For all the would be software pirates.

[Lord_Guy]

I'm done with this thread. It's an infinite loop. Waco, I agree with most of your statements. Everyone else, I see where you're coming from and respect all of the opinions. But this will never end and everyone thinks a different thought. So nice debating, free Tibet, and all of that.

[Deathmineral]

You can always watch someone play a game that's in the room with you, and they can always tell you what to do. Does YouTube make this illegal? I doubt it. It probably falls under fair use, is my guess. Plus, those walkthroughs, like demos, may encourage sales as it makes the game more available to people with lesser skills/experience. Again, there would need to be a study for a reasonable debate on that. I'm just putting forth a similar logic.

 

Sharing a game would have to be legal if selling used games are. Same idea only more likely to be illegal, due to the exchange of money. Yes multiple people are enjoying a single copy of the game, but they are also enjoying it one at a time, which may help in a court of law. It's not like you are all playing on a single license at the same time, which would, most likely, violate the EULA.

I think everyone understands the legalities of stuff like that, but I mean morally what do others think was my question.

 

Honestly, to say something breaks a law or violates a EULA is just silly. Laws and EULAs are made up, they're simply opinions enforced by guns and batons. I mean they can pretty much make a law for anything, they could outlaw cupcakes if they wanted to. It's really just a matter of people obeying the law, which they will, because they're scared of the guns and batons. That's why piracy discussions are so boring, people just talk about the law instead of forming their own opinions on things.

Edited December 16, 2011 by Deathmineral

[Waco]

Also, the thing about your "harms nobody" idea is it can be dangerous. If one person pirates a copy, it's not really harming anyone. It's just one copy, and it's not like they'll notice it at $60 a pop. Before long though, one is two, then three, and you get the idea.

I'm not talking about pirating it without having bought it though - or pirating it for the sake of not paying for it. I'm talking about "pirating it" when you actually have a reasonable excuse to do it (replacing a disc, bypassing broken copy protection, etc).

[F13Bubba]

I'm not talking about pirating it without having bought it though - or pirating it for the sake of not paying for it. I'm talking about "pirating it" when you actually have a reasonable excuse to do it (replacing a disc, bypassing broken copy protection, etc).

 

I think that if you have a legal copy, or license of said software, where you get it from doesn't matter. If I buy a game, and the disc breaks, or gets lost, I have no qualms downloading it "illegally".

[Locutus]

It seems a lot more reasonable to ask someone to pay for whatever they pirated than to sue them for thousands of dollars.

 

Say I pirated a song, and the company contacted me and asked for the 15 dollars for the CD. Would I pay it? Heck yes I would. I don't have thousands of dollars to go to court and pay a settlement. It just makes way more sense.

[bilcliff]

I must admit i played part of the witcher 1. i hated the controls so much that i probably got little more than an an hour into it before i uninstalled it. Now the Witcher 2 comes along and get great reviews and wants $70-80AUD on steam with no demo. I'm sorry CD Projeckt but i'm not about to drop $70+ on a game that i may end up hating like i did the first one. I was tempted to torrent it as a demo, but in the end them not releasing a demo has cost them at least 1 sale; potentially all of those "4million" pirates they keep claiming. So until it hits $10-15 in a steam sale its a no go for me. that or release a demo first. These days too many review sites are too biased and are too afraid to give bad reviews to bad games. everything ends up being a 7.5-10

 

And really? Going straight to a physical property analogy? We all know those don't work and simply spark nasty debates where both sides are firmly set in their ideas and nothing will sway them.

 

That being said, downloading something is not the same as stealing. I am not depriving anyone of anything by downloading a game to see if I like it or not. I'm not going to buy a game outright unless I know I'm going to like it and there aren't many games that satisfy that requirement without a demo.

I'm with Waco. The difference between games and other physical property is cost. Once the game is finished, the marginal cost (for non-economists that the cost to produce 1 more copy) is almost $0. Think about it. A case, dvd, manual etc would cost a couple of dollars at most especially with the bulk-buy discounts publishers would get on them. Also as things move towards digital distribution, the cost to sell one copy or 1million copies is virtually identical. all they are doing just copying a masterfile. you compare that to a burger at mcdonalds and they still have to pay for the beef, the bread, the cheese, the cooks wages, etc.

 

There is flaw in the test driving a car analogy. because there are some people who would play the entire game not just "test". so that would be the equivalent of "test driving" the car until you clocked up 100,000+ miles on it or till the engine gives out.

 

That being said i'm not condoning piracy. Years ago I used to get a lot of games pirated from a market, but nowadays i know what impact it has on the industry and i also have a higher disposable income so i can afford to spend money on games.

 

I think if most games had Demo's that would help people get the chance to try it out before buying it.

 

There is to many good titles out there that never have a demo so you are stuck looking at pics or videos.

 

Huh, that's strange because I was at VideoEzy yesterday and they had a whole wall of PC games avaliable. Only in SA? Weird

I havent seen a PC game in videoezy in years. In fact i'm suprised you still have videoezy. i know of several in my area and several blockbusters that closed down ages ago.

 

sorry all for the long post

 

EDIT: also everyone should watch Extra Creditz episode on Piracy

Edited December 16, 2011 by bilcliff

[Locutus]

I'm with Waco. The difference between games and other physical property is cost. Once the game is finished, the marginal cost (for non-economists that the cost to produce 1 more copy) is almost $0. Think about it. A case, dvd, manual etc would cost a couple of dollars at most especially with the bulk-buy discounts publishers would get on them. Also as things move towards digital distribution, the cost to sell one copy or 1million copies is virtually identical. all they are doing just copying a masterfile. you compare that to a burger at mcdonalds and they still have to pay for the beef, the bread, the cheese, the cooks wages, etc.

 

But you aren't calculating in the fact that they had to put in tons of money to develop the game, and then advertise it etc.

 

You didn't hear about Witcher 2 via word of mouth. I'm sure you saw an ad for it online, maybe one on TV, etc. They pay millions of dollars for those ads, just so that they can make their money back on a game that's already cost them millions of dollars.

[Waco]

But you aren't calculating in the fact that they had to put in tons of money to develop the game, and then advertise it etc.

 

You didn't hear about Witcher 2 via word of mouth. I'm sure you saw an ad for it online, maybe one on TV, etc. They pay millions of dollars for those ads, just so that they can make their money back on a game that's already cost them millions of dollars.

This has nothing to do with what he said...

[bilcliff]

But you aren't calculating in the fact that they had to put in tons of money to develop the game, and then advertise it etc.

 

You didn't hear about Witcher 2 via word of mouth. I'm sure you saw an ad for it online, maybe one on TV, etc. They pay millions of dollars for those ads, just so that they can make their money back on a game that's already cost them millions of dollars.

Re-read what i wrote. I'm not talking about the TOTAL cost, I wrote about the MARGINAL cost. Development costs are part of the total cost but not part of the marginal costs. once the game is finished you dont have to pay any more development costs. the only costs they incur once the game is fully finished is the cost to duplicate the case, the disc, the manual, shipping. and yes potentially advertising but how much advertising do you see for a game over a month after release? none unless its called "call of Duty"

 

EDIT: think it another way. The development costs dont change with the total number of units sold. if you sell a million copies and you want to sell another copy it wont cost the publisher more for programmers, artists etc to sell another copy. all it costs them is a case, a disc, a manual or in the case of digital distribution "copy, paste". Yes you still have to recoup the total cost to development but ... im going round in circles here. hopefully you'll get my point now

Edited December 16, 2011 by bilcliff

[Guest_Jim_*]

You want to be careful trying to defend your position by saying the marginal cost is low, because that also means the marginal profit is quite high. So getting a single copy illegally (and I mean for full use, not just a test) actually takes more away from the publisher. It costs $1 (for example) for the production and shipping to a store, and sells for $60, so that's $59 the company loses because of a single pirate. Really to illegally download a game steals more from the company than stealing the hamburger mentioned earlier.

Also, it is not proper to say that advertising doesn't count in the cost of the game because it is part of post-development, just like stamping a disc, and has a direct impact on the number being sold. People are saying we you need demos to know if you want to buy a game, well try deciding to buy a game when you haven't seen a trailer, TV spot, screenshot, or even a professional review. There would be some content made by people who did purchase the game, but not as much as any of us are used to, and there definitely would not be a professional review because why would anyone spend the time reviewing a title no one has heard about. All of this directly influences the sales and I'm sure the marketing teams at publishers know how much advertising sells how many games.

To dismiss the costs of production because it's all from a master copy is also a poor decision because to produce so many copies of one title means you are producing fewer of another, unless additional production lines are purchased and installed, which can obviously be quite expensive. For digital distribution this is less of an issue, but there is still the cost of maintaining servers and stable Internet connection.

Finally, why is total cost not what we're looking at? Is the development cost really unimportant? Not to the people who spent years working on it. Not to the companies that need the sales to justify maintenance of the older title (patches, so yes development costs do continue after release) and the development of future titles.

 

"Lies, damn lies, and statistics," is a saying for a reason. Be careful what you say is unimportant because for every reason you say it is, someone else can give a reason for why it is important. All you can do is hope that other person doesn't bother.

[Waco]

$59 lost if they would have bought it in the first place.

[Guest_Jim_*]

$59 lost if they would have bought it in the first place.

True.