Dear 7thGuardian

Yes, because I know how customers may be a pain in the ass.
It's your problem to learn everything about product, before you decide to buy it.
I will not buy TV, GPU, PC even if it's got return policy, until I will make sure that it's really good choice. You said: "Beyond that, the high rated part is usually "pure marketing" - you rarely see a "honest review" this days". Like you said honest review, I don't trust producers, I learn from users review, friends etc.

Buying is not a race of rats, who will be the first to play The Witcher 2! :) It's not a competition...

Best regards.

Sincerely

I don't know how it's in Australia, but it's not an enforced censorship by the state. Rather, just like with pornography in many countries, extreme display of violence means you are not allowed to sell the game openly (in a way where the box / merch / ads are visible to minors when they stroll through your sub-18-accessible shop). Meaning that they can still sell it to adults, just basically from a back compartment of the store.
The problem is that this kills ~all advertisement ability since you wouldn't be allowed to advertise it, either.

Hence most companies decide to rather censor their own game so they can still run ads for it and put huge piles of it at the front of a store. Everyone who wants it uncensored already imports it, and this way they can at least advertise it.

Because it's the internet, it's the Wild West. There are no moral standards to uphold. You may have been raised in such a way that you feel it is morally reprehensible to torrent a game, but many weren't. If there is an option between having something for free or paying for it, guess what, a lot of people will choose to hold onto their money and have it for free. They don't care about the families of the developers or how long it took them to make it. It doesn't have an immediate affect their life, so why should they care? You seem genuine in your question but you should be old enough now to not be so naive and think that everyone is a do-gooder, caring about laws and the morality of their actions. You know why people pirate: because they can, it's as simple as that.

I'm saying this as someone who bought this game and feel it was worth every penny, but I'm not blind to reality.

Dear CaLeDee

I also agree with you.
Best regards.

PS. KnThrak thank you for your explanation.

Sincerely

That was related to "high rated part".

I also know that customers can be a pain in the ass (worked 2 years as an IT sells assistant)... but trashing consumer rights cause you had some bad experience with consumers, wile protesting against piracy... well, i see some Hypocrisy in that...

"Best regards.

Sincerely"

- kinda similar to above words, I presume you had to be"polite" in your line of work and did that for so long that you're doing it automatically now... yet the meaning of those words is kinda fake in reality, if we take in consideration the part where "customers may be a pain in the ass."

piracy is not all bad.
alot of people pirate it to see if it will run on their rig, to use it as a demo or becaue their legal copy have not arrived yet.

one of my friend pirated TW1, he loved it so much that he bought 8 copies (including the EE) after he played the pirated version.
he would not have played TW1 ever if he never pirated it because he looks at teh game at face value and doesn't like the main character, doesn't like the world.
he would never have spent those money if he hadn't pirated the game first.

i didn't pirate the game and neither did i buy TW1.
it just wasn't on my list of games to play but that friend gave the extra copies of the games he bought as gifts and i was one of the lucky ones that got an EE from him.
and that game made me a fan and i too bought like 4 copies to gift to others.

and all those sales would not have happened if not for piracy

Dear 7thGuardian

I am trying to be always polite and respect people who I am talking with.
You have half true, I do this automatically, but it's nothing to do with my customers at all.
...and the other half - it's all really sincere and heartfelt.

Lots of people say do not write Dear and Sincerely, Best regards, because they don't trust this person good intentions, All pre-suppose that it is not sincere and they are mistaken.

Best regards.

Sincerely

Where can we get the demo from? Also 90% of pirates either can't afford the game or just download them for the heck of it. I have over 300 paid for digital games and I also like to get games the other way you mentioned just for the heck of it.

Dear mojoman69

In case of The Witcher 2 there is no demo, it's right.
...but piracy isn't only related with The Witcher 2, right?
Best regards.

Sincerely

Anybody who pirates this game should be ashamed. For £24 I received a brilliantly presented box full of goodies that I'd normally expect to get in a more expensive edition. Everything CPD Projekt does oozes quality and passion for their work and gamers need to support developers like this, otherwise there won't be any left, and you pirates will have no good PC games to download - you'll have ports of big blockbusters with no substance, or a load of EA games that last 6 hours. Think about the damage you're doing before trying to be clever by downloading things for free from the anonymity of your bedroom - and if you can't afford it then you need to worry about bettering your life instead of playing games, because obviously you aren't doing very well for yourself.

Dear mojoman69

You may not understand my English properly, due to my poor English I think.
I said, that you will never steal a car to test before buy, I don't say that there aren't possibility to test the car from dealers. You misunderstood me. And in my country the possibility to test cars are for few years not always was it able to.

Best regards.

Sincerely

Here in Australia it is $75 USD from steam and GOG. $50 from GOG if you change your region to NA. I could see that some people that see $75 for a game and think wow That is half of my wage for the week. I don't know what they charge in china but the average monthly wage in china is about $200 a month.

If some people don't see piracy as stealing, because you didn't take something phisical, they are very ignorant. Sorry but that's the way it is.
How would you feel if a hacker stole your credit card details from your computer? Name, number, secret code and expiration date. And then he would go rampant spending hundreds or thousands of dollars, on your account!
Would you still say that he is not a thief? After all, he didn't steal anything phisical right?

Game programmers create games. Games are not phisical, period.
It is only a small portion of the cost that goes into printing the game onto phisical discs, if it still happens at all!

I am of the opinion though that downloading games is way too easy, and that the people who crack and distribute them should be considered a much bigger criminal than the ones who download it.

Also, as has been stated a few times before, not every pirated download means a loss of income for the pubs and devs.

Long story short:
Don't stare yourself blind on the number of 'illegal' downloads. Piracy will always be around, but the negative effect of it might just be smaller than you think.
And finally I believe It's up to the devs and pubs to give pirates less reason to resolve to piracy.

Piracy is not stealing. Please look up the laws about it.

Anyway did we need another topic about this?