Again, I appreciate that delayed international publishing is a pain in the ass - however, I think this is an overreaction. My own company will soon be introducing a new product that has some anticipation from our customers. We have delayed the introduction for a variety of internal business reasons, including our current inventory holding, cashflow projections and marketing considerations. At what point do we owe people an explanation that is based on our internal operations? I'm not saying this is Atari's reason - I don't know. But let's say it's as simple as Atari needs to run on strict inventory control (because of their financial situation) and they delayed the purchase until their open-to-buy reaches an appropriate level. Are they obliged to tell Joe Public "Sorry, we're broke so that has been delayed. Our inventory budget is $36Mm which normally equates to five stock turns per year but Dragonball Z flopped and we are currently 13.2% below our expectations"?
As I said, I'm not arguing about waratah's reasons not to buy the game. I'm just arguing from the point that he's not going to buy it, illegal download or no illegal download.
So, you are appalled this company uses child labour but you simply can't live without their product (everyone is talking about, after all)? You don't see the twisted logic in that? And what's more - not only are you still going to use the product produced with child labour but you aren't even going to pay the slaves.
By paying the slaves you have to pay the company that "hires" them, and so by paying the slaves you say that child labour is ok (and I might be jumping to conclusions, but I don't think you do).
Now, just because you don't think child labour is ok doesn't mean you dislike the product in itself. As an example: pick your favorite article of clothing. If you didn't make sure that it was "justice labeled" (as in no pollution used in the makeing of the article of clothing etc) then child labour was prolly used in the makeing of that article of clothing. Does that mean you throughout hate that article of clothing? Since it's your favorite article of clothing, I'm pretty sure you don't.
Now, you have a choice (or you had a choice when you were standing in the store with the article of clothing in your hands and were considering buying it): you can either choose to buy the article of clothing (and support child labour) or you can choose not to buy the article of clothing. If you had been confronted with this fact (most pepole don't think about the fact that most "mainstream" clothes today were "built" (can't think of the right word for the moment
) useing child labour, dangerous chemicals that pollutes the groundwater etc. They just look at the clothing and the price) that child labour was most likely used in the creation of that article of clothing (I should just have said it was a jacket
), would you have bought it? I wouldn't have bought it. My parents wouldn't have bought it. I don't think any of my friends would have bought it. In short, I'm pretty sure that article of clothing wouldn't sell very well if everyone knew child labour had been used to "build it".
This doesn't mean the article of clothing in itself is worse than other examples of that kind of articles of clothing (why didn't I say it was a jacket, why?
). It's probablly warmer/cooler/better looking/more comfortable etc than other clothes. So, if it weren't for the fact that child labour (and other things) were probablly used in the creation of the article of clothing, you'd buy it.
Now, since you're not going to buy it, if you could find a copy of it that didn't use child labour (or toxic dumping etc), then you would buy it, wouldn't you? Especially if you found it for free...
(With clothes it's gets a more complicated, because if you oppose child labour etc you should probably support the "justice" clothing movement (the companies that works non-profit to bring the pepole an alternative to clothes that uses child labour etc) by buying their products. And not only that, you should probablly wear these products in public to show pepole that you don't
have to buy non-justice clothes. This can probablly apply to games too (you should probablly buy some other game than the Witcher, one that's not published by Atari), but as long as we're merely talking about one game my argument stands strong...)
There is no decision to make when the choice is to simply copy it from the 'net for free (hell, why do any of us buy software ever?).
You know the answer, I know the answer. Besides, I've allready replied.
Let's imagine a world where piracy didn't exist. Now he has to decide whether to buy it or go without (instead of buy it, versus get it for free anyway). Will he still go without? Maybe now he will buy it, because there is no other way. In other words, you can't judge how many pirates would or wouldn't have bought it, because the alternative is simply getting it for free without leaving your desk. Not a difficult choice for many people.
And this is the prime example of where piracing is not only wrong, but allso stupid (since it backfires due to smaller budgets for the companies). I'm not arguing about this, because we agree that simply getting it for free instead of buying it is wrong.
My point of arguing is that if you wouldn't buy it in a hypothetical world without pirating, then there's nothing wrong with you downloading it, because the devs (or publishers etc) doesn't lose any sales on it.
And I know a lot of pepole claim to be category B pepole (I wouldn't have bought it anyway) while being category A pepole (a free game! Yay!), and I don't approve to that either, because that's hypocrisy (and I HATE hypocrisy). But that doesn't mean category B pepole doesn't exist (I claim to be one of them, for example).
You are painting a simplistic picture (which may be correct - we don't know). Why did CD Projekt choose Atari? A company everyone knows is broke? Is it possible noone else was interested? We can't separate Atari-who-delay-games from Atari-who's-money-made-it-possible.
A lot of gamers hate JoWood for their approach to Gothic but it must be remembered that their investment made the series possible.
Let's say you successfully destroy Atari. Do EA bring out more RPGs you like? No? How about Ubisoft? Not really? It's not so simple.
I don't know, and therefore I'm not speculateing in it. I'm not even arguing about why waratah boycotts Atari (I do, however, think he has a point in his dislike for Atari), I'm just accepting that he does and arguing from that point of view.
Übereil