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The same with stealing in some big multinational supermarket or the local small bussiness grocery, they are two completelly different things!

Nope. You are yourself affected by the theft. You become a worse person by stealing unnecessary things.

How do you think someone becomes the kind of guy who would steal from a corner grocery? How? By stealing somewhere else and lying to himself how it's an OK thing to do. Lie to yourself often enough and soon enough you'll believe it.

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Nope. You are yourself affected by the theft. You become a worse person by stealing unnecessary things.

How do you think someone becomes the kind of guy who would steal from a corner grocery? How? By stealing somewhere else and lying to himself how it's an OK thing to do. Lie to yourself often enough and soon enough you'll believe it.

Please stop feeding the theft troll, thank you.

Discuss piracy with diebagger or someone that is still being serious.

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Come on Gorlom, you really don't help the discussion if you call me names and doubt my seriouness. That's why there is rules in forums so people don't get into personal attacks. Look I don't mind been called names, and I understand its hard to accept other opinions, I know that for myself. Sometimes we have no arguments or its difficult to explain the arguments and we go into personal attacks.

That said I haven't heard really good arguments in favor of piracy, except that its like stealing or its wrong (without explaining why). I think right and wrong are really difficult topics to discuss. But you are lucky here everybody wants artists to get what they deserve for their work. Only we have dissagrements about piracy and the way its being delt with.

You have to put in mind that more than 90 per cent of people pirate things, you are not going to solve much if you continue with just saying its wrong and stealing. There is a lot of work been done by artists to change the scheme of their bussiness and sometimes it really works.

There are even artists saying piracy is great like,

And we have to discuss when we are breaking the law, like we do in piracy, we have to see when its bad and when its maybe not so bad that's why i compared shoplifting in big corporation or local grocery. Like the movement yomango - http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2005/08/68609

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I used to pirate when I was much younger, but I've reformed myself and I haven't copied a game in years. There is really no excuse to pirate a game "just to try it and see if I like it" now that so many reviews are available. Xeno is the biggest leap of faith I've taken on a game in a long time because it hasn't even got to beta yet. Normally, I'll NEVER pre-order a game because you are opening yourself to being ripped off by crappy software. As far as the "I'm poor and can't afford to pay" and the "only rich stockholders are losing money" arguments those are totally wrong. I used to be "poor" and just worried about putting food on the table, but I have money in stocks for my retirement now after years of sacrifice to save up. It angers me to hear that "only rich people and big corporations" are getting ripped off. I'm not rich and I'M GETTING RIPPED OFF TOO. Piracy is stealing profits from the developer and it means they have to charge more to all the "rich people" that actually buy games and/or cut development budgets. If you want to look at a small company (three guys that weren't "rich") that lost a lot of profits because of piracy do some research into Battlefront. They produced a revolutionary gaming system in the early 2000's. At one time they estimated that 1/2 the copies of their game were pirated. They now have DRM because of the problems and are doing a lot better (five guys now!, LOL.) So, it doesn't just hurt BIG CORPORATIONS it hurt little guys too probably a lot more than big corporations.

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There is really no excuse to pirate a game "just to try it and see if I like it" now that so many reviews are available.

Except reviews are inherently very biased towards either the policy of the reviewer/company or the personality of the reviewer. It's VERY hard to find reviews that are seriously trustworthy in my opinion and I would NEVER base a purchase on reviews alone plus the whole review scoring system is just beyond messed up right now largely because of metacritic and it's terrible influence.

If there is a good demo of the game that isn't super crippled then yes I'll agree with you but quite often there are no demos or they are not very representative of the final game so it's hard to get a good idea what it's actually like before taking the leap. Personally I spend a fair bit of time gathering information from as many sources as I can regarding any purchase I do (with exceptions) and there has been plenty of times that there just wasn't enough information that I felt I needed to make an informed purchase. I'm not saying that I think it's justified to pirate it in this case but they haven't really given people that want to be well informed much choice either.

I think that AAA games are the worst regarding this because they shower you with ads and fancy trailers that are in absolutely no way representative of the game to skew your opinion on it into making a purchase before you are fully informed, indie devs are in general MUCH more open and directly interact with their crowd so you know more what to expect. This is especially true now with the whole alpha funding where you may jump on-board much earlier because you see what the specific dev is trying to do.

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Except reviews are inherently very biased towards either the policy of the reviewer/company or the personality of the reviewer. It's VERY hard to find reviews that are seriously trustworthy in my opinion and I would NEVER base a purchase on reviews alone plus the whole review scoring system is just beyond messed up right now largely because of metacritic and it's terrible influence.
You have some valid points, however, I've learned that if you find a good reviewer you usually can't go wrong on a highly rated game. I always look for reviews from independent reviewers that specialize in the types of games I like. IGN and the rest of those mass game/review sites are worthless. They're trying to get you to buy from them. For example: If I'm looking for a wargame I'll look at the reviews in the Armchair General because their reviewers are all mature wargaming/strategy buffs, history writers and ex-military (sometimes all three.) If they rate a game highly I'm going to be happy. In fact, that's where I found out about this game. If you go to site where all the reviews are by WOW fans or console gamers you'll never get a decent review of a different type of game. MANY times they've dragged excellent strategy games through the mud because of the "dated" graphics, sound, or because they weren't "exciting" enough i.e. spectacular explosions every five seconds or they're "too complicated". Edited by StellarRat
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If anyone wants it:

Here's what Tim Schafer of Double Fine stated on the topic of the massive piracy of the game Psychonauts:

"Go pirate it and then buy two of our t-shirts."

Anyways, I'm not really supportive of Piracy just because of one thing:

IMO, people pirate games for 2 reasons:

1. They don't want to spend money/can't afford it

I'm not bashing the guy/gal who can't afford it. Fine, just pay for a legitimate copy later (or buy two of their T-shirts...). The other guy...can go to hell, because he's contributing to reason 2.

2. The massive amounts of crap they have to install to get it to work, all for the sake of putting the publisher's minds at ease.

Piracy causes game publishers to tack on more annoying DRM to their games to make sure they can't be pirated (such as the ability to only play while connected to the internet). The more crap we have to wade through (aside from waiting for the darned thing to actually install) just adds more to our collective frustration. Thus, turning said frustrated consumer to piracy, which do not have the aforementioned DRM (viruses though...that's another story...). It's a vicious cycle.

Edited by Commissar Pancakes
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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

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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.

Edited by Gorlom
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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.

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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...

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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.

Edited by StellarRat
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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...

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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?
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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...

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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.

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I'm not sure using any fictional character as a justification for your actions really works to be honest ;)

I like to think it is illegal because it is wrong, rather than your view that it is the other way round.

If you have to steal to live then you can claim the moral high ground, if you are stealing a luxury item just because you want it then you can't.

I never buy anything from EA because I don't like their business practices either, plus most of their products seem to be second rate.

Just like I didn't bother buying Diablo 3 because of their always online restrictions.

I still wouldn't pirate their games though for a few reasons:

I think it would still be wrong for me to do it, regardless of my views on the company.

It would have no effect on them if I was to download and play their game without paying as I wouldn't have purchased it anyway, that would be a justification rather than a reason.

If I was to add to the market for pirated games then I feel I would be part of the problem that the big companies are trying to deal with by using the restrictive DRM that I dislike.

I doubt the people that I would be getting the pirate copies from would likely be restricting themselves to cracking just the games I have an ideological issue with, they are just as likely to be cracking and distributing games from my favourite devs and indie studios.

There are others but you get the drift.

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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.

You know Mr (or is it sir?) Locksley is a fictional character? And as you mention there's hardly any equality there. Prince John and the Sheriff forced heavy taxes on the people... no one forces the people to buy EAs games.

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?

As soon as you steal from the company all your argumentation is undone. They won't listen to you anymore.

Those fliers you hand out, those forums you are active on, on that facebook page; are you encouraging pirating from EA on all those mediums? If so you are doing it wrong.

It doesn't matter that you hardly get any personal gain from what you steal you have to look at it from the other side. They can't tell how much personal gain you get out of it... Just that you steal from them. To them you look like a malcontent jerk that uses hate of their company to justify stealing from them. And they can't tell who supports your cause and who is just a thief that wants in on it.

Keep doing what you are doing but without the theft. If you think they are evil you need the moral high ground. Not the ambiguous roobinhoods sherwood forest where people can't tell if you are a highwayman or a hero.

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If you have to steal to live then you can claim the moral high ground, if you are stealing a luxury item just because you want it then you can't.
That my friend is brilliant. I wish I would have thought of that. No one has to play a game. It's not like you're starving and need to steal food just to survive.
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