Hi...and at the risk of sounding DUH!

LlamaGod · February 16, 2004

About software piracy, I dont see the big problem about it. Most games/companies have a large enough core of dedicated fans to generate a decent amount of sales and they are usually larger than the band of pirates.

Blaming poor sales on piracy is like the whole 'musicians are going poor because you're downloading music' sort of crap.

Rise · February 16, 2004

damn fast reply doesn't BLEEP around... its FAST

EDIT: no reason to curse, sorry :D

just testing fast reply

Exitium · February 16, 2004

Well okay, I guess you have a good point, Gromnir, but I still don't see why the law should favor the first world (e.g. USA! USA! USA!) and screw everybody else. I think that even though piracy is wrong, everyone should be allowed the same luxury of computer games as anybody living in the first world. I don't think these people should be penalized just because a few selfish publishers refuse to lower their prices for these countries. Don't they realize how detrimental it is to their own sales figures?

I'm pretty sure that if imported games cost as much as locally made ones in Asia did which are priced decently at 45 dollars in their own currency, rather than $45 US the imported games would sell just as well. In case you were wondering, locally made games in Asia do indeed sell well and are the only reason why games like Lineage and the Korean edition of Starcraft manage to sell better than the imported games. It's all comes down to idiocy on the part of the major publishers.

If anyone even thinks to mention the following sentence in any form: "If you live in a third world country... TOUGH!" I'll have to point that out as the reason why piracy is so rampant and why local governments don't even bother to do anything about it. A lot of these people see piracy as a solution to a problem that no one else will fix.

roshan · February 16, 2004

hi GSF. welcome to the forums.

Drakron · February 16, 2004

About software piracy, I dont see the big problem about it. Most games/companies have a large enough core of dedicated fans to generate a decent amount of sales and they are usually larger than the band of pirates.

Blaming poor sales on piracy is like the whole 'musicians are going poor because you're downloading music' sort of crap.

Developers, yes.

Publishers, no.

I liked Origin a lot but when EA assimilated Origin only thing left was UO.

Publishers are only as good as the games they sell, EA force power is their massive distibution network ... their ability to put a game on the market worldwide is rather impresive.

But tech support and how they handle affiliated companies is a disaster, anything that comes under EA became assimilated and the staff assigned to "big sellers" (The Sims, UO, FIFA) and the rest abandoned ... EA dismantle then and puter their IP in a vault "just in case" (like Wing Commander recently).

Publishers are trhe ones that scream "bloody muder" with piracy, devopers usually dont have as must to gain as publishers.

It resumes to one word ... profit.

Exitium · February 16, 2004

... and it annoys! Publishers like Electronic Arts and Herve Caen's Interplay annoy me to no end. Sometimes I even wonder why anyone would feel bad for ripping them off when all it means is that the boss can't buy his 19th Porsche.

roshan · February 16, 2004

... and it annoys! Publishers like Electronic Arts and Herve Caen's Interplay annoy me to no end. Sometimes I even wonder why anyone would feel bad for ripping them off when all it means is that the boss can't buy his 19th Porsche.

not to promote anything illegal or anything, but i bought a pirated copy of dark alliance, and i will most probably also buy pirated copies of fobos and da2, if i decide that im going to play them.

Exitium · February 16, 2004

More power to you.

Revolver · February 16, 2004

Now that the dollar's in a free-fall, I wonder if we will be seeing better game prices outside of the US. (It's probably not what the European developers want to hear though...)

Gromnir · February 16, 2004

perhaps fergie can explain why games is so much more expensive in asia and europe. we do know that people is often a little confused 'bout the relative costs of development v. distribution, but in any case, we has a hard time working up compassion for folks stealing luxury items.

*shrug*

you know, we spent some time in spain teaching and we was always amazed at how cheap good clothes was... 'specially leather goods like shoes. when we got back to the u.s. we did not decide that we would henceforth steal shoes 'cause we seen 'em cheaper in spain.

HA! Good Fun!

roshan · February 16, 2004

i only buy original copies of games i enjoy. its my way of objecting to the evil game companies which only make stuff for the mass market and dont pay attention to the quality of their products.

~Di · February 16, 2004

Bah. A bunch of spoiled geeklings stealing luxury items like video games then whinng about how impoverished they are 'cause games cost too much... *foot stamping here, for emphasis*... makes me wonder if I should laugh or cry. Stealing games that require top of the line, high-tech computers just to run 'em, then sobbing about poverty and how games cost too much is pretty lame. The 'morality only at my convenience' theme doesn't cut too much sympathy with most judges... or most parents either, although that may have changed lately, from what I read from folks who see nothing wrong with helping themselves to stuff that doesn't belong to them, then blaming the victims for allowing themselves to be robbed.

Piracy has put one heck of a dent in too many industries to name (not that those who steal music, videos, movies, whatever, gave a fat rat's patooty about the livelihood of others). I just read in the newspaper this weekend about two more video rental stores and a music store shutting down; the owners say that their business is reduced to near zero because their previous customer base now gets all the music and movies they want for free... downloading illegal copies off the internet.

So some of y'all steal because you can, because you'd rather spend your money elsewhere, or because it's a thrill. That's between you, your parents, your clergy and your God. It's still stealing, and what you are stealing is money rightfully earned by someone else.

End of my semi-annual rant on this topic. For the moment.

roshan · February 16, 2004

"Stealing games that require top of the line, high-tech computers just to run 'em,"

an average pc costs 30k, an average game costs 3k.

"Piracy has put one heck of a dent in too many industries to name (not that those who steal music, videos, movies, whatever, gave a fat rat's patooty about the livelihood of others). I just read in the newspaper this weekend about two more video rental stores and a music store shutting down; the owners say that their business is reduced to near zero because their previous customer base now gets all the music and movies they want for free... downloading illegal copies off the internet."

no, this isnt true. these are just inflated figures. 95% of piraters would have never bought a game if the pirated copy wasnt available.

"So some of y'all steal because you can, because you'd rather spend your money elsewhere, or because it's a thrill. That's between you, your parents, your clergy and your God. It's still stealing, and what you are stealing is money rightfully earned by someone else."

majority of asians dont see anything wrong with piracy. in asia parents get pissed off at kids for wasting money when they buy orig games.

Exitium · February 16, 2004

Money 'rightfully' earned by publishers who have too much money to even fit into the banks who overcharge their products on purpose because they know they can make a small killing from the people who buy their products?

Wow, pity them that they won't be seeing their 18th Jaguar because some acne-riddled kid refuses to spend his monthly salary on a game and has to instead spend it on college fees.

Not too long ago (in the 1980s) CEOs had a monthly salary of $20,000 dollars. It was considered good money, and still is, but somewhere along the line they decided to boost their income into the 6 to 7 figure zone, bankrupting their companies, inflating the economy and amassing a large fortune for themselves in the process. What the hell happened to balance? If this keeps up, you regular folk with your regular salaries will become poor in 10-20 years because your money will be considered valueless compared to the billions of dollars held by the top 1%. Yeah, that's a society I want to live in. Yeah, pity them.

Exitium · February 16, 2004

'Theft' is largely a concept invented by the rich Lords to protect their own interests. Their refusal to share their goods and services with the rest of the community and their monopoly on certain assets (e.g. food, masonry, clothing) was a successful bid to force others to 'work for a living' by working for them. By working for the wealthy, the serfs were given the services and resources they required to live. If they were more productive, their employers would have more wealth, and having more wealth meant having an excess of goods, which they would occasionally share with their serfs, as a reward for their productivity. Now, if a person took something without working for it, it was considered an act of 'theft' and the person, the 'freeloader' was branded a 'thief' by the Lords so that the other serfs would feel betrayed and cheated by this thief and penalize him for his actions. This is of course, the most classic case of misdirection. Instead of criminalizing theft, the serfs should have, more or less, rebelled against their lords for hoarding the damn resources in the first place.

I believe that people should work for a living, but I don't believe that a single person, or party, should be allowed to hoard and amass resources for distribution, as a middleman, making a huge sum of money based on the work that other people do. People should be allowed to trade and barter their own materials and resources without some fat jackass keeping it all to himself and thriving off the market of supply and demand by monopolizing the most wanted resources and selling them at a steep price, creating a biased economy (in favor of making himself rich). It's shrewd, but I don't think cruelty should be awarded with wealth.

If you work hard, and if you work for somebody else, just ask yourself why your work doesn't even pay you as much as your boss gets. Chances are, he just sits around the office and tells people to do the thinking for him while he makes money out of other people's efforts. This is essentially the basis of publishing. Just don't get it mixed up with distribution, because distribution actually takes some work.

roshan · February 16, 2004

the problem is that western game companies are trying to exploit asians by charging higher prices in the region. if you look at western clothing, perfume or fast food, you will see that their prices here are less then 1/3rd of what they are in the west. this is because they decrease prices so that the market can afford it and thus they can make sales.

on the other hand, computer game companies in the region despite having local publishers who have much less costs due to the cheap labor and materials in asia charge even more here. thus no one can afford computer games and it has become a social norm for you to pirate software. if you buy original games in asia people look at you as if youve gone insane and regard you as being a stupid person for wasting so much money.

if the prices for original games were cheaper here and are decreased by the same level as other products then at least half the piraters would switch to original games.

mkreku · February 16, 2004

Maybe piracy is just the common man's way of expressing an opinion?

If I didn't get free games for being a games reviewer (one hell of a benefit!) I would probably get pirated games. Why? Because, as many have said, it is just a game, a luxury, and it is certainly not worth 500 SEK (68-69 american dollar) to buy just one game. If there weren't pirated copies, what could people do to protest against computer game prices? Not buy the games? Well, the problem with game distributors is that they're smart. They hire economists who calculate exactly where the fine line of "too much" is, and then they put the price of their games just below that line, to be able to make as much profit as possible, and people keep buying the games even though they cost a lot because it still costs below their threshold of "too much".

Piracy gives people a fair chance to "vote" in the matter. Instead of making the personal sacrifice of having to tell their kids "Sorry kid, you're not getting any games this year. Daddy's protesting.", they can still play the games (at the risk of viruses, without manuals, having to deal with strange installation guides and so on) while sending a message to distributors that the price is too high.

If distributors of games would lower the prices to acceptable levels, noone would bother with pirated games. Who wouldn't want an original Ultima cloth map, for example?

Gromnir · February 16, 2004

"Because, as many have said, it is just a game, a luxury, and it is certainly not worth 500 SEK (68-69 american dollar) to buy just one game."

then don't buy. that is how the system works you know. if you not buy, and nobody else buys, then eventually the price will drop.

*shrug*

this moralist perspective is an interesting take on economics... how very bolshevik. if a person wants to steal a game they can rationalize by noting that the publisher or developer is getting far too much money compared to labor they invested in product? a big mean developer deserves to be stolen from if he is gonna overcharge.

wonder how most consumers would like such return scrutiny.

go into store to buy a new pair of levis and have merchant question you

Nightblade · February 16, 2004

again, we is talking 'bout the "justified" theft of luxury items.

Gromnir · February 16, 2004

"Just because I have a computer, doesn't mean I'm filthy rich, and can afford to spend 60-70 US dollars (500 NOK) on a game."

then don't buy it.

is lots of stuff we want and can't have. maybe you gotta wait til price drops on game you want. maybe instead of getting 4 pc games next year you only get 2. maybe you just not get the damn thing.

again... these is luxury items. has nothing to do with rich or poor. is non-essential items that every single one of you can do without. steal such an item is inexcusable as far as we can see.

HA! Good Fun!

Iolo · February 16, 2004

I agree. The higher price of games does not excuse piracy. Game companies are a company. They need to make a return on their investment and they preferably want to make that return beyond the original cost of investment as soon as possible. There is a tradeoff here between cost of game and perhaps more sales due to a lower priced game. The price that you see games at at Amazon or in stores is not the price that the publiser receives either. There is the middleman, the distributor, who buys at one price from the publisher and sells at a higher price to the end company who in turn sells at a slightly higher price to the actual consumer. Of that $50-$60 game you see at Electronic Boutique, the publisher may only receive $36-$40. If you buy directly from the company's own online store, you are actually giving them a better return on their investment.

Like Gromnir says, this is a luxury. And you don't need to be rich either to afford it. As someone who works in the software industry myself, I am against piracy. If you have a favorite developer, support that developer by buying their games. It will trickle down from the publisher to the developer anyhow. I am fairly certain that this is just the economics of today's environment and nothing at all to do with being greedy. I suggest you go and look at EA's or Interplay's or other company's actual sales and profit margins and tell me they are still money grubbing. Interplay by the way aren't making money.

roshan · February 16, 2004

stealing is wrong, but is piracy stealing? morality is largely taught to us by the society we live in. so a majority of asians will not say that piracy is stealing - they just arent taught that its wrong.

time magazine had an article about asian culture and the wests impact on it. in their how to tell if youre an asian list, they included "you dont dream of paying the full price for a dvd etc"(paraphrased by me).

Iolo · February 16, 2004

stealing is wrong, but is piracy stealing? morality is largely taught to us by the society we live in. so a majority of asians will not say that piracy is stealing - they just arent taught that its wrong.

time magazine had an article about asian culture and the wests impact on it. in their how to tell if youre an asian list, they included "you dont dream of paying the full price for a dvd etc"(paraphrased by me).

Piracy is stealing. You are robbing the publisher and the developer of that game the revenue that they deserve for making the game, not to mention the retailers and the distributors of that game. Just because many people in Asia do it or have done it doesn't make it right.

roshan · February 16, 2004

stealing is wrong, but is piracy stealing? morality is largely taught to us by the society we live in. so a majority of asians will not say that piracy is stealing - they just arent taught that its wrong.

time magazine had an article about asian culture and the wests impact on it. in their how to tell if youre an asian list, they included "you dont dream of paying the full price for a dvd etc"(paraphrased by me).

Piracy is stealing. You are robbing the publisher and the developer of that game the revenue that they deserve for making the game, not to mention the retailers and the distributors of that game. Just because many people in Asia do it or have done it doesn't make it right.

why? if asians didnt pirate the game, then they would still not buy the orig game since they cant afford it. so how does it cause lost revenue to the publisher if asians pirate?

Nightblade · February 16, 2004

I agree. The higher price of games does not excuse piracy.

We're not talking about piracy. At least, I'm not. (Of course, maybe you weren't replying to my post, in which case, please excuse the quote). Dloading a game and testing it, or borrowing it from a friend, maybe copying the CD's, testing it to see if you like it, is as I see it, a necessity. How would you feel if you bought ToEE for 70 US dollars, just to find out you think it stinks after half-an hour.

Piracy is big distribution, copying games to sell them cheaper than your local distributor. That's a no-no.

Hi...and at the risk of sounding DUH!

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