The only way I can see it being OK is if the game is abandonware. If I want to give a publisher money for the game and they refuse to sell it anymore, it isn't my fault that I go find the game elsewhere. I have $20 sitting right here that I wouldn't mind using to pay for a copy of System Shock 2, which I played through years ago thanks to an abandonware site, but like hell I can find it anywhere at a reasonable price.

What's the difference(beyond the moral one some claim) between playing a friend's copy of a game before buying it(on sale) and pirating a copy of a game and then buying the game later on in a sale? Either way you played part or all of the game for free before buying it.
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It also makes me laugh when people bring up the whole "you're not paying the creator for using their product" line of reasoning in such a way as to make it seem like those pirating are taking money from the individual game developer's pockets/families & not from the publishing company's/game store's bank accounts.

Before anyone puts words into my mouth, I say this: By saying the above I am not saying creators/etc should not be compensated for their work, or that this particular line of reasoning is wrong.....I just dislike when people(repeatedly) use it in an incorrect manner.

(Because let's face facts here: Most game company staff are either salaried or get paid when the project is complete. Unless a person works for/owns a small game company I am pretty sure piracy doesn't affect their incomes in any major way.)

I more or less agree with the change as long as "within my budget" means income and not "dude I bought so many games."

My personal approach to piracy is very simple. I don't do it.

You have a really good game from the 80's you'd like to play again.

Nobody in the universe manufactures USB floppy drives for the 5.25" diskettes. There are USB drives for 3.5" floppies, but game you rightfully own was never made available in 3.5" diskettes.

What do you do, then?

Yes, but it's only the main "scapegoated" cause. Sadly, though, even if there wasn't any piracy(or very little) they'd just come up with some other reason why they put DRM in games.....most big game companies DO have massive PR/spin departments, after all.
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Sounds fair enough.

9.9 never said it was the programmers themselves but its the same general idea if its a company or a specific person you're stealing from. The company spent money and effort to produce something people feel entitled to take for free because they can.

fine then. How about investing in researching some idea you planned to sell only to have random customers instead just flip your blueprints 90 degrees and make it themselves.
Or taking your savings and commissioning a graphic designer to make art that some jerk photographs and starts handing out free poster sized printouts around the corner from your booth selling numbered poster prints or whatever.
Is that better?

Or is it not ok to do that to individual people but sure steal from a "faceless corporation". is that your point? Not seeing how you feel the distinction on who specifically lost potential customers and therefore income really matters. The programer or the shareholder or the owner or maybe its passed along to the actual customers who all have their cost jacked up a few cents. its still eventually somebody.


that was a long quote. snip.

Well you could plug it into this here adapter and play it on a great big flat pane.......aaaaaaaaaaand it's gone. ;)

In my opinion, piracy is only acceptable in two situations. Either there is no demo available of the game or it isn't readily available for purchase first-hand in your country.
If there is no demo, you pirate it & enjoy it, then go out & buy that game the next day, regardless of who sells it.
If it isn't available for purchase & you pirate it, go & buy the minute it becomes available, regardless of who sells it.

Furthermore, I like to stick by a motto: "If it ain't worth paying, it ain't worth playing". Many of us would kill to have enough time to play video games we don't like, as we could use it to play more of the games we DO like.

1. No, but you implied it(or it seems like you did)....possibly to gain support for your side of the argument. Those sort of tactics don't gel with me, i'm afraid.
1b. No, it isn't exactly the same(in terms of the severity of after affects).......a major gaming company can afford to take the hit and won't suffer too much because of piracy/their product being pirated whereas an employee/owner of a small gaming company(Or an independant artist of some other media/product/service) would suffer more noticeably(Not saying whether it's more "right"[imo] to take from major gaming companies over smaller ones/their employees, but there is a difference between "stealing" from one vs. the other.).
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2. More generalization by the opposition.....not all people pirate such things just because they can, and not all pirates pirate without later paying for what they pirate.
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3. Not really....again your examples are of small business owners/investors/employees suffering from being ripped off and those aren't good example to compare to a major gaming company having it's product pirated.

It's like a multinational fruit company's main fruit orchard has a bag of apples stolen(and as such they lose a few dollars) and you use the following as a comparative example: The owner of a small orchard just had half his crop stolen/destroyed by vandals/etc.

Yes, the examples in both cases share similar concepts but they aren't fairly balanced.
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4. No, my point is that if one is going to use the whole "Piracy is wrong because it deprives the seller of income" line as part/all of their argument against piracy then they shouldn't make it sound as if every pirated game copy is akin to stealing money from game maker's(and their family's) paychecks & pockets.
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5. Maybe, but(as I said above) it's not that I was discussing but the unfair comparison of some/all piracy to stealing from game company employee's wallets/families by you/others.

The only time I'd ever consider getting a "pirated" copy of something is if there is no official distribution channel for it.

The rest of the time, I don't pirate, but rather vote shrewdly with my wallet.

I never pay more than 25$ for a game, because I can't justify that high of a price for a single game.

If a game is more than that, I'll wait until the price come down and if a game developer claims that waiting until the price comes down causes them to go in the red, then I want them to fail, because they don't have a sound development model. I want someone more competent (or just better adapted to the reality we live in) to take their place.

If the game has DRM, I wait until it is DRM-free or never get it if it doesn't (unless it has a darn good reason for having DRM-like features, like being massive multiplayer).

It won't significantly affect me, because I have a big backlog of good games I want to play, but if enough people do it, it will make a dent in their revenue stream.

I don't think the small loss in revenue will make them reconsider their business model (using DRM), but the loss in revenue will bring them that much closer to going under and free up some room for people who have sensibilities closer to my own.

Call me cruel, I can't in good conscience enable businesses whose practice I disagree with by injecting money into them.

If the game doesn't come with a demo, I won't pirate a copy. Rather, I'll wait until the price of the game is ridiculously cheap (read, 2$-5$ depending on how good the game looks) before I risk my money in the game.

If they had come up with a demo and I really liked it, I might have gotten the game for 10$-15$ as it would have been a surer investment, but that's the developers' problem, not mine.

I don't rip off game developers (by pirating), but I don't just throw money at them either. I want them to offer me a product that has value at a reasonable price and I'm not compromising on this.

I never pirate games. Music on the other hand I pirate. If I like the album, I buy it full price. That is my policy.

I 'choose' not to pirate. If I think that I can pay for a game and I like the concept then I get it. I am not paid that highly and considering PPP(Purchasing power parity) paying $50 for a game is a expensive proposition...if I think it is too expensive then I don't get the game and wait until there is a steam sale or something.The reason I do this is because I am a writer myself and I consider games as being intellectual property.There is a lot of hard work that goes into them and developers deserve to get their due.....If you pirate then it is an insinuation that you don't actually respect the work that has gone into making a game you like happen.And yea it would eventually kill the pc gaming industry....

The only instance where I resort to piracy is when a game that I paid for does not work as promised due to a faulty installer or whatever.

Nice try at reversing the argument, but it doesn't wash. It boils down to "That guy got something for free that he should have paid for, since the vendor/creator of the product never intended it to be free". It has nothing to do with the fact that I paid and the pirate didn't. It has everything to do with the fact the creator is offering something for sale and someone is taking it without paying for it. They're ripping off the vendor/developer because of some bullshit pretzel logic of how the game isn't worth what they're asking for it. Guess what? You can wait for a better price, or you can just skip the game altogether.

Shit, my wishlist on GOG alone is rife with games that I don't feel is worth the asking price. Am I pirating them? No. I'm waiting for a sale. You can try to twist the reasoning all you like for why I don't agree with pirating the games, but the bottom line is they're asking for a certain price right now (which is the current sell price) and I don't think it's worth it. So I'm waiting to see if they decide the going price is too high and decide to drop it to what I consider a fair price. If they do, they get my money. If they don't, I don't play the game, and I'm therefore far less likely to play whatever game they come up with in the future. Simple as that.

It may be that for some, but that's not the case for me. I look at it like I outlined above: a developer offers something for sale at X price. If I don't think it's worth that price, then I don't buy it. But that does not give me the right to pirate it. Just wait until they lower the price to a level that you feel it's worth. The argument that you'll play it now and pay later when the price drops significantly is utter crap. If you want to play it now, then pay the asking price now. Otherwise, wait until the price is in line with what you feel it's worth.

I don't lose any sleep over pirating games that are no longer for sale through a publisher/developer. Buying a game second hand from a person who's selling it for 100+ dollars, of which no publisher or developer will see a dime, is just stupid. Unless you are a collector of the actual physical media, of course. But yeah I don't even remotely feel bad about downloading old games that can't be purchased somewhere legally. Emulation falls into this category for me as well. There are cases where some of the newer systems have allowed digital downloads of old titles (The Wii and PS3 do this), so those might be more of a grey area, but for the most part using emulation for me is the same as pirating an old game that's no longer for sale. If the IP owners for those products have a problem with that, then they should reopen an outlet of distribution for them. Tough titties otherwise.

And secondly, when it comes to games that have strict DRM - I still buy them legally, but I crack them to make them DRM free. The publishers can kiss my ass in that regard, but I will still pay for their product rather than just outright stealing it, because they do employ regular people that have families to feed. In cases where I have an extreme problem with a publisher's DRM or game design choices (eg Diablo 3), I simply refuse to buy or play their game at all. I'm not sure if Diablo 3 has been fully cracked yet for offline play, but I'd refuse to play it regardless.

As I said in another thread recently, DRM does nothing but criminalize the law abiding gamers that already paid for the product, i.e. consumers that don't require the extra controlling measures. People will always find a way to steal software, and if they can't, that doesn't mean they would buy it. So really, DRM does little to curb lost sales and probably has a negligible effect on a publishers bottom line. Obviously some DRM is worse than others, and some is quite painless, but nonetheless it's an extra step paying customers have to take with their legally purchased games, meanwhile thousands of people are playing illegally without ever having to worry about running out of software activations (as an example).