This is why game makers want a slice of the console markets

Nerevarine said:

There must be some guilt involved however; otherwise pirates wouldn't be spending so much time and effort in making theft seem completely justified and "not wrong" through the usage of complicated, winding arguments that ultimately carry little truth or logic.

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Right. Silencing the inner sense of justice.

Drug Barons would be fast in eleminating (literally ) those people who still have a sense of justice in them. Because they disturb. Everything.

Interestingly, the more sensitive a person is - and this is my personal experience - the higher the sense of justice is. Wich is probably an explanation why brutals are rather found within the lins of Drug Barons, the Mafia, Hooligans etc. .

If I was a Drug Baron, I'd kill those first who have a sense of justice inside, because they'd be ble to drag me before court.

And with the rest I'd arrange myself using bakshish.

And that's how Mafia works : They create a "Wall Of Silence" either through simple corruption ("... and you'll get a piece of the cake, too !") or by distributing the feeling of fear, like fanatics do (Afghanistan, Iraq, Nazis).

And since those with a sense of justice inside are - as a tendency - so much more sensitive than the rest, it's easier to suppress them.

Couchpotato said:

You wish people would think the opposite but its not going to happen is it. See how that works. Its a digital code with no physical item being stolen. You can say what you want but the prehistoric thinking on file sharing needs to change.

I'm not here to debate if its right or wrong just the context people think it is. That is the problem.

Also please don't get me started on inflated loss numbers. When most people who pirate don't give a damn and were never going to buy the product anyway. Now go ahead and counter I know you want to.

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Ah yes, tired old excuse number 2.

Let's look at the top 3 shall we: Crysis 2, Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3. 3 games that require a pretty powerful PC to run. So here we have a bunch of people who don't mind spending quite a bit on a PC (especially the graphics card which in the mid and high end range has no other purpose than gaming) but clearly they would never pay for a game. Bullocks.They don't pay because they can pirate. Take away that option (either by force or by educating these simpletons in economics) and you can be certain that they'll start paying.

This doesn't mean that every pirated game translates as a lost sale but the total number of units sold would increase drastically.

So is it time for tired old excuse number 3 now?
("The games are too expensive. If only they cost less I wouldn't mind paying for them")

GothicGothicness said:

35 000 ? and you are wondering what I'm talking about?

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Yes. Maybe I should have included the next paragraph

"The digital sales of The Witcher 2 have exceeded our expectations," CD Projekt boss Marcin Iwiński said.

"We are even more pleased that our own platform GOG.com had such a great share in the Witcher's success. The performance of GOG.com in selling new titles is not completely surprising, as we have said for years that DRM isn't necessary.

"It is gratifying to see that the only platform that offered The Witcher 2 DRM-free from launch has performed so well. We're confident that many gamers who haven't had a chance to purchase The Witcher 2 just yet will take advantage of holiday specials and continue to expand our fanbase."

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Here's an interview with Marcin Iwinski on DRM and GOG, among other things, if you don't believe Eurogamer.

There are more if you don't believe those two. Just do a google search on the topic. Just about everywhere you go it will say how it was a smashing success. Of course it's not going to outdo Steam, but blowing away all of the other online digital distribution sites combined is nothing to scoff at and the fact they did it without DRM just adds icing on the cake.

fatBastard() said:

So is it time for tired old excuse number 3 now?
("The games are too expensive. If only they cost less I wouldn't mind paying for them")

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Nope sorry doesn't cut it. A pirated copy is a copy that was never going to make you money in the first place. Hence you lost nothing. Try harder pleases no one said anything about not having money.

I'm sorry but I'm tired of the reasoning both sides keep using to justify there reasons. Its extreme on both sides.

I can keep going if you want I already said this discussion goes around in a circle with no one agreeing or winning. Pleases go on I'm feeling playful and vindictive this week. The usual discussions are boring me.

Couchpotato said:

Nope sorry doesn't cut it. A pirated copy is a copy that was never going to make you money in the first place. Hence you lost nothing. Try harder pleases no one said anything about not having money.

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That's nonsense and you know it.

The hard core "inner circle" of pirates are basically unreachable by any means. You can give away free computers, free games, a handful of cash if they would only go to the store to get their games and they would still pirate just on principle. However, this group of degenerates aren't even included in the original posters list since they use other channels to get their fix.

The majority of the 3.5 million parasites who pirated Battlefield 3 are simply doing it because it is free, easy and the chances of getting caught are extremely small. Change either of the last 2 (either by making it more difficult/bothersome or increase the chances of getting caught) and a large portion of the freeloaders will start paying. I have no idea if 10, 20 or even 75 percent of the 3.5 million pirated versions would be turned into legitimate sales but the effect WILL be there.

But you're right. There really is no point in debating it. As long as the pirates (and their supporters … yes, you are indeed acting as their spokesperson right now CP) keep hiding behind the 3 cardinal excuses mentioned earlier then no progress can be made.

Off with their heads I say

fatBastard() said:

That's nonsense and you know it.

The hard core "inner circle" of pirates are basically unreachable by any means. You can give away free computers, free games, a handful of cash if they would only go to the store to get their games and they would still pirate just on principle. However, this group of degenerates aren't even included in the original posters list since they use other channels to get their fix.

The majority of the 3.5 million parasites who pirated Battlefield 3 are simply doing it because it is free, easy and the chances of getting caught are extremely small. Change either of the last 2 (either by making it more difficult/bothersome or increase the chances of getting caught) and a large portion of the freeloaders will start paying. I have no idea if 10, 20 or even 75 percent of the 3.5 million pirated versions would be turned into legitimate sales but the effect WILL be there.

But you're right. There really is no point in debating it. As long as the pirates (and their supporters … yes, you are indeed acting as their spokesperson right now CP) keep hiding behind the 3 cardinal excuses mentioned earlier then no progress can be made.

Off with their heads I say

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Why thank you I try since most on this site are die hard pirate haters with there holier than thou attitudes. Besides as I said I'm feeling playful this week. I also love playing devils advocate with a side of sarcasm.

Lar is proposing a different business model to prevent pirating : http://www.lar.net/?p=99

skavenhorde said:

Yes. Maybe I should have included the next paragraph



Here's an interview with Marcin Iwinski on DRM and GOG, among other things, if you don't believe Eurogamer.

There are more if you don't believe those two. Just do a google search on the topic. Just about everywhere you go it will say how it was a smashing success. Of course it's not going to outdo Steam, but blowing away all of the other online digital distribution sites combined is nothing to scoff at and the fact they did it without DRM just adds icing on the cake.

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I do believe them. But they offer exactly what people want a DRM free game released at the same time in all time zones and without unfair prices due to currencies and 35 000 is over their expectations?

I mean that's just so so so sad.

It's hardly surprising though. This is a world where many people believe steam is the only place to buy download copies- literally the only place- where people sincerely believe that steam isn't drm (because that's bad, and steam is good, ergo...) and where people will refuse a better deal because they will only buy on steam. Beating out everyone else by a factor of three+ with your very niche service with pretty much no main stream exposure- sure, we knew about them but we are most definitively not the norm- is pretty good.

If they really wanted to push GOG then they should have given away GoG keys with retail.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Lar is proposing a different business model to prevent pirating : http://www.lar.net/?p=99

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That would be a great way to ensure that every game start out great, the developer will sit down and calculate exactly how many hours they need to get the player to spend on the game to reach the limit.

If streaming works, this idea would work, but I'd say drop the "up until a certain limit" just keep it a pay per hour model.

Either way if streaming works... we wouldn't have a piracy problem, so the debate is a bit pointless.

I know we quote Newell a lot when the topic of game piracy comes up, but his comments are always relevant. He is a man who gets it. He has learned that the battle with piracy cannot be won through the use of DRM, region restrictions or any other restriction that you can throw at the customer.

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WTF?!? Are we talking about Gabe Newell of Valve Corp. or some other mystical Mr. Newell? It can not possibly be Gabe Newell because I'm not sure what Mr. Gabe Newell of Valve Corp. is "getting" when European (and especially German) gamers like myself have to deal with more restrictions than we have German road signs (and we have metric fucktons of road signs if anyone was wondering).

Aside from the fact that Steam is DRM, has built-in DRM and allows publishers to pile their own DRM on top of Steam's DRM, this is the wonderful restriction-free world of Mr. Newell:

- Notice: This version only contains the German language
- Notice: Low Violence Version
- Notice: The game is currently not available for purchase
- Notice: The game is currently not available in your region

Honestly. The quote posted above must be from a Valve/Gabe fanboi who is completely out of touch with reality. Pathetic...

Copying is not stealing? Come on, man. I'm a programmer by trade. If I made a game, sold it for $5 to one person who made it available via bit torrent, and it was downloaded and played by 100,000 people…I would only have $5 to show for it. Where's my motivation to make another one?

Regardless of your arguments, piracy is hurting PC gamers. Even if there is not a problem, as Couchpotato suggests, publishers believe there is one. Thus we are subjected to ridiculous DRM, or losing games completely off our platform.

GothicGothicness said:

Either way if streaming works… we wouldn't have a piracy problem, so the debate is a bit pointless.

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What do you mean, if streaming works? Streaming already does work. Well, technically, at least.

Streaming games works well for us who live in or around major cities in countries that can afford to have a good broad band net.

I wonder how many of the pirates are younger than 18. Many parents will buy their kids a computer, but let the kids buy the games for their own (allowance) money, so in that case it is entirely possible that a 50€ game will be outside of their price range, even though they have access to a powerful computer.

Also, I have to admit that I was really close to pirate a certain Drakensang: River of time last year, because I really wanted to play it, but the publisher apparently did not want me to buy it. It would just have been so much more convenient to pirate the game rather than to put in all the work that I did in order to find a place that would ship the game to me.

Nerevarine said:

There must be some guilt involved however; otherwise pirates wouldn't be spending so much time and effort in making theft seem completely justified and "not wrong" through the usage of complicated, winding arguments that ultimately carry little truth or logic.

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I've read a ton of arguments in favor of piracy - in fact I've probably read every single argument there is on the subject.

Have yet to find a single argument in favor of piracy that doesn't collapse under the weight of the counter-argument that stealing is wrong, not to mention illegal.

Put the shoe on the other foot - there isn't a software pirate out there who wouldn't howl with a megaphone from the tallest tower in a public square if something they worked for years on which had commercial value was stolen from them.

I agree with what you say. Our world is currently embroiled in a battle to distinguish right from wrong - fallout from the 80s inspired 'moral relativism' which preaches that there is no right or wrong, only opinion.

But do something evil or illegal to a believer of moral relativism and suddenly they are quite capable of distinguishing the difference.

GothicGothicness said:

I do believe them. But they offer exactly what people want a DRM free game released at the same time in all time zones and without unfair prices due to currencies and 35 000 is over their expectations?

I mean that's just so so so sad.

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You see failure, I see room for improvement. You see "Teh PiRATS are laughing", I see many happy customers who bought through GoG and didn't have to deal with any DRM or Streaming bullshit. In other words we see what we want to see and for once the people in the business have lined up with my perception.

You're concentrating on 35k when you should be thinking about how GoG, an untapped resource for modern games, managed to outsell everyone except for Steam. That right there is the triumph and what they are so happy about. This was their first modern game they sold. Who knows what the next one will do.

skavenhorde said:

You're concentrating on 35k when you should be thinking about how GoG, an untapped resource for modern games, managed to outsell everyone except for Steam.

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I'm a big fan of GoG. I really love the click and go ability with games. No DRM. No need for a CD in the drive. It's liberating. But I don't think you can compare GoG to Steam (and I don't like Steam so if I had a biased preference for one company or another, it would be GoG) with only 1 exception that I know of (Witcher 2), GoG sells games that are many years old. If GoG starts selling DRM free versions of brand new titles as they come out (like they did with Witcher 2) as a normal part of their business, then your argument may have more clout, depending on the outcome.

skavenhorde said:

They outdid the pirates in convenience and found out that people were willing to pay. SHOCKER……You stop being a dick and make it easier for people to get your product and they'll come.

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This argument is a derivative of the 'better marketing will 'fix' piracy' which I don't believe is true. Acquiring digital media without paying for it, unless the publisher gives it away for free, is theft. Theft is a personal choice. I do agree that some people will pay for digital media if buying it is made easier (iTunes is proof), but it doesn't solve the problem entirely and there are still millions of people out there stealing MP3s (as evidenced by the thousands of torrent sites out there)

Irradicating piracy through marketing is much like government trying to fix social problems through policy. It doesn't work. Because theft is a personal choice, truly 'fixing' piracy comes down to people being raised with positive values by parents, teachers, coaches, and other anti-MTV role models. Unfortunatley the current world culture is at an all time low for positive role models and poor behavior is on the rise, not in decline.

TheMadGamer said:

Irradicating piracy through marketing is much like government trying to fix social problems through policy. It doesn't work. Because theft is a personal choice, truly 'fixing' piracy comes down to people being raised with positive values by parents, teachers, coaches, and other anti-MTV role models. Unfortunatley the current world culture is at an all time low for positive role models and poor behavior is on the rise, not in decline.

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Well said. Governments pump millions into poorer areas, housing, hospitals only for them to be vandelised/mis-managed again without thought of better educating children in schools and media (which are mainly intended for time wasting 'fun') and parents of their responsibility to raise their children properly.

SpoonFULL said:

without thought of better educating children in schools and media (which are mainly intended for time wasting 'fun') and parents of their responsibility to raise their children properly.

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Which is currently crystallizing as one source of problems here, there and everywhere.

Education is so important that I'm baffled that politicians just don't see it.

Even worse, German school education was made so - by politicians, of course - that it meets the demand of the economy for "pret-a-porter-workers", to put it cynically, or in other words, for "ready-to-use-workers". The politicians axed one complete year of school educatioon because they thought that "ever other country's youth's are much earlier ready for work than ours !" Now the universities have to stomach 2 generations of students : A regular one and a shortened one - and both at the same time !

The German ediucation system is even now overloaded by this. And in an interview a week ago a teacher says : "The missing year is really missing in their ripening process !"

German school education has grown into pleasing the economy which has nudged and demanded "ready-to-use-workers" of young ages so often that they finally got them.


And no-one is thinking of the youths themselves. They are lamenting right now that having to push and pull themselves through these short years of school education with still the same amount of learning stuff ( ! ) leaves them no more time for a private life ! And students with the relatively new Bachelor system, too !

The tendency is clear : Less and less private life; more and more devoting one's life for corporate work - and, essentially, into the profits of those who earn the profits from big, huge companies with lots of power on the politicians.

And some of the youths begin to rebel. They want to have their lives back. They do not want to give them for free to the corporates anymore.

Moriendor said:

- Notice: This version only contains the German language
- Notice: Low Violence Version
- Notice: The game is currently not available for purchase
- Notice: The game is currently not available in your region

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Don't forget the € = $ = £ BS.


I actually tried out Steam recently. They had a deal going for their "King's Bounty Platinum pack", which includes The Legend (English and Russian), Armored Princess (English) and the Crossworlds (English) expansion. The currency was converted more or less decently — that is, the price in Euro was at least less than the price in Dollars. I do like the ease of use and other stuff that the Steam platform brings (ignoring Steam-only games).

But browsing through their catalog and comparing prices, the King's Bounty package seemed to be an exception and while I was considering to buy other games as well I got irritated at first about the € = $ thing, then angry and finally indifferent, which means Steam is now dead for me until further notice. Too bad.

GOG does look like a much better alternative. Yes, I'm not on there yet, no time to game, not even good old games.