I don't want to read everything that is said in this topic, but here's what I have to say about it:
The reason companies are whining about it, is that they don't respect the costumers. The fact is, people are smart enough to know that they have to support them. No support, no more games. They need money to go on.
And what do big companies like EA? Shows no respect towards the players;include thousands overpriced DLCs;pointless DRM softwares;rushed games;etc.
Fact is, pirating in my eyes, is a mean for the players to speak out. If you want my money, you need to deserve it. You need to make me want to give it to you. If people want your company to die, then they can pirate your game and play what they like, without supporting you.
The industry needs to change its priorities, but in the past years they have been changing them the wrong way. Its a bit like the idea that the makers of GTA think "omg, whats the point of making our games for PC, they get pirated to hell and nobody likes it", yet the "why" is that they delivered a piss poor buggy version with a bunch of crap with it, and blame it on pirating.
Make the people respect you, and you will get money. Plain and simple.
While I agree with you about gaming companies adding ridiculous charges, and I agree that some people pirate stuff to protest these things, I still think the majority of people pirate just because they want free stuff.
For example, I have many friends who i have well over 12k songs on their computers. I don't even believe that they have listened to most of this music, so I find it hard to believe when these people in particular talk about how they would buy stuff if they thought it was worth it.
While I know this doesn't describe everybody who illegally downloads a lot of things, I still think the standard internet pirate is just somebody who believes that they are entitled to stuff without paying.
The reason companies are whining about it, is that they don't respect the costumers. The fact is, people are smart enough to know that they have to support them. No support, no more games. They need money to go on.
And what do big companies like EA? Shows no respect towards the players;include thousands overpriced DLCs;pointless DRM softwares;rushed games;etc.
I don't think EA is intentionally trying to disrespect its customers. I just think they're out of touch with consumers who generally play video games. By being out of touch, I suppose what I mean is they try to maximize their profits by maximizing piracy protection. But they could maximize their profits more by committing themselves more to making quality games. Spore is a good example of this. They promised a lot with this game and what a huge disappointment it was. And there were all these catches to installing it on a computer and having to register a single account with each copy of the game. It's as if they didn't feel your money was enough and you had to do further things with the game for it to really be yours. I know this is just my perception of their efforts cause in their perception they're just trying to prevent people from pirating it. But there is also an opposite effect when they do that kind of stuff with their software that makes people wanna pirate it even more cause they wanna break all the DRM stuff. It's like, the more a company tries to prevent piracy, the more people wanna counter those anti-piracy efforts and get those games out to people for free.
Fact is, pirating in my eyes, is a mean for the players to speak out. If you want my money, you need to deserve it. You need to make me want to give it to you. If people want your company to die, then they can pirate your game and play what they like, without supporting you.
I'm not sure consumers have that much power to say, kill off a company. Or maybe if your average independent studio game was pirated as much as your average EA studio game, they'd be adversely affected, sure. But then again those smaller developers (relative to EA at least) seem to be putting out pretty good products with low piracy incident rates?
Then you got a game like Spore. And people are like, "Spore? That game with all the anti-piracy measures built into it? Well I'll show them by going out of my way to in fact, pirate their fucking game."
The industry needs to change its priorities, but in the past years they have been changing them the wrong way. Its a bit like the idea that the makers of GTA think "omg, whats the point of making our games for PC, they get pirated to hell and nobody likes it", yet the "why" is that they delivered a piss poor buggy version with a bunch of crap with it, and blame it on pirating.
Adapting to the market is a better way to put it. Companies like EA though see adapting as strong anti-piracy measures. I think those are reasonable to a point, but they should try fixing their reputation for games more first and winning the hearts and minds of fans first. Blizzard is a good example of this I think. We care about their games, acknowledge the time and effort put into the game, and want to pay for the game not just because we want to support Blizzard, but we know we'll be playing their games for years to come. I'm still getting my money's worth out of the first two Diablo games to this very day. But Sim City 4? No I gave up on that game forever ago cause there were too many things about it that pissed me off.
While I agree with you about gaming companies adding ridiculous charges, and I agree that some people pirate stuff to protest these things, I still think the majority of people pirate just because they want free stuff.
This kind of depends I think on what you're pirating.
For example, I have many friends who i have well over 12k songs on their computers. I don't even believe that they have listened to most of this music, so I find it hard to believe when these people in particular talk about how they would buy stuff if they thought it was worth it.
Most people when it comes to music are pretty impulsive though. The majority of music listeners I believe are content with what they play on the radio. CD sales though have just been going down the drain for years now. And a new market is emerging to distribute music digitally and they, like any other market are working out the kinks that come with piracy while some distributors are dealing with it fairly well, others are not.
While I know this doesn't describe everybody who illegally downloads a lot of things, I still think the standard internet pirate is just somebody who believes that they are entitled to stuff without paying.
I'm not sure how typical an example I am of a pirate dude. But for example, let's take movies and television shows. My primary reason for downloading them is because I cannot easily afford to buy them. That's not to say I can't afford them. I just can't easily afford them. But nor do I see the purpose of owning them. Because I only want to watch them, not own copies of them. There isn't a reasonable alternative to people who want to watch many shows or movies online and pay a fraction of the price as opposed to owning copies of it. I tried Netflix for awhile, but was unsatisfied with their selection of online movies and shows to watch. And the connection or buffer speed was pretty slow I felt for the service I was supposed to be getting for it. I'm not trying to make excuses, honestly. I'm just saying my patience gets exhausted pretty quickly when trying to find the cheaper alternative to paying full price for a physical or even sometimes digital copy of media.
The last movie I "acquired" was District 9. Now this movie seemed pretty interesting to me. But by the time I wanted to watch it it was no longer in theaters. I didn't have a Netflix account, and I kid you not, almost every video store in my area is going out of business. I also will not, out of principle, stand like an idiot in front of those redbox vending machines. I wish people could see how stupid they looked when they gawk at that machine. So I didn't have a lot of options to really watch it. And downloading it ironically was quicker than going where I know the next video store actually is.
Part of my problem is I have pretty particular tastes in media. And not a lot of people are really making things that I want to pay for. I love science fiction for example, but when Star Trek came out, I did go pay to see that movie.
Its not that people think theyre entitled to everything for free. Maybe 13 year olds think that way. Its the sense of security that you can delete it if you dont like it and you wont have spent your money on crap.
I guess the people I am speaking of are still still in high school/early college and they are pretty much douches who think they are entitled to everything. So what I think of as "the standard pirate" could be way off in other areas.
The last movie I "acquired" was District 9. Now this movie seemed pretty interesting to me. But by the time I wanted to watch it it was no longer in theaters. I didn't have a Netflix account, and I kid you not, almost every video store in my area is going out of business. I also will not, out of principle, stand like an idiot in front of those redbox vending machines. I wish people could see how stupid they looked when they gawk at that machine. So I didn't have a lot of options to really watch it. And downloading it ironically was quicker than going where I know the next video store actually is. Part of my problem is I have pretty particular tastes in media. And not a lot of people are really making things that I want to pay for. I love science fiction for example, but when Star Trek came out, I did go pay to see that movie.
That makes sense. Movie stores are getting hard to find, and if Netflix doesn't have the movies you are interested in can be hard to find.
I also have a particular taste in movies (at least I am picky about the ones that I would actually buy)and I really like old pc games. Sometimes it is just impossible (or way to difficult) to find something you want the legal way, and there really aren't a whole lot of other options.
I also will not, out of principle, stand like an idiot in front of those redbox vending machines. I wish people could see how stupid they looked when they gawk at that machine.
Do you have sociaphobia or something? What the hell is wrong with you boy?
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Diablo hates Jay Wilson.
Diablo thanks God for creating obesity and ugliness.
I doubt I could ever make another person understand why I hate seeing people stare at those red box things while they decide what fucking movie to watch for the night.
I doubt I could ever make another person understand why I hate seeing people stare at those red box things while they decide what fucking movie to watch for the night.
Beats renting a movie from those cheap ass movie rental spots...
Redboxes at least have decent prices.
I never pirate movies, unless I can't find them.
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Will be changed at some point, I'm too lazy right now.
The reason companies are whining about it, is that they don't respect the costumers. The fact is, people are smart enough to know that they have to support them. No support, no more games. They need money to go on.
To some extent, but I'd also say it's because of differing views of the world. The companies, in this case software developers, production studios etc. all view piracy as stealing. Thus suing those who pirate a product, or installing measurements against piracy cannot actually be viewed as doing anything to the customers. In the case of Spore this of course spilled over onto those who payed for the product, and it's a tendency that's become more common as of late. But given their standpoint and business model, they of course do not see pirates as their customers.
Make the people respect you, and you will get money. Plain and simple.
I'd say that's true, but not in the moneraty amounts necessary. You need to actually sell something, not hope that people will pay because they feel it's worth it sometimes.
While I agree with you about gaming companies adding ridiculous charges, and I agree that some people pirate stuff to protest these things, I still think the majority of people pirate just because they want free stuff.
For example, I have many friends who i have well over 12k songs on their computers. I don't even believe that they have listened to most of this music, so I find it hard to believe when these people in particular talk about how they would buy stuff if they thought it was worth it.
They would. But I can guarantee you they do not consider all of those 12k songs worth the 1 dollar or whatever they would cost.
And the fact remains that songs they have are in fact worht 0 dollars. So it's no surprise that they don't buy them.
I guess the people I am speaking of are still still in high school/early college and they are pretty much douches who think they are entitled to everything. So what I think of as "the standard pirate" could be way off in other areas.
To a large extent that's also an issue of knowledge. I know people's who's parents ask them to pirate for them, because they just don't know how to do it. As time progresses, we will starts to see more people from all age groups download, simply because the people who don't know how to do it and are to old to bother learning will die.
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Yeah most people simply aren't willing to go through the hassle of pirating a thing. If lots of people are pirating a movie or game, it's because that thing is really successful and making a lot of money already. Like, if I found a torrent for say, Star Trek, I would find the torrent very easily because of how hugely successful it is. And for every person downloading it for free, there are tons more actually buying the dvd.
It's like for each product, there will be a certain percentage of people who will pirate it. And that number usually goes up synchronously as do sales of that product.
As for me pirating music on the other hand, well I'm not sure anyone deserves to live off of making music. Artists are sentenced to be poor unless they are really lucky. That's why most struggling artists need to give up on their dreams and go work in factories. OR...they'll be so amazingly good at their music making that inevitably they're going to make plenty of money one way or the other.
Are you serious? I know plenty of people who play a lot of music, have their own album, but it's all just a side-project in their life, if I may call it that. Then you have people who play, and just get famous, some deserving (Metallica), some not (Bieber). Most musicians are incredibly talented people who deserve the attention that they get. If you're any good, you're gonna be known one way or the other. If you're shit, no matter what you do, you won't be recognized, at least not in the eyes of the musically competent (like, if you think Eminem and Lil'Wayne revolutionized music, you should get dead, and you are not musically competent). I hope that made sense.
Anyway, I don't buy pirated things to speak out, to voice my opinion, or anything. I just really don't have the cash to get the original. I'd only really buy original music CDs, and that's because musicians deserve it, and the CD isn't expensive at all. I download music because Metal is not sold in Lebanon. Shit like Risk by Megadeth is, yet I have no clue why they don't sell, say, Rust in Peace, or any of the good shit. Think of it this way. If there wasn't a pirated version, I STILL wouldn't get the original copy. IF I had enough cash to dish out 40-50-60-70$/game, trust me, I would (in certain cases), but I seriously don't. Income in Lebanon is way lower than income in the States, or Europe, for example. If I want to work as a clinical lab scientist in Lebanon, I wouldn't get payed more than 800$, compares to the 4000$-6500$ range that I'd get in America. See what I mean? I wouldn't spend about 10% of my salary on ONE video game, you know? I would save up and buy a game that I REAAAAAAAAAALLY want, like Diablo 3, which will be the very first original game that I buy, because it's a game that I really love and a game that I want to play with my friends, and my online friends. I really don't see any other game that I see as deserving of the 40-70$. Like, I won't buy a game for that much, simply because I'll only be playing it for 1 month, 2 months, a year tops. D3 on the other hand, is a game that I can see myself still playing 6 years from now (I still play D2 for fuck's sake), and in my opinion, the games coming out now just don't have the metal or the content or the whatever to last me that long, and therefore doesn't deserve my money. As for pirated movies, they cost 2$ here. Hell, if you know the guy, he'd give you a ridiculous discount. I once bought 22 DVDs for a bit less than 35$. Same as with the video games situation, I just don't have enough cash to buy all the series/movies that I want. Forget that, I can still rent the movie for 2$ (which is a legit way), but I get to keep the DVD forever for the same amount of cash, so it's a better deal. I don't download stuff because it costs less to actually buy them. I have a 4G download limit, and downloading a movie butchers most of it. (lol@how I went 12G over my 4G limit last month because I went crazy with downloading porn, and I had to give my mom 100$ to pay for the extra charges, and told her that I was downloading books and videos for my classes). So yeah, you get my point. Put in simple terms, if I'm willing to legitimately buy game X if there weren't a pirated version of it, I'd buy it legitimately even if there were a pirated version of it.
The reason companies are whining about it, is that they don't respect the costumers. The fact is, people are smart enough to know that they have to support them. No support, no more games. They need money to go on.
To some extent, but I'd also say it's because of differing views of the world. The companies, in this case software developers, production studios etc. all view piracy as stealing. Thus suing those who pirate a product, or installing measurements against piracy cannot actually be viewed as doing anything to the customers. In the case of Spore this of course spilled over onto those who payed for the product, and it's a tendency that's become more common as of late. But given their standpoint and business model, they of course do not see pirates as their customers.
Actually, as of late, it's not exactly the case. The way games are bound to accounts, limited installations possible (and the Terms of Use changes in many games) show that they try to make it so that people that buy the game can't resell it. Since used games that change hands in the market make their sales less. It makes sense in a sad way too.
The reason companies are whining about it, is that they don't respect the costumers. The fact is, people are smart enough to know that they have to support them. No support, no more games. They need money to go on.
And what do big companies like EA? Shows no respect towards the players;include thousands overpriced DLCs;pointless DRM softwares;rushed games;etc.
Fact is, pirating in my eyes, is a mean for the players to speak out. If you want my money, you need to deserve it. You need to make me want to give it to you. If people want your company to die, then they can pirate your game and play what they like, without supporting you.
The industry needs to change its priorities, but in the past years they have been changing them the wrong way. Its a bit like the idea that the makers of GTA think "omg, whats the point of making our games for PC, they get pirated to hell and nobody likes it", yet the "why" is that they delivered a piss poor buggy version with a bunch of crap with it, and blame it on pirating.
Make the people respect you, and you will get money. Plain and simple.
For example, I have many friends who i have well over 12k songs on their computers. I don't even believe that they have listened to most of this music, so I find it hard to believe when these people in particular talk about how they would buy stuff if they thought it was worth it.
While I know this doesn't describe everybody who illegally downloads a lot of things, I still think the standard internet pirate is just somebody who believes that they are entitled to stuff without paying.
I'm not sure consumers have that much power to say, kill off a company. Or maybe if your average independent studio game was pirated as much as your average EA studio game, they'd be adversely affected, sure. But then again those smaller developers (relative to EA at least) seem to be putting out pretty good products with low piracy incident rates?
Then you got a game like Spore. And people are like, "Spore? That game with all the anti-piracy measures built into it? Well I'll show them by going out of my way to in fact, pirate their fucking game."
Adapting to the market is a better way to put it. Companies like EA though see adapting as strong anti-piracy measures. I think those are reasonable to a point, but they should try fixing their reputation for games more first and winning the hearts and minds of fans first. Blizzard is a good example of this I think. We care about their games, acknowledge the time and effort put into the game, and want to pay for the game not just because we want to support Blizzard, but we know we'll be playing their games for years to come. I'm still getting my money's worth out of the first two Diablo games to this very day. But Sim City 4? No I gave up on that game forever ago cause there were too many things about it that pissed me off.
More or less. I mean, it's never quite that simple, but yeah more or less.
This kind of depends I think on what you're pirating.
Most people when it comes to music are pretty impulsive though. The majority of music listeners I believe are content with what they play on the radio. CD sales though have just been going down the drain for years now. And a new market is emerging to distribute music digitally and they, like any other market are working out the kinks that come with piracy while some distributors are dealing with it fairly well, others are not.
I'm not sure how typical an example I am of a pirate dude. But for example, let's take movies and television shows. My primary reason for downloading them is because I cannot easily afford to buy them. That's not to say I can't afford them. I just can't easily afford them. But nor do I see the purpose of owning them. Because I only want to watch them, not own copies of them. There isn't a reasonable alternative to people who want to watch many shows or movies online and pay a fraction of the price as opposed to owning copies of it. I tried Netflix for awhile, but was unsatisfied with their selection of online movies and shows to watch. And the connection or buffer speed was pretty slow I felt for the service I was supposed to be getting for it. I'm not trying to make excuses, honestly. I'm just saying my patience gets exhausted pretty quickly when trying to find the cheaper alternative to paying full price for a physical or even sometimes digital copy of media.
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
Part of my problem is I have pretty particular tastes in media. And not a lot of people are really making things that I want to pay for. I love science fiction for example, but when Star Trek came out, I did go pay to see that movie.
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
That makes sense. Movie stores are getting hard to find, and if Netflix doesn't have the movies you are interested in can be hard to find.
I also have a particular taste in movies (at least I am picky about the ones that I would actually buy)and I really like old pc games. Sometimes it is just impossible (or way to difficult) to find something you want the legal way, and there really aren't a whole lot of other options.
Do you have sociaphobia or something? What the hell is wrong with you boy?
Diablo thanks God for creating obesity and ugliness.
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
Redboxes at least have decent prices.
I never pirate movies, unless I can't find them.
I'd say that's true, but not in the moneraty amounts necessary. You need to actually sell something, not hope that people will pay because they feel it's worth it sometimes.
Of course. Who doesn't want free stuff?
They would. But I can guarantee you they do not consider all of those 12k songs worth the 1 dollar or whatever they would cost.
And the fact remains that songs they have are in fact worht 0 dollars. So it's no surprise that they don't buy them.
To a large extent that's also an issue of knowledge. I know people's who's parents ask them to pirate for them, because they just don't know how to do it. As time progresses, we will starts to see more people from all age groups download, simply because the people who don't know how to do it and are to old to bother learning will die.
I just thought this was a little funny.
If i had money, i would support what i feel deserves my support.
Are you serious? I know plenty of people who play a lot of music, have their own album, but it's all just a side-project in their life, if I may call it that. Then you have people who play, and just get famous, some deserving (Metallica), some not (Bieber). Most musicians are incredibly talented people who deserve the attention that they get. If you're any good, you're gonna be known one way or the other. If you're shit, no matter what you do, you won't be recognized, at least not in the eyes of the musically competent (like, if you think Eminem and Lil'Wayne revolutionized music, you should get dead, and you are not musically competent). I hope that made sense.
Anyway, I don't buy pirated things to speak out, to voice my opinion, or anything. I just really don't have the cash to get the original. I'd only really buy original music CDs, and that's because musicians deserve it, and the CD isn't expensive at all. I download music because Metal is not sold in Lebanon. Shit like Risk by Megadeth is, yet I have no clue why they don't sell, say, Rust in Peace, or any of the good shit. Think of it this way. If there wasn't a pirated version, I STILL wouldn't get the original copy. IF I had enough cash to dish out 40-50-60-70$/game, trust me, I would (in certain cases), but I seriously don't. Income in Lebanon is way lower than income in the States, or Europe, for example. If I want to work as a clinical lab scientist in Lebanon, I wouldn't get payed more than 800$, compares to the 4000$-6500$ range that I'd get in America. See what I mean? I wouldn't spend about 10% of my salary on ONE video game, you know? I would save up and buy a game that I REAAAAAAAAAALLY want, like Diablo 3, which will be the very first original game that I buy, because it's a game that I really love and a game that I want to play with my friends, and my online friends. I really don't see any other game that I see as deserving of the 40-70$. Like, I won't buy a game for that much, simply because I'll only be playing it for 1 month, 2 months, a year tops. D3 on the other hand, is a game that I can see myself still playing 6 years from now (I still play D2 for fuck's sake), and in my opinion, the games coming out now just don't have the metal or the content or the whatever to last me that long, and therefore doesn't deserve my money. As for pirated movies, they cost 2$ here. Hell, if you know the guy, he'd give you a ridiculous discount. I once bought 22 DVDs for a bit less than 35$. Same as with the video games situation, I just don't have enough cash to buy all the series/movies that I want. Forget that, I can still rent the movie for 2$ (which is a legit way), but I get to keep the DVD forever for the same amount of cash, so it's a better deal. I don't download stuff because it costs less to actually buy them. I have a 4G download limit, and downloading a movie butchers most of it. (lol@how I went 12G over my 4G limit last month because I went crazy with downloading porn, and I had to give my mom 100$ to pay for the extra charges, and told her that I was downloading books and videos for my classes). So yeah, you get my point. Put in simple terms, if I'm willing to legitimately buy game X if there weren't a pirated version of it, I'd buy it legitimately even if there were a pirated version of it.
Rise and rise again, until lambs become lions
Actually, as of late, it's not exactly the case. The way games are bound to accounts, limited installations possible (and the Terms of Use changes in many games) show that they try to make it so that people that buy the game can't resell it. Since used games that change hands in the market make their sales less. It makes sense in a sad way too.