it. So in essence, since I own both Dracula and Frankenstein, I've pirated those works through a bookseller and publisher that is essentially stealing the material from the estate of those artists that made them. Yes, game developers are alive and well right now so it does sort of suck for them to have their stuff stolen, but then for every developer except for the Indie guys, they're all owned by the megolith corporations who are the real ones ripping the developers off with shitty pay (except for those at the top). I also think that with the way many games are being shortchanged now with terribly short campaigns or gameplay time save for DLC that people need to buy, more and more are simply going to pirate.

What I don't agree with is the black market business individuals that pirate and make a profit out of the pirating. It's one thing to have several hundred or thousands doing so to make a statement to the gaming companies, another thing for profiteers to do it.