Feedback on "Goldhawk Interactive & Piracy"

[Gorlom]

Silichna: Your scheme to deprive EA of money seems (to me) likely that they will try even more to acquire small successful studios to make new money on. If what they got isn't making money they will look for new sources to get it.
I don't think pirating has the effects that pirates think it will or expect it to have. It's not a social commentary... in the eyes of big companies its theft plain and simple. They won't be looking at the reasons behind it. They expect it to be that you want the game but are too cheap of an evil bastard to pay for it. You need to prove them wrong in that case.

If you want to comment on how evil they are, do it without personal gain. Do it without a shroud of digital anonymity. Do it someplace it really matters. Do it without appearing (to the other side of the discussion) to be as evil as you claim them to be.

[TheUbiquitous]

My 2 pence is that EA can go fuck themselves, I've a lot of time for indie developers and I would never pirate an indie game, I've supported 6 this year alone (God Bless Kickstarter). But EA especially, can go and fuck right off. I'm never paying for one of their games ever again and at every opportunity I will pirate their games and generally try to subvert their company in any way possible. I think they're evil, and they represent everything bad that has happened in gaming in the past 15 years and their driving to make it worse. I'd invite you all to do the same and not only BOYCOT all EA purchases but also pirate as many of their games as you can and hopefully they'll stop with their relentless acquisition of smaller games studios that have become successful then serially diluting the games for the masses to the point where the game you knew and loved is gone and what's left is the title on the box and an n+1. :'( (sob sob).

In general though I just don't agree with the entire argument, I'm of the same school of thought as the guy that wrote the article that Chris replied to. I'll pirate any and every game (from a non-indie source) and if I do like, then I will buy it. I've been burned too many times by critics that are most definitely in the pocket of the games companies (all you have to do is take a fleeting glance at metacritic to see this) to rely on those so if there isn't a demo I'll try before I buy whether the I'm allowed or or not. I think it is progressive and moves the onus to the games companies to bring out games that aren't crap and full of bugs, cause at the moment games are non-returnable items so if you've already purchased it and it turns out to be shit the best you can hope for is getting near cost back for it on ebay. It doesn't affect the games companies at all, their not out of pocket so they don't give a shit what you thought about the game. The only way to get companies to listen is to hit them in the wallet, and hit them hard! I'm not trolling either, I'm just expressing an opinion, which seems to be going against the general anti-theft vibe thus far.

Rant over

There are other options. But even if there weren't, you'd still be stealing. From people. Maybe people you don't like or don't trust, but that doesn't change the thing itself that you're doing.

It affects you, if nobody else. You become the kind of person who would steal from someone else for his own bitter pleasure.

[raidsoft]

I'll agree on the point that if you want to deprive EA of any gain from you then you shouldn't pirate their games either, really the only way is to just avoid them entirely and even that isn't really going to do much since they are such a gigantic behemoth but it's really the only thing you can do.

Let me also add that anything that helps me choose better where to spend my money better and with less "mistakes" by being misled by developers/publishers is a good thing in my book, they don't get away with as much anymore because there are more ways of finding out about their game (piracy before buying being one of them) and if that's wrong but makes me a more informed consumer then that's fine with me. I only have a limited amount of money to inject into the gaming industry and making damn sure I spend it in the correct places is extremely important to me.

I find it pretty interesting how dead set some people are regarding this though, "It's illegal so there can be nothing good about it and nobody should do it" but there's sooo many laws that people break multiple times a day but nobody really seem to care about. Parking illegally for example most people seem to be fine with and hope they avoid a ticket, same with speeding and this is extremely common things and something most people probably don't give a second thought to...

[StellarRat]

Admittedly there are some very stupid laws out there and there are others that a difficult to obey consistently, but if you support or actually pirate games you're only hurting your own hobby. You have to put yourself in the shoes of the developer (specially the small shops.) How would you feel if you spent three years working on a project night and day after putting up your own saving then when you went to sell it you found out only 1/2 the people that are playing it paid for it? That could be the difference between making a profit and losing money. Programming games is a very time intensive job. I've done it. I remember a lot of 12 and 16 hour days.

[raidsoft]

How am I hurting the industry if I have a finite amount of money I can put into it and I already spend as much as I can afford? If for example I am pirating games after I have spent as much as I can then they wouldn't have been able to get any money for that product anyway right? Well what if I really loved that game that I pirated and when I get more money next I pick that up first because I pirated it and liked it? This might mean that I try games I never would have thought to try because it didn't seem like a game for me but got surprised at how much I liked it and thus they end up getting my money they wouldn't have otherwise...

Of course proving this type of scenario isn't really possible to prove or even find out how often it happens and there is no way to know if people that are jerks and just want free stuff (there will always be those, people that just want something for nothing and can't think beyond their own selfish desires but I really doubt they would have forked out money for it anyway in the first place) so we're back to hypothetical situations where we can't prove anything...

I think that piracy can definitely hurt developers but it can also help, personally I can at least say that I have bought games only because I was bored and looking for something to do so I pirated a game and ended up spending money on it later on because it was good. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one in the world that this has happened to...

[StellarRat]

Of course proving this type of scenario isn't really possible to prove or even find out how often it happens and there is no way to know if people that are jerks and just want free stuff (there will always be those, people that just want something for nothing and can't think beyond their own selfish desires but I really doubt they would have forked out money for it anyway in the first place) so we're back to hypothetical situations where we can't prove anything...

You have to admit that if the pirating was impossible the developers would make more money, no? All those selfish jerks would have to cough up some cash or not play any games. If they didn't also steal their computers I would have to think they planned to use them and would be forced to buy software, right?

[raidsoft]

Possibly, there is no way we can be 100% sure that if all piracy just vanished (not like that could happen anyway) that the industry would just explode in income. I seriously doubt that it's as easy as that... There are just a gigantic amount of factors involved in this, it could very well be that the industry would become much healthier if we magically could make all piracy go away but we can't know that for sure. Since piracy is an inevitability in today's market then why shouldn't responsible people utilize it to become smarter consumers?

If I choose not to pirate a game for example that doesn't do Anything to stop the jerks that refuse to pay for their software right? If on the other hand I can use piracy as a tool to make sure that I don't spend money where I don't think it belongs (creators of bad games) then that should be helpful to the industry since I will explore more game types that I normally wouldn't consider and possibly opening myself up to new markets instead of taking blind leaps of faith now and then and getting stung for it...

[TheUbiquitous]

Who cares if it's illegal? It isn't that it's illegal. It's that it's wrong.

[Silichna]

Silichna: Your scheme to deprive EA of money seems (to me) likely that they will try even more to acquire small successful studios to make new money on. If what they got isn't making money they will look for new sources to get it.
I don't think pirating has the effects that pirates think it will or expect it to have. It's not a social commentary... in the eyes of big companies its theft plain and simple. They won't be looking at the reasons behind it. They expect it to be that you want the game but are too cheap of an evil bastard to pay for it. You need to prove them wrong in that case.

If you want to comment on how evil they are, do it without personal gain. Do it without a shroud of digital anonymity. Do it someplace it really matters. Do it without appearing (to the other side of the discussion) to be as evil as you claim them to be.

Hey in response to this, I don't actually play 95% of the games I pirate from EA, I think the majority of their sports games suck balls (no pun intended) and only play the ones I like, (usually the ones from the smaller studios that they bought out and I was very happy to give my money to before the merger). So there's not actually much personal gain from my piracy.
I have a facebook page set up (Boycott EA), I make fliers and hand them out to people, I talk about it to anyone I know that likes games and am an active user on quite a few EA forums about the matter. Other than demonstrate outside their UK offices I'm not actually sure what much I can do.
As for not being as evil as I claim them to be I'm only doing what I think they'll listen to and that is hurting their brand and taking money from their already HEAVILY lined pockets. Why would they listen to anything else?

Who cares if it's illegal? It isn't that it's illegal. It's that it's wrong.

But why is it wrong? Because it's illegal. If it were legal, none of us would be having this conversation. Also though, that it is wrong is only your moral opinion on the matter. I don't think it is wrong. Just like I don't think Robin Hood was wrong with what he did or Aladdin.

[Silichna]

Just to clarify I'm not equating either what I do or piracy in general to Robin Hood and what he did, I'm merely using him as a moral example of someone that did stuff others perceived as wrong but for the right reasons.