Red_Avatar: The Industry is one big corrupt bowl of monkeys who have no clue what they're doing except for filling their pockets.

Take Timmy. Timmy is 16 and gets 50 euros pocket money every month which he is willing to spend on games. Timmy also has Internet at home.

Now, let's take a look:

Situation A: Timmy sees an ad for a game but it costs 50 euros. He takes a risk and it turns out the game is pretty dull. Timmy just lost an entire month's allowance on a crap game. Still: 50 euros went towards the games industry.

Situation B: Timmy realizes he has Internet and can use it. He sees an ad for a game but downloads it first. The game turns out to be crap so he looks at another game which is fun. He buys the game, spending his 50 euros and is happy. 50 euros went towards the games industry.

What is the difference between A & B? The difference is that the industry got paid for a crap game and the customer was not happy. The thing is, the industry likes it that way. It means crap products still make money and reduce the loss of money even if it was at the expense of the consumer. Yes, the industry doesn't give a sh*t about us as long as they make money. BUT, in the end, the same amount of money went into the industry except now the people who deserved it got it instead.

In the end, piracy is about a person A having a limited amount of money and choosing where to spend it. THIS is what the industry needs to realize. Their "theory" seems to rest on the fact that consumers have bottomless pockets where each game they try is a lost sale. NO IT'S NOT.

Most people can only afford one or two games a month and what piracy really does, is give gamers a better reason to invest in an expensive PC. If a PC costs €1500 to play games, and games another €50, it would become too expensive for many if they couldn't play more games on the side for free. Yes it sucks they can't afford to buy all games but their limited money still goes into that same industry so in the end, it makes NO difference. Heck, many PC gamers would just stop buying PCs and PC game sales would drop even more if they had to buy every game to play it with the risk of getting ripped off.

GameRager: I wonder what would happen if we used all areas of our brain at once sometimes.

GameRager: Lol I know this post is old but c'mon. Not every poor person is this way. Sometimes we WANT to buy every game but can't. In the end though Red's point still stands. If the kid/guy spends the same on games in each case then changing what he does with "borrowed games" after testing them from case to case doesn't change the fact that x amount of dollars still go into the gaming industry.

GameRager: Lol I know this post is old but c'mon. Not every poor person is this way. Sometimes we WANT to buy every game but can't. In the end though Red's point still stands. If the kid/guy spends the same on games in each case then changing what he does with "borrowed games" after testing them from case to case doesn't change the fact that x amount of dollars still go into the gaming industry.

Gundato: Wow. Has General Discussion become so repetitive that necro-posting is a fad now?

I don't fully recall what this topic was about, but let me just point out the fatal flaw in your counter-argument:

"Hi, I am Bill Jim Bob of Project TerraMineBoid. I am perfectly happy that, while little Timmy loved FreeVolume, the game I spent the past 3 years of my life working on, he chose to spend money on something from Electronic Vision. Because all I care about is the gaming industry getting the money!"

That is not at all factoring in places like Gamestop that never send a single penny of their used game purchases back to the publishers (who in turn send a fraction of a penny to the developer, maybe), or people who would rather wait to purchase the game (for a replay) when it is on sale.

Gundato: And food for thought: going back to Troika. Even with them basically being dead by the time of Bloodlines's release, imagine if even a fraction of the people who own the game now had bought it new. They might very well still be in existence today (and still be releasing buggy pieces of crap that are fundamentally awesome, after you wait for the unffocial patch).
Does that mean VTM: Bloodlines was worth buying for 50 bucks? Probably not. But I think we can all agree that Troika had vision, And maybe "getting screwed out of 10 bucks" is actually kind of good for the industry. Early support from the consumers encourages support from the publisher, which in turn leads to patches and sequels.