Piracy comes in many forms, music piracy, game piracy and movie piracy. I just wanted to know what your opinions on piracy?

Game piracy is probably the only one i'm interested in, it seems the standards of games today have slipped quite a lot I can't see many good games on the PC anymore, but maybe thats just my opinion? Bioware one of my favorite RPG makers are creating console exclusives. I can't help but think the increase of PC game piracy is responsible for a large decline in the standards of games?

In fact the last game I bought for my PC was C&C3, all the others i've borrowed. I can say now that i haven't been grasped by any of them they all just seem samey and unintuitive. Hellgate london for example, I found this game to be such a bore i took it back the same day. Crysis was worth borrowing just to look at the eye candy but i didn't bother finishing it. Bioshock was a slap in the face after replaying SS2. The witcher wasn't worth borrowing I found the cinematic to be quite fun to watch but the rest was point and click adventure.

When it comes to PC game piracy i know for a fact that torrent sharing etc is very popular and many people dedicate themselves to cracking games etc etc. But it must have an affect on the game companies who where before making great games?

Here in Norway theres a TV channel that uses the Bittorrent technology to give out movies for free, but this is counted as leagal, Its the only network they can use to transfer that big files.

Not against bit torrent at all i think torrents are amazing and use utorrent for any latest game patchs / linux distros heck anything really. But when you consider how much piracy goes on through torrents its kinda scary . Take biowares Mass effect for example, i'm pretty sure there holding an Xbox 360 exclusive just because they know that the PC version won't generate the revenue they want because of piracy.

Torrenting itself isn't illegal. It's the sharing of copyrighted Materials.


On the subject of File Sharing, i'm 50-50 on it.

The prices for games keep rising and rising, although piracy itself is a factor of this, and i just can't buy the games i want anymore without having to work extra hours and whatnot.

I've also found torrents are extremely slow. I prefer other methods of File Sharing (Legal...)

It hasn't affected the quality of games, piracy has existed since before Doom.

So many people I know Torrent their games and programs.

Game Piracy isn't limited to the PC anymore. They have found ways that you can pirate console games as well.

As for Piracy in general I can see both sides of the issue. Most people who download don't do it because they are purposely trying to rob the movie/game/software/music producers but because they honestly can't afford to pay for the product. On the other side it's very easy to see why it's very bad for the industries and workers that are having there product stolen.

The biggest problem that the people trying to stop pirating have is that it is really easy to download something. The amount of effort to illegally steal a movie is much less than to actually go out and buy the movie. Unless the movie/game/software/music industries can find a way to reverse that they're fighting a losing battle.

There's also probably a lot more people who actually buy it than pirate it.

It depends. I mostly pirate music and movies.

It doesn't bother me if I have to pay though. Certainly if I think the company/band/director did a good job. So I buy their software/music/movies legally (while I could get them for free)

Not against piracy, but imo, if you really like the thing you pirated, you should give something back to the creators.

Wow, that was really brave of you to just say that outloud.

Like Drolleke, I just pirate music and maybe some, but not alot, of movies. The only reason i pirate is cause music cost $1.00 on iTunes and i won't f*ckin waste that much money for 1 song. And for movies, my dad likes to watch movies but he doesn't want to use money so i say i can get it for him.

And maybe that's all.

The main point is that people only pirate cause wanna save some money. I know it's wrong, but it's ridiculous for me to pay $1 for 1 song.

And for games, I've never done that cause I only play free games Other then CSS which i got to buy cause my dad had $50 gift card!
And no he didn't steal that

I'm mostly against piracy. I used to download music using Limewire, but I stopped doing that. I use the iTunes store now, it's guaranteed high quality, you don't have to search that long and it's legal.

However, I have a game (GTASA) for the PS2 that I finished a long while ago, and I wanted to start modding it, but you can only do that in the PC version, so I pirated it.

~Knight Haleth

The price tag on Gran Turismo (for the PS1, back then) was 79,900 Lire (Italian lira), which is 41.26 Euro: most games, nowadays (except those who have been invested in heavily with TV promotion and whatnot), are below the 39.99 Euro mark, so no, they haven't kept 'rising and rising'.

The argument "a pirated song is a CD not sold" is bollocks.

In 2002, the RIAA reported that CD sales had fallen by 8.9 percent, from 882 million to 803 million units; revenues fell 6.7 percent. In the same period that the RIAA estimates that 803 million CDs were sold, the RIAA estimates that 2.1 billion CDs were downloaded for free. Thus, although 2.6 times the total number of CDs sold were downloaded for free, sales revenue fell by just 6.7 percent. ¹

There's something very wrong with that.

Game piracy is easily justifiable - the gaming industry owes me for not stopping John Romero and his Daikatana. (Yes, I'm joking...partly.)

Plus, quite a lot of people actually go out and BUY content from the artist after having pirated something - I own a few Nightwish pirated songs, and here I am after about a year, having spent real cash for a Nightwish CD, a Nightwish t-shirt and a ticket for a Nightwish concert. If I hadn't pirated those five/six songs in the beginning, I wouldn't have bought all the rest: in most cases, it's a tradeoff.

Also, if it weren't for the lobbies (hi RIAA), CDs and everything else would cost FAR less. But until copyright legislation more or less forces artists to adhere to those organizations, the situation won't change.


¹From Lawrence Lessig's "Free Culture", http://free-culture.org/

I must admit i used to pirate a while ago (music) when we first got our 56kb/s with freeserve. I used a program called WinMX and later kazaa. If it wasn't for downloading a few songs i wouldn't have the collection of music today. I would have probally never heard of NiN (one of my favorite bands) Pendulum, Rise Against and other bands i've later purchased quite a lot of music from.

I'll take a cheap game into consideration here;

The Settlers - Rise of an empire
Available for £17.99 Free delivery (very cheap in the UK imo)

Take one torrent;
The Settlers VI Rise Of An Empire
Availability:
Seeders: 28715
Leechers: 97157

Thats just one site, one torrent the company has already lost 125k sales. Personally i don't even know what the game is about i'm just using it as an example. I can't help but think this could be contributing to the lack of PC games these days. Or maybe I'm just cynical because I'm stuck playing Q2 and half rate games until deus ex 3 or fallout 3 comes out

The problem spirals out of control. Piracy isn't that big in reality--it isn't costing gaming companies half their sales. What's costing them 90% of potential sales is either poorly coded games or rehashes of the same thing over and over again. EA is a major player in this downward spiral--minimal money and risk in designing games means they'll have minimal sales and minimal further innovation. They don't want to do too well, lest "pirates" get a hold of it. Many people see the poor games not worth spending $50+ on, so they pirate it. If the game is good enough to warrant a $50 price tag, by all means buy it! EA and other companies slap that large price tag on a POS game and expect it to sell fairly.

I don't pirate games--I see no point in it really. If there's a game I like or want to find out more about, I'll find the demo. I'll wait a while and hear about it on the forums and then buy it, unless I'm really convinced it'll be good. I'll buy Assassin's Creed for PC at launch, but I left other games for months before purchase or not purchase at all. Speak with your money.

I think piracy is cool.

I don't pirate anything, I usually dont need to. When I want to get more songs, I just buy an iTunes gift card. Its virus free and legal. To me, using the pirated software is not illegal. But the people who distribute it are.

-Virus-Free-
~~Samarkov

I dont really pirate anything at all. I have a set method when it comes to downloads now, I use it like I used renting from video stores back when I was a kid. I will test the game and if I genuinally like it I will go out and buy it. If I play a game that I dont have fun playing I delete it when I make my decission. At most I have a game downloaded for 1-2 hours before I decided wether or not to buy it. I think this should be applied to every type of downloading, but realisictly it isnt going to happen. Had it not been for downloading I would not have my game collection today, I probobly would of given up on games.

Priacy is not really a probelm in consoles as pc because any idiot can download a pc game and install it.
But a xbox 360 game for example they have to flash there dvd drive download various software to rip it etc..
but any idiot could do that as well but most people don't like to get inside of the 360 because of warranty.
PC has no risk factor it's fail safe.

If i don't think a game is worth buying i will probaly d/l it to check it out if it's a good game i will buy it.

Or you could download an ISO and burn it to a DVD for x-box or playstation...

Anyways--it's not as big an issue as it's made out to be. Many people pirate because the software is unavailable or just out of reach.

Still you'd need the know how on how to soft/hard mod your xbox/playstation and modding a PS3 could result in bricking it which would be an expensive mistake. Its a lot easier to do it on a PC.

Same as what Acid said above. You run the risk of ruining your warranty if you have an Xbox 360 because you need to mod it to run burned games.

I don't own an X-Box or a Playstation or any current console, for that matter. I just assume that a properly-burnt ISO would work without any additional modding.

When Radiohead released there newest album they didn't go through a record company and let people who wanted to download it pay anything they wanted including nothing at all. They ended up making more money on it than any of their previous albums.

To me, this prooves that people are willing to pay for good music when the big fat record companies arn't soaking up all the cash that the artists deserve.

P.S - Sorry about my spelling. I'm still waking up, lol !

I really don't care. Don't pirate though

People don't worry, the music company is taking action against piracy, they have already closed down a lot of torrenting sites. I personally pirate stuff, since I'm asian. The problem is that software like Adobe Photoshop CS3 is like US$1000, and for people like me who use it often, I don't have the necessary funds to purchase that kind of software. Only large cooperations can purchase such software. So I turn to pirating, I have no choice but to download the program. Tell the companies that design software to lower their prices and maybe they won't see pirating as much. That's only my opinion.

And you pirating that software isn't actually that bad from Adobe's perspective.

Your never going to be able to afford the program, so whatever happens Adobe aren't going to get your money. However, if you pirate it, and use it for a few years, when your older and if you started a graphics design business up or had some need for it in a business world - your more likely to choose Photoshop over the competitors because you've have already used it and are already knowledgeable in its use.

That's exactly right Stobbo.

If you're pirating it, others are too. The more people that steal it, the less revenue the company makes. I'd say you should talk to Adobe about it before you begin to talk for them. It's simple. Companies hire employees to develop a product. The product is developed. The company sells it to cover the cost of the resources, including employee wages. If the company isn't making money off the product, or enough to cover the projected costs of future products, they cannot pursue them. That means they cut back on resources, including employees, and you just may not get the quality product you hoped for, or any product at all for that matter.

Stealing is wrong people. What's so hard about that to understand?!

I can guaran-darn-tee you that Adobe isn't looking at it as, "It's okay that they are using this product for free. When they become more knowledgeable, they'll buy the next version from us because they know how it works."

Stealing is wrong, I don't disagree. But what I am saying, Opac is never going to be able to afford it right now, however he might be able to when he is older. Now, he has used Adobe while he is younger, so is more likely to choose Adobe which he is already competent with.

I'm not saying piracy is okay, but in this case, it will help Adobe in the long run. By Opac pirating the product now, they are more likely to be the software provider he chooses, and therefore they will get some money off him.

If i need a program that costs money, i go look at SourceForge or Download.com,
Then i may find an alternaltive.
Before thinking of pirating, look for alternaltives, but this is only for programs
Music, movies and games are different, you wont find a game that looks like another.
Just those bad short games <<
But the networks are good, a shame their used to illeagal stuff..
Peer-to-peer may be very useful.
Ubuntu downloads goes through bittorents too!

Also, because many users of this forum son enrolled in schools which makes them eligible for educational discounts.