I think you are confused at what this thread is about. Maybe you should have just exited 10 posts ago.
But haven't you heard, there's nothing wrong with it at all.
You can try to rationalize it all you want, but to attempt to say piracy is not immoral requires a suspension of logic you should be ashamed of.
Morality and ethics are completely and wholly subjective.
You fail.
Legality aside, from a moral standpoint, couldn't second hand sales be considered the similar effect to pirating or buying bootlegs...cause if you think about it, if you buy from Gamestop or even Ebay, a used game, the copyright holders don't get any further sales from that. Instead, someone else gets the money and a "potential" profit gone, i use potential with assumption in mind btw....much like a factory owner in Asia, buying a game, then selling copies illegally, just on a more linear scale.
What i'm pointing out is, it's a legal way for someone to avoid paying copyright holders, yet still obtain it and for someone else to profit. One is legal, other is not yet they still share the same end game, the copyright owners getting nothing except the initial sale
I think you are confused at what this thread is about. Maybe you should have just exited 10 posts ago.
Actually, if I recall correctly it's not anymore. Google reached an accord with the record companies, and they are paying for the use of that music. They of course pass that charge along to you in the form of tracking and advertisement.
I'm shocked there are so many people who feel it's perfectly okay to make someone else pay for their entertainment.
Probably the most misunderstood and misrepresented issue in all of gaming.
Sure we have piracy numbers showing that piracy is very high, and sales numbers showing us that as a percentage that sales are just a small fraction of people legitimately buying the game.
But like all evidence it needs to be looked at with some careful thought, we could look at the evidence that every galaxy we look at is moving away from us (on average) and come to the conclusion that our galaxy is the center of the universe, but if we use our brain for a few seconds we could also see that maybe the galaxy is expanding uniformly and every galaxy see's the same thing.
Not every pirated copy of the game is a lost sale to the developer, and there's lots of reasons to believe this. Furthermore we don't understand the impact completely of what would happen if we "corrected" piracy, would the money to pay for a pirated game X come out of the money spent on game Y.
It makes more sense to look at the industry as a whole and ask the question, is the industry healthy, is there a decline in profiles and revenue during periods when there has been an uptake in piracy? How much of the reason for piracy is greed on the consumers part and how much is it to do with simply providing a bad service, treating customers like thieves, or simply not keeping up with the times and delivering the content in ways consumers demand? How many of the customers pirating are doing so simply because there is more desireable media than they can possibly afford?
I have no doubt in my mind that piracy exists, and piracy does cause some legitimate lost revenue, but if you consider all of the above I think the evidence points to that being a very small amount of revenue in comparsion to what most game developers estimate, and what anti-piracy groups advocate.
I'm sorry, but the moment I read somebody either defending piracy (in any way) or declaring that their 'studies' suggest it's not a big factor regarding sales, I immidiately conclude that this person does alot of pirating themselves.
Why ? Because as humans we need to try and justify ourselves for doing things that go against our moral compass. You don't just do something because it is bad for the sake of it, or do something wrong because it is wrong, you do it because it is 'good' for yourself, and then make excuses why it 'isn't hurting anybody else' etc.
Stop making excuses, for yourself, or for the other criminals.
These days its extremely easy to get stuff; but most people; *not all* most will go and buy the game if its easy to run and not a pain in the ass. Publishers need to sit up and take notice when people with cracked version of their game have a better running of it than an offical copy. That is one of the many things that is wrong with the industry right now.
It has nothing to do with ease of install or how the official game runs. Games with zero DRM have been released and are still pirated just as much as any other game. The reason people pirate is simple. It is a nearly identical game for free. The value is the same.
The only way to stop piracy is to offer more value for retail than you get when pirating. A lot of titles do this by offering multiplayer. Sure, I can probably pirate the latest CoD and find a server that will let me play this copy, but the experience won't be nearly as good as just paying the $60 and paying it on the official servers. There is a reason millions of people don't stop paying for WoW and start playing on free servers. It isn't because it is hard to set up. It is because the experience offered by Blizzard is worth the $15 a month to most people.
Out of curiosity, who actually said that? We were discussing the degree to which piracy would effect PC gaming. Piracy is the given in this thread, and the discussion is about the degree to which it actually effects PC gaming. Morality has no real place here. You seem to be equating the notion of piracy helping a product or industry with morality. There are studies that go both ways, and picking one side versus the other isnt a referendum on ones morality.
We aren't the moral police. If you really want to discuss morality of piracy, you should start up a new thread or discuss it with your church group. Now excuse me while I smoke some weed and watch some pirated porn.
I think what I have to say bothers you, and it should.
We get it, you're unconmfortable with the idea that other people think your activities are deplorable.
The morality of the issue should really not even need to be discussed. However, there are people here living in their own fantasy worlds that need to come back to reality.
That is why this needs to be discussed in every single piracy thread, because there will always be some ignorant tool who truly beleives he isn't doing anything wrong, or hurting somebody else and their livelihood.
I estimate that 5-10% of revenues for a game is lost because of pirates who would choose to buy otherwise.
That's great and all if you want to say morality has nothing to do with it. Why do so many stop pirating when they get older many times because they beilive it's wrong ?
It's because those people knew all along, but maybe now have the disposable income to no longer justify it to themselves.
The lack of morality has has almost everything to do with pirating today. It does matter, it needs to be talked about, and it's no surprise at all to me that it is an unpopular thing to bring up.
Well if you actually read the thread you would already know my thoughts on that. But lets say that the lack of morality has everything to do with piracy...so what. How much do you think piracy is affecting the PC Gaming market? In other words, the topic at hand.
No one is asking for a sermon on morality. If we wanted that, we would be on a bible study forum.
Well, the original topic really can't be answered properly. There is Ubisoft saying it's 95%, and CD Projekt Red saying it's also very high, plenty of forum members saying it's nowhere near that.
Let's face it, it's really a question that can't be answered, we can only guess at best.
How much do I think it's affecting the market ? I don't know. But I know that it's probably enough to hurt it, which gets me upset because PC gaming is one of my hobbies and passions.
So when I see others talking about how piracy isn't actual theft it gets my blood pumping because it's an issue that strikes home. And it's my firm belief, and I really think others can agree on this point, that if people truly thought of it as theft, and then chose to do the right thing based on that, it would be close to a non issue.
SimCity and Diablo 3 are what happens to the gaming industry due to piracy. Rightfully or wrongly the executives in charge of these companies view piracy as their #2 threat behind used games and are doing horrid DRM schemes like this to try and prevent it. Perception is everything.