Thorton_AP

Actually World of Warcraft still requires you to buy the game before playing it as well (something I've never been a huge fan of, but wasn't a deal breaker for me).

I'd argue that there are plenty of free, public domain games out there that you can play. Unless you're looking for a 1:1 relationship in that there is no free equivalent of Dragon Age. As you say though, games require a lot more than being just a good programmer. However, if acquiring free software is a stress relief or source of entertainment (or whatever) for someone in a financially strapped situation, why is the public domain of free games insufficient? The big difference between game crackers and those that make freely available software is that the crackers aren't actually making the software. They are merely taking someone else's work and making it available to others for no/low cost. This is a huge difference as it requires orders of magnitude less resources to take someone else's work and alter it. I think your analogy is an exceptionally poor one.

Michael Fitch, of Iron Lore entertainment made a post here attributing part of the companies downfall to piracy. It's not really quantified in any way though so I find a lot of people indifferent/supportive of piracy just dismiss it. He comments that not only do pirates contribute via lost sales, but also because the first pirated copies of Titan Quest were a "quick and dirty hack job" that didn't work properly resulting in false impressions of the game. In my mind, piracy is a net negative on the industry. I am skeptical that it's "demo/review/I buy more games than I otherwise wouldn't" group outweighs the "Meh, I can get games for free so why not" group, and even beyond that, piracy is leading to a marginalization of the PC Gaming industry (I don't think it's dying, but it's remained stagnant in spite of heavy growth elsewhere and great market availability). Piracy is also responsible for the DRM that so many people seem to hate.

I'd bet money that this sect of people is a lot smaller than you think. Software piracy is pretty much just economics. You can get something for cheaper, with no fear of retribution. Every now and then you get Ubisoft putting an outright challenge to them (which was just retarded), but if people are still butthurt over Origin, Bullfrog, and Westwood, they need to learn to move on.

If Malcador doesn't wish to invest in the industry that provides him with entertainment, that's his prerogative. Sounds like it's become a Tragedy of the commons where people like himself rationalize it as being so tiny of an impact that whether or not he pirates doesn't impact anything. The issue is when many people all make the same rationalization.

"Only" 22,000 games? What do you mean by "22,000 games?" Nah, just his continued employment, salary growth, and other such stuff like that. What you just said here demonstrates you don't actually know how economies work. Companies that fail to make sufficient profits are unable to improve the wages of their employees, or worse yet, maintain their employment regardless. This goes for every business.

Surely you can't be serious!?

Am I the only person that finds this math to be somewhat of the "funny math?"

I'd say yes for Pripyat alone.

I got a BoS update.

It makes for a more effective filter then because it's harder to interpret what is being said.

I think his point was more to the lines that in some places games are overpriced ridiculously as to eliminate purchasing them as an option entirely. Therefore pirating it via torrent or some Chinese store becomes more appealing than it would. And for them, definitely not a lost sale. Most likely the reality of the situation, but I suppose we must get righteously angry over it still (not our money in any event so ) Hm, wonder how come no one's mentioned that 'entitlement' buzzword yet. Yay at least 1 person who read the thread really understand what i was really talking about... Here a sweet and crunchy chocolate cookie for you My last post about this theme in this thread, no more hijacking from now on. I am pretty sure I understand what you're talking about. You acquire games for free because you feel they are too expensive. Or is this not actually the case?

You'd be surprised how much blood could splatter with the body being actually no where near death.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA You started the what ifs when you said that the world would be better if organized religion wasn't involved. EDIT: Hurlshot pointed this out already. How much longer before you begin your persecution complex? XD XD XD

And the inquisition? That was misunderstood as well in your mind I suppose too. Bible bleeding hearts like you are a dime a dozen from my travels. Always making up rationals for atrocities committed by (their) faith/organized religion. But what's your excuse? I am a ordained Wiccan minister. Last I knew no wars, genocides or mass atrocities were ever committed in the name of Wicca. But if I missed one please do point it out. This is probably more of a symptom of how marginalized Wicca is, compared to other religions. Self-righteous people such as you are also a dime a dozen, that **** all over organized religion because it's in vogue. I have seen people be pompous **** in the name of Wicca however. Fortunately you're not influential enough to actually spawn anything resembling a mass atrocity. And I am agnostic btw.

Uhhhhh, would you say that the PC gaming market has boomed with the console gaming market? There's a reason why the primary platforms for development are the consoles EDIT: pmp10 wins. I am not a fan of DRM, and I blame the pirates for making it exist.

The whole picture being that you feel validated in pirating your games because you think they're too expensive?

I actually enjoyed Dragon Rising. After getting killed (or seeing my CO get killed) during the tutorial of ArmA II, I was quickly turned off of the game. I loved the original Operation Flashpoint, but Dragon Rising was a lot of fun to play with friends.

It seems more like it'll be damage reduction via a percentage, rather than a fixed value. I know a lot of games that have similar systems.

The way I read it was that they were going to work with torrent services (or something like that) to find users. I sort of envisioned them embedding something into a torrent. I remember when a friend of mine got a letter from his ISP stating that they had detected him downloading copyrighted material (a movie. Star Wars Ep2 I think...). I'm guessing that this information is not embedded into the actual content. If the information gathered can only be gathered via the actual torrent and is not related to the game data in any way, wouldn't it be impossible for a legit user to be a false positive? EDIT: I see: spoofed IPs.

He seems to be saying just the opposite.

Yeah.. And the console crowd thinks we "PC elitists" are being stupid when we whine about games being more and more dumbed down. Thank god there are still sadistic GRPG's around. I think you only become a PC elitist when you blame consoles, as opposed to a non-platform specific pandering for the masses, for this. It's interesting, really, the change just between Modern Warfare 1 and this is pretty staggering. MW1 was fully dependent on YOUR ( the player's) ability to keep advancing continuously. This was already scaled back with MW2, and now you're just a bystander while the rest of the team advances. MW2 had the solo sections, and even when you had your team with you, they didn't seem quite so omnipotent as these guys do. I haven't played Black Ops, but I hated that my allies were useless in other CoD games.

I think the game looks pretty phenomenal personally.

Of course you can melee Deathclaws. It just takes few perks and a sensible weapon. In fallout 1&2 it required a power armor but now that it is meaningless it easier than ever. I watched a friend of mine melee a deathclaw to death in FO1 with a knife and the leather jacket. Which one? The respawning ones near gun runners would kill player in 2 criticals and attacked up to 3 times per turn so that would take plenty reloads for sever criticals to occur. If you mean the quest releated one in hub then he was wounded at start IIRC. I think it was the one in Hub. He would poke it, and had enough movement points that he just ran away and the deathclaw couldn't keep up.

Of course you can melee Deathclaws. It just takes few perks and a sensible weapon. In fallout 1&2 it required a power armor but now that it is meaningless it easier than ever. I watched a friend of mine melee a deathclaw to death in FO1 with a knife and the leather jacket.