You wouldn't download a car... would you?

View blog entry: You wouldn’t download a car… would you? – Twilight Lynk

As someone who used to pirate and shoplift all the time...

You get a lot, lot more fun out of something you own. At least I do. If I already own it, it isn't much of a problem to pirate it but I now try to buy things I know I have a digital backup with. Like Steam.

Meh, I think it's pretty clear that I have no morals, so for the most part I couldn't really give two shits about piracy. That being said, I try to buy my games when I can and when I feel that I will get my money's worth out of said game. Now make no mistake, I'll pirate games when I'm not sure if I want to buy them, let's see recently I've played Dragon Age: Origins and The Saboteur. After what I've played of them both, I am looking to buy DA:O when I have extra money, and I'm extremely glad I didn't waste money on The Saboteur.

I'm reminded of an interview, by John Riticiello (?) he's the head honcho at EA right now, and he stated that he sees piracy as an extended demo for a game. Basically he's saying that if someone is going to pirate the game in the first place, then no matter how inaccessible to pirate a game is made, you cannot force that person to buy the game. S/he'll either pirate it or ignore it. However, by the pirate playing the game for free, you at least have a chance to earn that person's money. I just think that is a very interesting perspective, personally there have been games I've pirated that have then convinced me to go out and buy the game and in the future, buy it's sequels.

On the topic of "I has cartridge/disc so therefore I has right to download ROM and warez!!11!!1". I'm pretty sure that legally it doesn't actually matter if you have the original cartridge, ROM's are still illegal. What I've been in the habit of doing lately though, at least for my PSP and DSLite is that I will download the .ISO or ROM of a game that I purchase, so that I can keep my games shrink wrapped "factory new". I was gonna type more but I forgot, so that's all.

on the ROMS issue:

if nintendo or whom ever wants to complain about them, then they should start reselling the snes/super famcom.

as for movies,
oh well, too bad so sad, cant really stop torrents...

as for mpfree's (hur hur):
plenty of sites on google that you can go to.

They are... what do you think Wii Virtual Console is all about, and the PS1 games sold on PSN?

Sorry, this is just more garbage about trying to justify what you do. Clearly he doesn't actually support piracy, he was just looking at how they can still make money off of it. Rent a game or download a demo if you're not sure you want to buy it.

On the other hand, downloading ROMs is kind of a grey area for me. I am certainly not as strongly opposed as I am straight up new game piracy as it's clearly not lost sales especially if you already own the game on a different platform.

Going into other platforms like music for a minute, I actually think this is worse than PC game piracy. A single song costs ninety-nine cents. I won't say that I've never downloaded music, though I don't anymore, I still have some of that music on my computer from when I used to.

Also: Modern Warfare 2 Most Pirated Game of 2009 | TorrentFreak
Not that I give a fuck about Activision losing money from MW2, but no one can say those 4 million PC downloads weren't lost sales. Pretty sure the PC version of that game actually sold well under 1 million units.

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Well piracy does suck through and through in my opinion, none of my games have ever been pirated i purchase all mine, but due to the pc priacy deal game stores are giving up on the games, in my local game store the shop has now got two shelves dedicated to pcs instead of 3 entire sections. due to torrents and pirates they are even considering removing all pc titles from their store chain. So that is how pc gaming is being effected here in Ireland.

derp

I dont really own consoles :P

Who the fuck said I'm trying to justify pirating for myself? I don't need to justify it to make myself not feel guilty because, as I'm pretty sure I've already said, I don't give two shits anyway. I'm pretty sure I know that the CEO of one of the biggest publishers doesn't actually support piracy. I was simply pointing out that he has an interesting attitude towards it. Basically he's saying, "if you can't stop it, try to use it to your advantage."

i have to admit his attitude is suprising but it does happen, there is also no need to take his head off like that moel =/ trying to keep the debate nice

no need to get pissed off at it D:

I've only pirated one game over the years, that said I still think It's an inevitable part of the business.

Evolution is a bitch sometimes.

It was this wasn't it.

Don't you care about PC gaming? Piracy is a HUGE reason why companies either just don't bother with the PC, or only bring out shoddy ports. How can you even blame Infinity Ward for making a shit PC version of MW2 when it was pirated at least 10 times more than it was actually bought?

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I don't get how people don't want to support the companies that make their favourite games.

Yes I care about PC gaming, but no I'm not going pay full price for a game I don't know I want. So if I want to try out that game I have two choices, rent or pirate, and guess what, the developer makes no money off either option. Not that I even know a of a place that rents PC games. Is it fair to the developers, no, do I care, no. If they want my money then they need to provide me with a great enough reason to give it to them otherwise it's not really fair to me either.

As far as Modern Warfare 2 goes, I'm sure that the amount of people that pirated CoD4:MW contributed greatly to their decision to make a shotty port for MW2. That is an unfortunate decision for them to have made. I don't have the numbers, and I'm not going to look it up, but I'm pretty sure that MW2 was pirated a lot more than CoD4:MW, most likely because people didn't want to pay because of the quality of the port.

I find it funny that I'm playing devil's advocate here.

I wish XD it was actually GTA: San Andreas

There is nothing about the other side of this argument for me that I can stand for. It's incredibly unrealistic to say people pirate games just to try them and then buy them if they like them (even if you've done it). Read reviews if you don't know if you'll like a game, that is what they are there for.

"This is a shoddy port." "PC games are buggy." "This game sucks on PC." All these reasons don't hold any weight. At the end of the day, real people are putting a lot of time in developing games. It doesn't matter if it's "fair" to you or not, if you don't think a game will be worth your money, don't play it.

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I don't ever recall claiming that the majority of people that pirate, do so as an extended demo. The point of this discussion is to present your own opinion and background on the topic and that is what I did. I consider my stance as the "grey area" on the issue of the morality of pirating. The "White Knights" buy every game they play, the "Corrupted" pirate ever game they can, and thus I'd fall somewhere in the middle.

Also it'd be incredibly unrealistic of me to expect that I would be able to present a facet of the pirating side of the discussion that you would be able to "stand for." After all, this is the internet, and opinions never change on the internet.

As far as using reviews to judge whether or not one should buy a game, no offense, but that is a horrible idea. Reviews, as they are written by an individual, are very opinionated and if this thread has proven anything, it's that rarely do opinions ever coincide with each other perfectly. I've played games that I've loved that were reviewed very harshly, and I've played games that garnered critical acclaim across the board and I found to be bland. No doubt you may certainly get an idea if you may or may not like a game from a review. However, you could get the same from a trailer, but you wont know for sure until you get your hands on the game for yourself.

Meh, it's the same game. The VirtualConsole version is really just a port of the SNES version, isn't it? I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

In the sliver of an off chance it isn't a port to an improved or different engine to match the new controller scheme...you may have comitted piracy.

If you wanted to get technical, the one you own is for the Wii VC, the rom you have is SNES... That's *about* where the differences end no?

The VC version: I'm just going to take a shot in the dark and guess they didn't REmake it for WiiVC (alike but with only negligible differences), but rather just ported it outright from the original to a new engine/controller scheme, etc.

So essentially, no you haven't comitted any thievery or piracy. It's extremely unlikely, anyways.

There is a real good probability you and anyone else with the VC version actually own a port of the SNES version--I mean why wouldn't nintendo port it? It's *their* game afterall.

I don't think that you did, personally. However I have no sources to back me, only probability and some business sense. If you are still having personal issues with it, I don't know what else to tell you except either buy Super Metroid on ebay (perhaps an SNES too if your conscience demands it), or just delete it off your machine.

BTW, great choice, my first laptop was a vaio. Only wish I knew where they still sold RAM chipsets for PCG-FRV 35.