And did you not read the post from frogboy saying in the end, those that do something will win out? Oh, but frogboy is an idiot who doesn't know what he is talking about, apparently.

I mean what should these companies do? Nothing while there games are being stolen?

You guys are mad at the companies, when you should be MAD at the pathetic theives out there who can't pay a tank's worth of gas for a game.

Of course some of you guys think putting lots of copy right protection on a game isn't nearly as bad as pirating games.

Thats the way are society is. The criminals have more rights and freedoms than the righteous.

This is such utter misinformed horsecrap. Copy protection DOES NOT STOP PIRACY! Most games are online for download on or before release date. The software companies are not stupid. They know this. In fact someone I know who works for a well known software company has said that these days it's more and more about control (just what else will this Securom check be doing?) and also that stores like WalMart prefer product with copy protection.

In fact you should THANK the pirates actually, since if you ever encounter a game, as I have on many occasions, that WILL NOT RUN due to the copy protection not liking your system (Neverwinter Nights for example), you can thank PIRATES for enabling you to actually run the software you've paid for. After all, you won't be able to return it for a refund as you've opened it and could copied this COPY PROTECTED PRODUCT.

If pirates were REALLY to blame, Gal Civ II wouldn't have sold a zillion copies. In my experience, Gal Civ II is one of the most pirated games I've ever seen. I see it pop up all over the place. And yet it still sold by the bucket load.

I am so sick of this overly simplistic antipiracy nonsense. There is far more too it than just "GRRR! PIRATES!"

Be nice if Valve could get Spore on Steam. About the only games I buy anymore are electronically purchased. I don't pirate the games that you only get in the stores. I simply don't bother with them.

The key to beating piracy is just make it less hassle to BUY the games. With Steam it's now EASIER to BUY a game than pirate it. You have to download anyway, but you don't have to muck about with cracks etc... I've bought a lot of games on Steam that I simply wouldn't have bought had it been on disk only, because I prefer not to have drivers secretly installed system.

But yeah, far easier to blame the pirates than criticize the blinkered thinking of an entire industry.

[quote]Of course some of you guys think putting lots of copy right protection on a game isn't nearly as bad as pirating games.[quote]

Ok my bad. I meant to say that some of you guys think pirating games isn't nearly as bad as excessive copy right protection.

Depends -- do I actually have internet wherever I happen to be living?

I "got along" fine for 3 years with my only internet being through the school. Alas, I can hardly take my desktop to school with me, unlike a thumb drive.

Pay for your damn games. You filthy pirate. You act like piracy isn't wrong. Its stealing. You are a theif if you download a game for free that a programmer slaved to produce hour after hour to make. Its no different than stealing someone's lunch, stealing someone's wallet, etc.

Also, has it dawned on you that galcivs sold a ton of games because its good? Not because it had minimal to no anti piracy in it?

"OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Spore is awesome BUT I WILL NOT BUY THIS GAME BECAUSE HEAVEN FORBID I HAVE TO CONNECT TO THE INTERNET EVERY 10 DAYS!!!! Never mind the fact that you would almost certainly want to connect to the internet anyway to download the inevitable patches for it. Fine don't buy it. Your loss.

Comparing piracy to stealing a physical item is a horrible comparasion.

Piracy is more like finding something you need (headphones, a tool, ect) on the ground, but wouldn't pay for in a store.
Basically, most people who pirate things would never have bought them.

Most people I know pirate music. Do they go screaming down the halls "YOUR HURTING THE ARTISTS!!"?


There's 2 types of arguments for piracy on the Internet.
Piracy is good and the current business model for buying games is outdated.
Piracy is bad and anyone who pirates deserves to burn in hell.

I pirate alot of stuff, I'll be honest about that. If I play the game alot, I'll buy it. Alot of people are like that.

Hahaha, all 1 patch to be released...
Hold on a second...

The second will come out a year later and fix maybe 1/4 the bugs. All the while new worse ones shall arise!

And whats your basis for assumming this? The company?

Horrible comparison. Maybe someone accidently dropped their headphones, tool, etc. on the ground and doesn't realize it until later? They rush back to see if its still there, then shake their head as they realized some idiot stole it.

You are enjoying for free what programmers and others have slaved over for months, maybe years. You are offering no compensation for their efforts. How is this different from me taking milk from the cow farmer who worked months to get the cows fat so they can produce milk? Please provide detailed, reasoned arguments why piracy in any form is perfectly ok and how it is different from stealing..

I find this very disappointing. I was really looking forward to Spore. I hate going through all the DRM BS when I legally bought the game. It only hurts the consumer, and the pirates just break the DRM. At least it doesn't add any background programs. Hopefully it doesn't collect any info either.

Stealing is stealing. You're taking something without paying for it. Don't give me this "finding something on the ground" rationalization bullshit.



Yeah, that business model of exchanging currency for goods and services is so outdated. When will these companies get with the times and start giving everything away for free?

Wow, look at that! I can create strawmen too, idiot.



A lot of people lie.

Stealing is stealing. Don't pretend it's anything else, and don't act like stealing music and software is some goddamned moral crusade.

No, it's the company's loss, and that's why companies that use nasty copy protection are being just as dumb as you are.

Let's play a questions-and-answers game, shall we?

Q: Has anyone ever refused to buy a game because of invasive copy protection?
A: Yes.

Q: Has anyone ever not been able to play a game because of invasive copy protection that malfunctioned?
A: Yes.

Q: Has invasive copy protection ever made a customer angry at the company, and therefore lessened their opinion of said company and their products?
A: Yes.

Q: Has invasive copy protection ever stopped a game from being pirated?
A: No.

Q: Given these facts, is invasive copy protection a wise move for your business?
A: ____ <- Fill in the blank yourself. Hint: It has two letters.

COPY PROTECTION DOES NOT STOP PIRATES.
It's only purpose is to make money for the people who develop copy protection software.

And before you start slinging insults at me, I'm not a pirate. I'm a game developer with over twenty major releases on my resume.

Copy protection is the reason why I went into piracy in the first place (back when F.E.A.R. came out and bear in mind I actually had over 100 legit games, only a few non that were gifts from long before). After getting locked out of FEAR, SWEAW, Act of War and a few other games that I bought legitimately one right after the other, combined with periodic lockouts from other games (all caused by copy protection) and device driver conflicts with Starforce lagging my system to about a quarter speed for the better part of a year, I decided "f** this, I'm already being treated like one, I might as well get the benefits" (I actually believed that).

Nowadays (since December-ish '05) I have grow out of it and found other, better, non-pirate methods of getting good games without much of the trouble (and disappointment that comes with buying the hype). It's off topic, but I can elaborate if asked, but it does result in me buying ALL my games again, though only a fraction's worth (I used to get 15-30 games a year, now it's 3-5 if I go really spend happy).

Why is it?

I have x money I'm going to spend on games. I'm not going to magically buy more games just because there are more games I'm interested in than I have money to spend on them. If, instead of passing on them, I "steal" them, who have I hurt? Where is the effect of the wrong I've committed?

The answer is nowhere, such piracy has no victim because there is no loss to anyone. If the software wasn't going to be purchased if it wasn't for the act of piracy, nothing bad happened. It is at the worst, morally ambiguous.

Anti-piracy measures though. Where is the wrong in the currently discussed method? Assuming people can read, nowhere. It states an internet connection is required to play, asinine, but not harmful. As long as they aren't defrauding customers on release because the servers crash or something, not anymore damaging than victimless piracy is. The less benign versions though? How does a 30% drop in system performance sound? Zero level drivers opening your system up to attacks by outsiders? Your computer being hijacked and functions disabled just in case you decide to use your legitimate burning software to make copies to send to all your friends? Wearing out your drives with incessant cd checks, wearing out your cd's by requiring them to be in the drive without any valid reason? I've put up with more bullshit from anti-piracy measures causing problems than I have just plain buggy software, and you know how much of that is out there. I don't steal games, I have a whole stack of them sitting on top of my tower, and more in carrying cases. It does nothing but harm me to put inconveniences into my games that I buy.

Now, if instead of spending my money on games, I pirate them simply because I can, and blow that money I would have spent on something else, there is indeed a lost sale and someone has lost potential income. This can be considered equivalent to actual theft. Of course, you still haven't actually taken something from someone, and a minuscule portion of piracy can even laughably be attributed to actual lost sales. The idiots that try to say every download of a game is a lost sale are just that, idiots.

Gaming is a luxury, a luxury very low down the list, and very expensive. Most pirates aren't going to bother if they can't pirate, which is why the rise in piracy has done dick to sales numbers. They like to point to the huge levels of piracy compared to sales, but they never point out that the industry has been steadily expanding at a relatively stable rate despite those alarming increases.

Additional note, since I can't edit my post:

Stealing is stealing and piracy is stealing and stealing is wrong.

That, however, is a totally different subject.

What's being discussed here is copy protection, and that does not stop stealing.

Publishers count every pirated copy of a game as a lost sale. The ugly truth, however, is that the vast majority of those pirates would never have bought the game, and the worst-case scenario is that the piracy is acting as word-of-mouth advertisement for their game.