Why I Think It Is GOOD To Pirate Commercial Games

[beetle]

I've been gaming since 1985, with the Atari 2600.

I still got my Atari 2600 that me and my sister used to play when we were kids. It still works.

[Shotgunner]

As do I beetle Along with all the others I've gotten over the years.

[Ratcatcher]

As do I beetle Along with all the others I've gotten over the years.

And many games on those systems are still better than the cookie cutter crap we see today.

[Shotgunner]

Agreed. Every FPS these days tries to be like COD or Battlefield, every RPG tries to emulate Final Fantasy, every RTS(not that there are many of them) tries to emulate Command & Conquer......it's sad.

And yet, some people still shell out good money for a "revision" of last year's game. Especially true with sports games - what, did they finally make it so a single button will throw the damn ball?

@ Tessera - if it involved some of the "booth babes" from the Tokyo Game Show, I'd wrap my shaft with a $100 bill - but that's just me.

[Cat]

Nothing wrong with stealing form a corporation with all the shit their doing, but I do think it wrong to steal form the truly independent or from local business.

[Tessera]

Nothing wrong with stealing form a corporation with all the shit their doing...

Tell me who the biggest thieves in America are.

If you don't know, then you'll find their names listed in the Wall Street Journal.

Stealing from thieves is not stealing. It's getting your money back.

It's justice.

[kevx74]

I've never been of the mind that piracy was bad for business. As a matter of fact there are more than a few games I would have never bought, much less played, if not for piracy. I would have never bought nor played any of my Elder Scrolls or Mass Effect games. The way I see it if someone pirates a game and they like it, not only are the chances of them actually buying that game going up but then they spread word of mouth and will more than likely get a few other people to buy it also. I pirated Morrowind and Mass Effect and since then have bought both and the 2 consecutive games after them, none of which I would have if I wouldn't have exposed myself to those in the first place. I don't pirate a lot of games, but I'm not gonna take a chance on paying $50-$70 for a game that sucks either, although I did pay too much for Jagged Alliance: BIA when I much prefer JA2. 

[Tessera]

With regards to online piracy, I've either read or heard some skeptical comments from various people over the years. Skeptical with regards to how effective online piracy could be, as a means of peaceful protest against corporate greed and corporate megalomania.


So... does online piracy actually hurt the big digital media companies..?

Note that when I say "digital media companies," I'm referring to any and all companies who engage in the selling of such digital media as games, movies, music, software applications, and so on.

First, we need to estimate the total number of people who at least occasionally engage in some form of online piracy. That number varies considerably, depending upon who you want to believe. The lowest number that I have seen is around 50 million people, worldwide. The highest number that I have seen is that there are over 100 million people in this world who have engaged in online piracy at least once. The actual, correct number is undoubtedly somewhere in-between those two extremes. But to be scientific about this, let's just stick to using the lowest number... 50 million.

Okay, so we have at least 50 million people worldwide who have engaged in online piracy, in one form or another.

Next we need to "guesstimate" with regards to how much money that translates to, in the form of lost revenues. This is rather difficult, because the stuff that most people pirate these days can vary wildly, in terms of its street value. Some people pirate music, for example... and these days, your average music CD costs somewhere around $10 USD. Other people pirate little things that are worth even less... maybe only $5 USD. But there are also lots and lots of people who pirate more valuable things, such as rips of BluRay DVD movies, which often sell for as much as $100 for a boxed set. And there are still more valuable things that people pirate, such as commercial software packages (eg: AutoCad, 3D StudioMax, etc.) that can sell for as much as $1000 USD.

So the exact dollar amount of lost revenues due to online piracy is unknown. But once again, we're going to remain scientific about this, and choose the lowest number -- roughly $5 USD. And we'll do this with the knowledge that the actual cumulative total of lost revenues is almost certainly going to be quite a bit higher than the result that we come up with here.

Let's do the math, then...

If 50 million people each pirate something that is worth at least $5 USD, then the cumulative total in lost revenues for the digital media industry comes to... TAH DAH...

$2,500,000,000 USD. That's two-point-five BILLION dollars, folks. And remember that we're being VERY conservative with our estimates here. The real, actual number may be as high as ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS. We're talking about SERIOUS money here, folks. There isn't a company in this world that would look at those numbers and consider them to be "negligible," or "a good tax write-off," or "unimportant in the long run." On the contrary... they'd shit their pants.

So for those of you who doubt whether online piracy is actually an effective way to protest against digital greed, then my aanswer is simple: why don't you send an e-mail to any large corporation of your choosing, and ask them if they feel okay about losing 2.5 billion dollars in annual revenues. I already know what their answer will be... right after they finish taking a shit on the floor of their office, that is.

But you go ahead and ask them for yourselves.  

[finalphoenix]

I have no idea if piracy actually hurts these companies or not. Who says a pirate would pay for something if he couldn't steal it? Maybe he would just give it a pass all together?

You've thought this out quite a bit more than I have though, so I'll just go with your line of thinking.

Though, I do appreciate knowing that I'm not the only person on the planet who didn't get mad enough to get put on death row the last time I shelled out cash for some piece of software that simply didn't work and the publisher laughed at me while wiping their ass with my money.

I would buy any software that I need and pay good for it too. If it worked. However, they won't let you try it out first. Oh no, fuck you! Non-refundable cash up front only! Oh, you installed it and it doesn't do shit? Well fuck-a yooo twice!! Hahahaha!

It's nuts. But when I come up on a new task I need to perform and I need a little app, I end up going through at least 4 different ones before I find one that at least half ass does it's job. I have to install at least 12 before I find one that's the shit. Had I paid for all that..? I'd be one broke dick bastard.

Plus, you speak of whores.. You can't find any sort of site who does reviews of software that you can trust. They ALL lie. But, you can ask a pirate and they'll shoot you straight. What kind of fucked up situation is that? (I mean it makes sense, but it's kind of ass backwards in that legitimate legal people will lie to your face, while the thievish outlaw types will shoot you straight even though they keep their identity hidden.)

[Tessera]

I have no idea if piracy actually hurts these companies or not.

Oh please... of course you know that it hurts them.

If it didn't hurt them, then why would they go to all sorts of trouble to prevent it..? Online requirements, cloud storage of critical game files, encryption, DRM... you name it. All of those things cost the company lots of money to institute and enforce. Plus most of those anti-piracy schemes hurt their honest customers almost as much as they hurt the pirates, which fosters quite a bit of ill will.

So why would they bother going through all of that, unless they had a very serious financial reason for doing so..?

Their actions speak louder than words. Online piracy hurts them VERY badly... to the tune of literally hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

[finalphoenix]

Point taken. I wasn't looking at it from a realistic angle.

[PrairieEagle]

I agree with all of what you are saying and is actually the reason why I almost always wait to buy games. Thanks to Steam and it's sales, the likelihood that a decent game that ends up with a billion add-ons (all of which EA will make you pay for) goes on sale is very high. It's only when a game that would have cost me 50 I can get for 5 do I buy it.

This does mean I end up years behind everyone else, but then again my computers tend to be as well, so there is no problem.

If I do want a game now though, I will pirate it.

[Tessera]

The following is a copy of an article that I found on the web. I did not write it, but it seems like good information...



5 Ways To Download Torrents Anonymously

Thanks to Torrentfreak


With anti-piracy outfits and dubious law-firms policing BitTorrent swarms at an increasing rate, many Bittorrent users are looking for ways to hide their identities from the outside world. To accommodate this demand we'll give an overview of 5 widely used privacy services.

With an increasing number of BitTorrent users seeking solutions to hide their identities from the outside world, privacy services have seen a spike in customers recently.
Below we've listed some of the most-used services that allow BitTorrent users to hide their IP-addresses from the public.

The services discussed in this post range from totally free to costing several dollars a month.
The general rule is that free services are generally slower or have other restrictions, while paid ones can get you the same speeds as your regular connection would.


VPN (strongly recommended!)

Hundreds and thousands of BitTorrent users have already discovered that a virtual private network (VPN) is a good way to ensure privacy while using BitTorrent.
For a few dollars a month VPNs route all your traffic through their servers, hiding your IP address from the public.
Some VPNs also offer a free plan, but these are significantly slower and not really suited for more demanding BitTorrent users.

Unlike the other services listed in this article, VPNs are not limited to just BitTorrent traffic, they will also conceal the source of all the other traffic on your connection too.
BTGuard, StrongVPN and Itshidden are popular among BitTorrent users, but a Google search should find dozens more.
It is recommended to ask beforehand if BitTorrent traffic is permitted on the service of your choice.


BTGuard (strongly recommended!)

BTGuard is a proxy service that hides the IP-addresses of its users from the public. The service works on Windows, Mac, Linux and as the name already suggests, it is set up specifically with BitTorrent users in mind. Besides using the pre-configured client, users can also set up their own client to work with BTGuard. It works with all clients that support "Socks V5″ proxies including uTorrent and Vuze. In addition, BTGuard also includes encryption tunnel software for the real security purists.

After these words of praise we're obligated to disclose that BTGuard is operated by friends of TorrentFreak, but we think that should be interpreted as a recommendation.


TorrentPrivacy

Torrentprivacy is another proxy service for BitTorrent users, very similar to that of BTGuard.
It offers a modified uTorrent client that has all the necessary settings pre-configured.
The downside to this approach is that it is limited to users on Windows platforms.
TorrentPrivacy is operated by the TorrentReactor.net team and has been in business for more than two years.


Anomos

"Anomos is a pseudonymous, encrypted multi-peer-to-peer file distribution protocol."

It is based on the peer/tracker concept of BitTorrent in combination with an onion routing anonymization layer, with the added benefit of end-to-end encryption," is how the Anomos team describes its project.

Anomos is one of the few free multi-platform solutions for BitTorrent users to hide their IP-addresses.
The downside is that it's not fully compatible with regular torrent files as Anomos uses its own atorrent format.
Another drawback is that the download speeds are generally lower than regular BitTorrent transfers.

On the uTorrent Idea Bank, more than 1,600 people have asked for the Anomos protocol to be built in to a future uTorrent build, making it the second most-popular suggestion overall.


Seedbox

A seedbox is BitTorrent jargon for a dedicated high-speed server, used exclusively for torrent transfers.
With a seedbox users generally get very high download speeds while their IP-addresses are not shared with the public.
Once a download is finished users can download the files to their PC through a fast http connection. FileShareFreak periodically reviews several good seedbox providers.


Shhht

And then there's Usenet.

[rubinonthetable]

Even though this is a 8 year old thread, I couldn't agree more since most of the time developers tend to try so hard to make games playable just to appease the fans just for a quick buck. Take the infamous crapcom for instance (or at least one of the infamous company who didn't take their time and tries so hard to make games great which obviously isn't and decides to release it extremely early) since they tend to refuse to give fans what they want and has a habit of butchering the franchise and not sticking to their original roots on how it all began. (referencing the resident evil franchise that's been longed fucked up since the 5th sequel and 6th game is just an insult to injury). Then ask myself, why the hell would I want to pay 30 to 40 dollars on a broken piece of unplayable, uninteresting, bland storytelling piece of shit that is no more worth then at least 10 to 15 bucks, better off getting the pirated version. You probably might call it stealing from another thief, but I pretty much call it scamming the scammers.