I do not promote, or dissaprove of online piracy... I'm going to be discussing whether I THINK piracy is right, or wrong. I would prefer you do also so we don't get in trouble with the forum feds. I'm asking you not to please not say whether you pirate or not, but whether you believe it is right.
Okay, after reading about the Pirate Parties International, and was wondering do you think piracy is alright, and if so to what extent.
For example I have no problem with piracy, unless you are pirating something from a indie group. I think it is fine if you're doing it to a group of people making hundreds of millions of dollars on sales already, but if it is a guy who is just getting into game creation selling his game for $5, then don't steal it... Also porn, seriously people, you know it's a virus, and you can get it off just the internet.
AGAIN, PLEASE DO NOT SAY WHETHER YOU PIRATE OR NOT, BUT WHETHER YOU THINK IT IS RIGHT OR WRONG
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Will be changed at some point, I'm too lazy right now.
I see 'piracy' as the natural result of the expansion of the software market. It's not going anywhere. You're not stopping it unless you want to implement a police state. It's a lost battle. All anti-piracy laws need to go away, and software developers should switch to a more service-based model and *gasp* adjust to the market.
Music shops here don't sell Metal albums, so I'm forced to download those. I don't buy original games because they don't interest me..I buy the pirated version, play it for a couple of days or a couple of weeks, then throw it aside. I'm gonna get the original copy of Diablo 3.
Anyone who pays for porn is a jackass, btw. I support paying for music because music takes talent, porn is just...no.
Even creating a police for it is kind of mute, because of the same fundamental problems with policing the internet: It's global. It crosses nearly all borders and you'd have to have a global police force to do so, which is nigh impossible. Sharing will continue no matter how mad you get, corporate CEOs.
My stance on piracy is that I try before I buy more often than not. Demos aren't as common as they used to be and I think that if you want my support for your game/movie I should know exactly what I'm paying for. I've played a couple of games that I would only buy if they were twenty or so or less even. That's why I love Steam.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Join the Irish Mob. We like almost everybody. Read Pants are Good. It's funny. You'll like it.
Also read Wintendo, as DINGBANG is attempting to play through 764 SNES games in a back catalog.
Why not start making games and music free to all after they've been out for 10 years or more? I mean nobody is making money off them at that point except for a very few, such as Diablo II + LoD for Blizzard.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Just as the Scorpion hunts...
Silently Lurking...
"Nothing is True. Everything is Permitted." ~ Ezio Auditore de Firenze
Copyrights. Sometime, some idiot gave the right to people to hold on to their crap for like, what, 100 years or something?
I liked them when it was 14 years and you're done, it's public domain after that.
Yes. That's what makes sense to normal people.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Join the Irish Mob. We like almost everybody. Read Pants are Good. It's funny. You'll like it.
Also read Wintendo, as DINGBANG is attempting to play through 764 SNES games in a back catalog.
Im a pirate and im proud of it. Plus im a TL member so i pretty much own.
In third world countries like Israel (LOL) piracy is not even ilegal... Except for busineses using legal software. I mean, you can buy an Xbox360 with a chip from any store. It basically works with pirated copies of games. Anyway yea, untill the country i live in will start enforcing some strict laws against piracy... Im not gonna do anything about it.
I see 'piracy' as the natural result of the expansion of the software market. It's not going anywhere. You're not stopping it unless you want to implement a police state. It's a lost battle. All anti-piracy laws need to go away, and software developers should switch to a more service-based model and *gasp* adjust to the market.
This. It's interesting to see the reality of the world of digital information. No matter how hard countries try to limit this, they will have to go to extreme lengths to stop it. Like Equinox said, police state surveillance of the general populace is just about the only thing that can stop it. That, or you have to destroy the internet :whistling:
Blizzard is being a total douche for removing LAN from their games just because Kotick is being a greedy fuck.
Removing LAN is a natural reaction to pirating, which comes from the nature of products that are 100% digital. One of the few ways a company can charge people for programs is through some continous authentication system. In Blizzard's case, it's Battle.net 2.0.
If someone wants to charge people for games/music/movies these days, they have to offer more than just the actual product. For games, this started off as CD-keys, but since that doesn't really work, it branched off into systems like B.net and Steam. For music, the answer most probaly lies in concerts. For movies, going to the movie theater.
This will have a lot of consequences. All films cannot go up on the big screen, and not all movies benefit from that. Hollywood productions do, but what else? Maybe that's not an issue for you americans, but for the rest of the world it is.
Not all artists can live off of concerts. Can they still play music then?
Not all games, often stuff like indie games, can have authentication services like B.net. Will indie games disappear or be severely limited?
This, in my eyes, isn't a question of right/wrong and "act now before it's too late!". This is what will happen, and answering these questions is a must if you want to make money off of digital products in the future.
PlugY for Diablo II allows you to reset skills and stats, transfer items between characters in singleplayer, obtain all ladder runewords and do all Uberquests while offline. It is the only way to do all of the above. Please use it.
Supporting big shoulderpads and flashy armor since 2004.
I guess there could always be government subsidation (subsidy? how do you spell that?) for people who go in to artistic fields, like farmers? Of course, it's not a necessity, not all people like all art forms, it's hard to define art succinctly, and it would remove a level of competition in artistic markets. Although, to sincere artists, the competition lies in the art and not the money. /some crappy input
Piracy is fine.
I support freeware developers.
Blizzard is being a total douche for removing LAN from their games just because Kotick is being a greedy fuck.
Indie games I have no problem with.
Just that most of them suck balls and don't deserve my money.
Especially the ones that call themselves 'art.'
That's just a bunch of bull.
As Equinox said, they have to adjust to the new market.
This is no longer their territory.
Blizzard took LAN out simply because there are lots of people out there with that attitude. It's an obvious anti-piracy maneuver. And how do you mean "This is no longer their territory"? They are creating the games that you play, and they want to make a living out of it, they have families and in any case themselves to feed, something I think you'll find they definitely don't steal (food). Anyways, why I respect your opinion, I wished you'd kept it to yourself.
The thing about piracy is that without it many people just wouldn't be able to afford the products their pirating anyway. I mean think about it, I have maybe 50-60 games in my library right now, that's... $6000 if you count it all at $99.99 a game (though some are cheaper I realise), and that's a whole lot of money that most people just can't spend due to them having more pressing needs like food.
Now, with the above in mind, many companies adjust their prices against piracy, and some pirates use the fact that companies overprice their products to insure against the pirates somehow justifies their piracy, because by adjusting their prices the companies are legitimising piracy. They're saying "We know you exist, but we can't do much more than adjust the prices against your activities."
That's one aspect, but I would say that most people can afford to buy the games they play, and quite a few don't. And this is mostly what the problem of piracy is, that game companies, which are a BUSINESS, the entire point of which is to make MONEY, don't get the funds to make MORE games. Think of it like shoplifting from your supermarket. You wouldn't do it, it requires luck, skill and balls. Plus you wouldn't dream of not paying for simple things like food that you need to survive. However piracy is just so easy, and your not stealing physical things, and your pirating things that you can do without, and so few people are punished for doing it (and when they are they're handed ridiculous sums of millions that they'll spend the rest of their lives trying to pay off) that people believe in what they're doing.
The cost of a game company going to court and enforcing their copyrighted material is pretty exorbitant, and that's why they feel they can't take action against individuals, because they have to make back the court cost and money off the person. And that's what makes piracy stick, lack of action due to a failure in the justice system. Though this shifts the blame once again off the shoulders of the pirates themselves.
I think maybe steam has it right, release a small game for $5 a pop, promote, get people to give it to their friends (it's $5), sell a few thousand copies (it's $5), and then a few months down the road no one is playing it anyway, but the company got their capital.
Now, removing LAN, I would argue that while understandable, it's not a good idea. Because you are giving pirates an opportunity to provide the LAN service with their pirated product. Meaning that they are providing essentially a superior product to Blizzard. This is also the case with DRMs, the pirate takes away the DRMs of say Assassins Creed 2 and it's a better game for it. I like Blizzards approach of loading your CD-Key into the Battle.net site. And I like how they've not gone DRM mad (removing LAN is definitely not DRM mad, at least you can play offline). Though I hope they provide a LAN service to SC2 very soon.
/Arguments for and against
:starwars:
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"A lot of fellows nowadays have a B.A., M.D., or Ph.D. Unfortunately, they don't have a J.O.B."
I guess there could always be government subsidation (subsidy? how do you spell that?) for people who go in to artistic fields, like farmers? Of course, it's not a necessity, not all people like all art forms, it's hard to define art succinctly, and it would remove a level of competition in artistic markets.
This is probably an alternative. Is it better than how it was before the advent of piracy? Not necessarily, but there's not a whole lot to do about it I think.
Indeed it is, but it still hurts the buyer a lot more than the pirate.
Because there are a lot of programs that will allow you to play with other people, even without LAN.
Just look at Spore, that anti-piracy protection just spits in the face of the consumer.
Spore and B.net are two entirely different approaches to dealing with piracy.
Spore tried massive DRM protection, which indeed can always be hacked. Which is also the reason why it failed miserably.
B.net is added value. You can, just like normally, torrent Starcraft II and play singleplayer and against the AI But you cannot access B.net and all of the features it offers unless you actually buy the game. Strictly speaking, I'd say that when you buy SC2, you're actually buying access to B.net, and not the game itself.
And this is mostly what the problem of piracy is, that game companies, which are a BUSINESS, the entire point of which is to make MONEY, don't get the funds to make MORE games. Think of it like shoplifting from your supermarket. You wouldn't do it, it requires luck, skill and balls. Plus you wouldn't dream of not paying for simple things like food that you need to survive. However piracy is just so easy, and your not stealing physical things, and your pirating things that you can do without, and so few people are punished for doing it (and when they are they're handed ridiculous sums of millions that they'll spend the rest of their lives trying to pay off) that people believe in what they're doing.
While that seems like it's so true and unchangeable, I beg to differ.
The problem here is indeed that companies can no longer charge players for their products. The solution however CANNOT be achieved by digging in and spending billions on trying to get things to where they were before. It's not possible.
Game companies have to realize that they cannot develop games with the same business model as they've done up until now. Not the big productions at least, smaller might get off with donation.
And it's not stealing. Downloading a game is exactly the same thing as producing another copy of a physical object. Would anyone mind if you copied a loaf of bread? No. Digital media is an interesting case where the first product costs a very large amount to produce, but where every subsequent product costs virtually zero. Theoretically, this should force prices down to virtually zero as well. Which is exactly what has happened.
The cost of a game company going to court and enforcing their copyrighted material is pretty exorbitant, and that's why they feel they can't take action against individuals, because they have to make back the court cost and money off the person. And that's what makes piracy stick, lack of action due to a failure in the justice system. Though this shifts the blame once again off the shoulders of the pirates themselves.
Piracy sticks because of what it actually means to copy something and how it works, not because of failed legislation.
Now, removing LAN, I would argue that while understandable, it's not a good idea. Because you are giving pirates an opportunity to provide the LAN service with their pirated product. Meaning that they are providing essentially a superior product to Blizzard.
Not by a long shot. No one is ever going to be able to provide a service anywhere close to B.net for pirated games.
PlugY for Diablo II allows you to reset skills and stats, transfer items between characters in singleplayer, obtain all ladder runewords and do all Uberquests while offline. It is the only way to do all of the above. Please use it.
Supporting big shoulderpads and flashy armor since 2004.
Piracy is stealing and it is wrong. If I made something and didn't put it out there for free, I wouldn't want people to just download it and then MAYBE buy it, even though I often do exactly that. #1 Hypocrite? That's me!
Tbh I like to be a paying customer and buy as many of the games/movies/cd's I like. You are the legal owner of that one copy and you can just about do whatever you want with it. No one can accuse you of stealing or say you don't support the developer/actors,studios etc/band you like.
There's no stopping piracy as it is now. Pirates will always be a few steps ahead of the big companies trying to stop the spread of their works, and since they only focus their energy on stopping people from downloading their stuff for free they aren't coming up with new, easy and cheaper ways to distribute their products. iTunes is a good choice, although some of the songs and albums are a bit pricey compared to a physical copy you can order online. Steam is great platform for games and I'm always on the lookout for awesome games for low prices. Movies.. if I really want to pay for a movie I just go see it at the movies downtown.
Digital distribution is the way to go, but it can't cost that much more than a physical copy and the prices shouldn't be too high to begin with, even though it takes several years to develop some things and people need to get paid, paying over 1/4 of what you bought the console for a game is insane imo.
Piracy is stealing and it is wrong. If I made something and didn't put it out there for free, I wouldn't want people to just download it and then MAYBE buy it, even though I often do exactly that. #1 Hypocrite? That's me!
You're assuming that being able to charge money for digital products is somehow equivalent to charge money for physical products, and that whoever creates something automatically has a right to charge money for it. And that's just not the case, you can only charge people for a product if they're willing to pay for it.
Let's look at that. What happens to a product as supply rises? In general, prices fall. Normally, this stops at the point where selling a product for a lower price will result in a loss for the company. Usually this is when the raw materials simply cannot be gotten any cheaper, or you have to have a certain amount of labor. That's the lower limit.
Such as limit does not exist for digital products. Producing another one costs 0. Thus the price should eventually reach 0. The only reason it doesn't is because people somehow still buy these things, probably because it's illegal. Whether it's illegal or not has little effect on the economic side of thigs however, so long as it cannot be enforced. And as mentioned before, the only way to enforce it is through massive data surveillance.
PlugY for Diablo II allows you to reset skills and stats, transfer items between characters in singleplayer, obtain all ladder runewords and do all Uberquests while offline. It is the only way to do all of the above. Please use it.
Supporting big shoulderpads and flashy armor since 2004.
No one is ever going to be able to provide a service anywhere close to B.net for pirated games.
It's not B.net that I was really talking about, I meant the LAN itself. If there was a LAN version of SC2 up for pirate then you might see some small conventions getting it for LAN for a small social competition. Though now that I've said that they all would've bought it in the first place... Oh well, argument is invalid regarding quality of service of LAN vs B.Net 2.0
But it's still valid for the removal of DRM's from some games where the DRM's actually can be very restrictive.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"A lot of fellows nowadays have a B.A., M.D., or Ph.D. Unfortunately, they don't have a J.O.B."
Piracy is fine.
I support freeware developers.
Blizzard is being a total douche for removing LAN from their games just because Kotick is being a greedy fuck.
Indie games I have no problem with.
Just that most of them suck balls and don't deserve my money.
Especially the ones that call themselves 'art.'
That's just a bunch of bull.
As Equinox said, they have to adjust to the new market.
This is no longer their territory.
Blizzard took LAN out simply because there are lots of people out there with that attitude. It's an obvious anti-piracy maneuver. And how do you mean "This is no longer their territory"? They are creating the games that you play, and they want to make a living out of it, they have families and in any case themselves to feed, something I think you'll find they definitely don't steal (food). Anyways, why I respect your opinion, I wished you'd kept it to yourself.
The thing about piracy is that without it many people just wouldn't be able to afford the products their pirating anyway. I mean think about it, I have maybe 50-60 games in my library right now, that's... $6000 if you count it all at $99.99 a game (though some are cheaper I realise), and that's a whole lot of money that most people just can't spend due to them having more pressing needs like food.
Now, with the above in mind, many companies adjust their prices against piracy, and some pirates use the fact that companies overprice their products to insure against the pirates somehow justifies their piracy, because by adjusting their prices the companies are legitimising piracy. They're saying "We know you exist, but we can't do much more than adjust the prices against your activities."
That's one aspect, but I would say that most people can afford to buy the games they play, and quite a few don't. And this is mostly what the problem of piracy is, that game companies, which are a BUSINESS, the entire point of which is to make MONEY, don't get the funds to make MORE games. Think of it like shoplifting from your supermarket. You wouldn't do it, it requires luck, skill and balls. Plus you wouldn't dream of not paying for simple things like food that you need to survive. However piracy is just so easy, and your not stealing physical things, and your pirating things that you can do without, and so few people are punished for doing it (and when they are they're handed ridiculous sums of millions that they'll spend the rest of their lives trying to pay off) that people believe in what they're doing.
The cost of a game company going to court and enforcing their copyrighted material is pretty exorbitant, and that's why they feel they can't take action against individuals, because they have to make back the court cost and money off the person. And that's what makes piracy stick, lack of action due to a failure in the justice system. Though this shifts the blame once again off the shoulders of the pirates themselves.
I think maybe steam has it right, release a small game for $5 a pop, promote, get people to give it to their friends (it's $5), sell a few thousand copies (it's $5), and then a few months down the road no one is playing it anyway, but the company got their capital.
Now, removing LAN, I would argue that while understandable, it's not a good idea. Because you are giving pirates an opportunity to provide the LAN service with their pirated product. Meaning that they are providing essentially a superior product to Blizzard. This is also the case with DRMs, the pirate takes away the DRMs of say Assassins Creed 2 and it's a better game for it. I like Blizzards approach of loading your CD-Key into the Battle.net site. And I like how they've not gone DRM mad (removing LAN is definitely not DRM mad, at least you can play offline). Though I hope they provide a LAN service to SC2 very soon.
/Arguments for and against
:starwars:
Your white text is blistering my eyes...
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Will be changed at some point, I'm too lazy right now.
Man... I must be really pilled up or something right now because I can't understand 90% of the thread. If fact trying to write this and fixing so many typos that's probably the case, i just wanted to comment on this section that stood out for me.
For example I have no problem with piracy, unless you are pirating something from a indie group. I think it is fine if you're doing it to a group of people making hundreds of millions of dollars on sales already, but if it is a guy who is just getting into game creation selling his game for $5, then don't steal it... Also porn, seriously people, you know it's a virus, and you can get it off just the internet.
Stealing is stealing. Don't try to talk yourself into believing it's somehow more noble or less devious to steal from someone who is rich.
The problem with stealing from the "rich companies" is they're made up of thousands of people, and it has a trickle down effect. Eventually you're taking money out of Joe The Janitor's pocket. Obviously I'm talking about everyone pirating many things, not just you pirating one thing.
Don't like it, hardly ever do it, and the reasoning behind that is that the funds that you give those who made the thing your downloading deserve some form of credit for all the work they put into their creation. As an aspiring musician and hearing about how crucial album sales are, I feel bad for them because there are people who do pirate their music.
It's really sad, actually. But someone can just argue, "well, if they were serious about their art, they wouldn't want money anyway because you can't put a price on art."
To which I say, "if you were serious about liking that group, you would want to give them all the support you could give, fiscal or just spreading their name around. Also, taking into account how much effort they put into their art, you would probably expect some sort of payment if you were in their shoes."
So, really, I just feel like society doesn't need this. If anything, pay for music subscription services (Zune Pass, for example) and get Netflix and Gamefly. You're done because surely your money is working for you exponentially as opposed to paying $13 a CD and even more for a console game.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I hate the way you cling to ignorance and pass it off as innocence
An interesting thing I witnessed a few months ago: I was in a BarCamp (an anti-conference about e-business and internet stuff, very nice), mainly I went to my boss/teacher talk about cyber law, this conference was aimed to developers (game developers included) and every kind of internet content producers (journalists, music companies, etc), it's not a minor thing that this event main sponsors were microsoft () and ESSET. Of course in a part of the talk someone asked my boss about piracy and he started to talk about the current state of the law and national politics and bla bla bla... the interesting thing is that after he said all that he asked the audience (around 150 people) who thought piracy was a crime and no one, not even one single person raised the hand (and they were all affected about it)
My opinion is that capitalist principles can't be applied to information nowadays, we can't apply the same old principles for limited resources for virtually infinite capacity of reproducing one product on the internet, the very same law of supply and demand looses it's scope on this new territory of the economy.
I think that the companies has been asking themselves the wrong question since the beginning, it's not what they can do to stop piracy, but how can they profit from it, call it micro services, faster servers for MP features, merchandising, donations or whatever, imo the idea is not charging a few million people 100 dollars a game, but a few thousand million people 1 dollar (and then charge them again for that small thing they don't need to play the game but to "enhance" the experience)
kind of off-topic: I luv how we can talk about this in this forum, last year this thread would probably be deleted in a sec but now we can discuss it freely and not braking any rules, it says a lot about the community and the great work of mods and admins XD
OH! and welcome Aever1!! no go to the intro forum, make a thread, stay a while and post
I do not promote, or dissaprove of online piracy... I'm going to be discussing whether I THINK piracy is right, or wrong. I would prefer you do also so we don't get in trouble with the forum feds. I'm asking you not to please not say whether you pirate or not, but whether you believe it is right.
Okay, after reading about the Pirate Parties International, and was wondering do you think piracy is alright, and if so to what extent.
For example I have no problem with piracy, unless you are pirating something from a indie group. I think it is fine if you're doing it to a group of people making hundreds of millions of dollars on sales already, but if it is a guy who is just getting into game creation selling his game for $5, then don't steal it... Also porn, seriously people, you know it's a virus, and you can get it off just the internet.
AGAIN, PLEASE DO NOT SAY WHETHER YOU PIRATE OR NOT, BUT WHETHER YOU THINK IT IS RIGHT OR WRONG
Anyone who pays for porn is a jackass, btw. I support paying for music because music takes talent, porn is just...no.
Rise and rise again, until lambs become lions
My stance on piracy is that I try before I buy more often than not. Demos aren't as common as they used to be and I think that if you want my support for your game/movie I should know exactly what I'm paying for. I've played a couple of games that I would only buy if they were twenty or so or less even. That's why I love Steam.
Join the Irish Mob. We like almost everybody. Read Pants are Good. It's funny. You'll like it.
Also read Wintendo, as DINGBANG is attempting to play through 764 SNES games in a back catalog.
I liked them when it was 14 years and you're done, it's public domain after that.
Join the Irish Mob. We like almost everybody. Read Pants are Good. It's funny. You'll like it.
Also read Wintendo, as DINGBANG is attempting to play through 764 SNES games in a back catalog.
In third world countries like Israel (LOL) piracy is not even ilegal... Except for busineses using legal software. I mean, you can buy an Xbox360 with a chip from any store. It basically works with pirated copies of games. Anyway yea, untill the country i live in will start enforcing some strict laws against piracy... Im not gonna do anything about it.
But that is kinda what the Pirates Party International is about, make everywhere have no problem with it.
Of course now in America (where I live) no one really cares now that basiclly everyone does it.
Removing LAN is a natural reaction to pirating, which comes from the nature of products that are 100% digital. One of the few ways a company can charge people for programs is through some continous authentication system. In Blizzard's case, it's Battle.net 2.0.
If someone wants to charge people for games/music/movies these days, they have to offer more than just the actual product. For games, this started off as CD-keys, but since that doesn't really work, it branched off into systems like B.net and Steam. For music, the answer most probaly lies in concerts. For movies, going to the movie theater.
This will have a lot of consequences. All films cannot go up on the big screen, and not all movies benefit from that. Hollywood productions do, but what else? Maybe that's not an issue for you americans, but for the rest of the world it is.
Not all artists can live off of concerts. Can they still play music then?
Not all games, often stuff like indie games, can have authentication services like B.net. Will indie games disappear or be severely limited?
This, in my eyes, isn't a question of right/wrong and "act now before it's too late!". This is what will happen, and answering these questions is a must if you want to make money off of digital products in the future.
Blizzard took LAN out simply because there are lots of people out there with that attitude. It's an obvious anti-piracy maneuver. And how do you mean "This is no longer their territory"? They are creating the games that you play, and they want to make a living out of it, they have families and in any case themselves to feed, something I think you'll find they definitely don't steal (food). Anyways, why I respect your opinion, I wished you'd kept it to yourself.
The thing about piracy is that without it many people just wouldn't be able to afford the products their pirating anyway. I mean think about it, I have maybe 50-60 games in my library right now, that's... $6000 if you count it all at $99.99 a game (though some are cheaper I realise), and that's a whole lot of money that most people just can't spend due to them having more pressing needs like food.
Now, with the above in mind, many companies adjust their prices against piracy, and some pirates use the fact that companies overprice their products to insure against the pirates somehow justifies their piracy, because by adjusting their prices the companies are legitimising piracy. They're saying "We know you exist, but we can't do much more than adjust the prices against your activities."
That's one aspect, but I would say that most people can afford to buy the games they play, and quite a few don't. And this is mostly what the problem of piracy is, that game companies, which are a BUSINESS, the entire point of which is to make MONEY, don't get the funds to make MORE games. Think of it like shoplifting from your supermarket. You wouldn't do it, it requires luck, skill and balls. Plus you wouldn't dream of not paying for simple things like food that you need to survive. However piracy is just so easy, and your not stealing physical things, and your pirating things that you can do without, and so few people are punished for doing it (and when they are they're handed ridiculous sums of millions that they'll spend the rest of their lives trying to pay off) that people believe in what they're doing.
The cost of a game company going to court and enforcing their copyrighted material is pretty exorbitant, and that's why they feel they can't take action against individuals, because they have to make back the court cost and money off the person. And that's what makes piracy stick, lack of action due to a failure in the justice system. Though this shifts the blame once again off the shoulders of the pirates themselves.
I think maybe steam has it right, release a small game for $5 a pop, promote, get people to give it to their friends (it's $5), sell a few thousand copies (it's $5), and then a few months down the road no one is playing it anyway, but the company got their capital.
Now, removing LAN, I would argue that while understandable, it's not a good idea. Because you are giving pirates an opportunity to provide the LAN service with their pirated product. Meaning that they are providing essentially a superior product to Blizzard. This is also the case with DRMs, the pirate takes away the DRMs of say Assassins Creed 2 and it's a better game for it. I like Blizzards approach of loading your CD-Key into the Battle.net site. And I like how they've not gone DRM mad (removing LAN is definitely not DRM mad, at least you can play offline). Though I hope they provide a LAN service to SC2 very soon.
/Arguments for and against
:starwars:
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Spore and B.net are two entirely different approaches to dealing with piracy.
Spore tried massive DRM protection, which indeed can always be hacked. Which is also the reason why it failed miserably.
B.net is added value. You can, just like normally, torrent Starcraft II and play singleplayer and against the AI But you cannot access B.net and all of the features it offers unless you actually buy the game. Strictly speaking, I'd say that when you buy SC2, you're actually buying access to B.net, and not the game itself.
Unless the protection isn't an actual wall, once again like B.net. Added value.
While that seems like it's so true and unchangeable, I beg to differ.
The problem here is indeed that companies can no longer charge players for their products. The solution however CANNOT be achieved by digging in and spending billions on trying to get things to where they were before. It's not possible.
Game companies have to realize that they cannot develop games with the same business model as they've done up until now. Not the big productions at least, smaller might get off with donation.
And it's not stealing. Downloading a game is exactly the same thing as producing another copy of a physical object. Would anyone mind if you copied a loaf of bread? No. Digital media is an interesting case where the first product costs a very large amount to produce, but where every subsequent product costs virtually zero. Theoretically, this should force prices down to virtually zero as well. Which is exactly what has happened.
Piracy sticks because of what it actually means to copy something and how it works, not because of failed legislation.
Not by a long shot. No one is ever going to be able to provide a service anywhere close to B.net for pirated games.
Tbh I like to be a paying customer and buy as many of the games/movies/cd's I like. You are the legal owner of that one copy and you can just about do whatever you want with it. No one can accuse you of stealing or say you don't support the developer/actors,studios etc/band you like.
There's no stopping piracy as it is now. Pirates will always be a few steps ahead of the big companies trying to stop the spread of their works, and since they only focus their energy on stopping people from downloading their stuff for free they aren't coming up with new, easy and cheaper ways to distribute their products. iTunes is a good choice, although some of the songs and albums are a bit pricey compared to a physical copy you can order online. Steam is great platform for games and I'm always on the lookout for awesome games for low prices. Movies.. if I really want to pay for a movie I just go see it at the movies downtown.
Digital distribution is the way to go, but it can't cost that much more than a physical copy and the prices shouldn't be too high to begin with, even though it takes several years to develop some things and people need to get paid, paying over 1/4 of what you bought the console for a game is insane imo.
Let's look at that. What happens to a product as supply rises? In general, prices fall. Normally, this stops at the point where selling a product for a lower price will result in a loss for the company. Usually this is when the raw materials simply cannot be gotten any cheaper, or you have to have a certain amount of labor. That's the lower limit.
Such as limit does not exist for digital products. Producing another one costs 0. Thus the price should eventually reach 0. The only reason it doesn't is because people somehow still buy these things, probably because it's illegal. Whether it's illegal or not has little effect on the economic side of thigs however, so long as it cannot be enforced. And as mentioned before, the only way to enforce it is through massive data surveillance.
It's not B.net that I was really talking about, I meant the LAN itself. If there was a LAN version of SC2 up for pirate then you might see some small conventions getting it for LAN for a small social competition. Though now that I've said that they all would've bought it in the first place... Oh well, argument is invalid regarding quality of service of LAN vs B.Net 2.0
But it's still valid for the removal of DRM's from some games where the DRM's actually can be very restrictive.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Stealing is stealing. Don't try to talk yourself into believing it's somehow more noble or less devious to steal from someone who is rich.
The problem with stealing from the "rich companies" is they're made up of thousands of people, and it has a trickle down effect. Eventually you're taking money out of Joe The Janitor's pocket. Obviously I'm talking about everyone pirating many things, not just you pirating one thing.
Don't like it, hardly ever do it, and the reasoning behind that is that the funds that you give those who made the thing your downloading deserve some form of credit for all the work they put into their creation. As an aspiring musician and hearing about how crucial album sales are, I feel bad for them because there are people who do pirate their music.
It's really sad, actually. But someone can just argue, "well, if they were serious about their art, they wouldn't want money anyway because you can't put a price on art."
To which I say, "if you were serious about liking that group, you would want to give them all the support you could give, fiscal or just spreading their name around. Also, taking into account how much effort they put into their art, you would probably expect some sort of payment if you were in their shoes."
So, really, I just feel like society doesn't need this. If anything, pay for music subscription services (Zune Pass, for example) and get Netflix and Gamefly. You're done because surely your money is working for you exponentially as opposed to paying $13 a CD and even more for a console game.
I hate the way you cling to ignorance and pass it off as innocence
My opinion is that capitalist principles can't be applied to information nowadays, we can't apply the same old principles for limited resources for virtually infinite capacity of reproducing one product on the internet, the very same law of supply and demand looses it's scope on this new territory of the economy.
I think that the companies has been asking themselves the wrong question since the beginning, it's not what they can do to stop piracy, but how can they profit from it, call it micro services, faster servers for MP features, merchandising, donations or whatever, imo the idea is not charging a few million people 100 dollars a game, but a few thousand million people 1 dollar (and then charge them again for that small thing they don't need to play the game but to "enhance" the experience)
kind of off-topic: I luv how we can talk about this in this forum, last year this thread would probably be deleted in a sec but now we can discuss it freely and not braking any rules, it says a lot about the community and the great work of mods and admins XD
OH! and welcome Aever1!! no go to the intro forum, make a thread, stay a while and post