An Article on Piracy

tpex

tpex

New member
I found this quite an interesting article

This is an extract

I'm referring to Piracy (shhh, no so loud), the act of stealing copyrighted material instead of shelling out hard cash for it. Recently, I started to reexamine my own thoughts on piracy and I realized that I feel like a hypocrite. Since I started working for NAG, I've become very aware of the impact piracy has on the individuals inside the distributors that pay the big monies they do to secure the rights to bring in a certain range of titles, as well as the money they spend shipping those titles into our country. Real people are impacted by local piracy, people I know and who I like, so I don't like to see them worry about poor sales of a game due to piracy.

As a result, on the forums, in the IRC channel and other places where I represent NAG I make sure to always rebut anyone who mentions piracy in a positive light, or admits to having pirated themselves. This left me feeling like a full-fledged hypocrite for a few reasons.

Firstly, when I was a young gamer, still suffering under the parental units and not having my own income as well as struggling with school, I pirated games. As a writer for the most prominent gaming magazine in the country, admitting this feels like admitting to my own children (if I had any) that I did drugs in High-School, and that they should never do drugs. It is, in truth, entirely unfair of me to lambaste the young'uns who are pirating games. Said young'uns often say they do it because they simply cannot afford the games they want - the same excuse I once used.

After some lengthily discussion on the subject, I was given what I believe to be some useful advice - that perhaps piracy isn't a black-and-white issue and that there may be much more to it. As most pirates know, when a Warez group releases a game for people to pirate they always sternly remind people, "If you like the game, please buy it". It was those exact words that eventually led me to where I am now - an adult, buying as many games as I can afford (which compared to a young'un, is quite a lot). People like stuff, but more importantly, people like to own stuff. DVD sales are, I believe, a good indicator of this.

What I've come to realize, is that piracy is possibly the single most important word-of-mouth element in advertising games and growing the gaming market. I might be lynched by several factions for even suggesting it: but I believe piracy is needed if gaming is to survive.

The problem is, I am essentially trying to support the idea of responsible theft - something that is near-impossible to explain to the people who stand to lose money from piracy. Based on my own experience, piracy is the number one reason that South Africa even has a gaming industry right now. The PlayStation 2, I believe wholeheartedly, owes its local success entirely due to the flea-markets selling pirate PS2 games and the mod-chips that run them.

It requires you to believe in people, but I've come to realize that you get several types of pirates, some more useful to the industry than others - but the trick is the majority of pirates are still good people who, once they are financially more secure, would prefer to own stuff rather than dick around with pirating and cracking and hassling with updates... People who, after having gotten faith in certain game developers that they'll deliver on the goods thanks to being able to check out games via piracy since games are not cheap and demos are often carefully constructed advertisements or lies, will buy their own games.

That specific majority of pirates are important, but it doesn't condone selling pirate copies of games to make money - it may be a bit hippy, but don't copy that floppy if you're going to sell it - copy that floppy to see if it's something you want to support with your money. I believe in you.
Click to expand...
http://herebespacedinosaurs.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html
 
Necuno said:
dude. why do you double thread on mybb and myg ?
Click to expand...

Because there are some individuals that have never even heard of myBB before they joined this forum. :rolleyes:

I used to copy allot of games before. Only recently have I rally started buying games. But do still copy and download allot. The games I buy are only the best of the best, while the rest that I copy and download ar just to fill the time until I get that next great title. But if I already have a game copied, that would have otherwise bought because of my recent standards, I'm not gonna go and buy it again. So for thats just bad luck for whoever the victim is.

The real threat to gaming is not the pirate, but the casual gamer, the idiot who doesn't know how to set up a PC. And the for that you can thank the console, it brought gaming to people who don't deserve it. And now the Wii, that thing is causing the most damage, killing gaming by a billion tiny cuts.
 
Oh, and all of you who own x-box 360s and PS3s. You're just as bad! You're supporting the things are killing gaming.

090423.jpg
 
Raven Gold said:
Oh, and all of you who own x-box 360s and PS3s. You're just as bad! You're supporting the things are killing gaming.
Click to expand...

ow boo-fucking-hooo for the pc-pooper-fanboi we have here :D

consoles has been around long time with pcs, but it seems that you have forgotten all about the older ones. i would hardly call owning a pc and or just a console bad.

it is actually n00bs like you who are killing our industry of gaming; we who just enjoy a game for what a game should be no matter on which platform it comes out without the selfrighteous-platform-penis feeling ;)
 
Necuno said:
ow boo-fucking-hooo for the pc-pooper-fanboi we have here :D

consoles has been around long time with pcs, but it seems that you have forgotten all about the older ones. i would hardly call owning a pc and or just a console bad.

it is actually n00bs like you who are killing our industry of gaming; we who just enjoy a game for what a game should be no matter on which platform it comes out without the selfrighteous-platform-penis feeling ;)
Click to expand...

It's not the console it self thats the probelm, its the people who make money off them, they market them for the hipster groups who don't deserve breathe to begin with, never mind get any games.

And you guys who gave into that, who don't realise what the true cost is, are to blame aswell.
 
I believe in terms of gaming, consoles have been doing the rounds a bit longer than PC's. The first PC I remember playing games on was the old ZX Spektrum - and I'm not entirely sure if that qualified as a PC - even though you could do Word Processing and programming and so forth on it.

But it still had the old cartridge slot at the top of the keyboard, so maybe it was a hybrid :D
 
Raven Gold said:
It's not the console it self thats the probelm, its the people who make money off them, they market them for the hipster groups who don't deserve breathe to begin with, never mind get any games.
Click to expand...

so lest see my stats for this month :D

pc
games pirated:1
movies pirated: 4
series pirated: 3
music albums pirated: 1
games bought: 5

x360
games pirated: 0
movies pirated: 0
series pirated: 0
music albums pirated: 0
games bought: 2

seems to me that pc is more evil ;)
 
Necuno said:
so lest see my stats for this month :D

pc
games pirated :1
movies pirated: 4
series pirated: 3
games bought: 5

x360
games pirated :0
movies pirated: 0
series pirated: 0
games bought: 2

seems to me that pc is more evil ;)
Click to expand...

You damn pirate :p
 
Necuno said:
so lest see my stats for this month :D

pc
games pirated:1
movies pirated: 4
series pirated: 3
music albums pirated: 1
games bought: 5

x360
games pirated: 0
movies pirated: 0
series pirated: 0
music albums pirated: 0
games bought: 2

seems to me that pc is more evil ;)
Click to expand...

Piracy is a nessecary evil, it used to help regulate the market and bring up game quality. now because of the suc'fail'cess of the console, piracy can't do it's job anymore.
 
*gets popcorn*

I think I'm just going to sit on the sidelines and watch this one because it's bound to get interesting.
 
Raven Gold said:
Piracy is a necessary evil, it used to help regulate the market and bring up game quality
Click to expand...

sure and what about all the studios that had an AAA and got shafted due to piracy ? i'm sure rape and murder are also necessary evil to up you quality of life ;)
 
Those companies got those AAA ratings because the marketed to... (here it comes again) to the casual markets, they had success for a while than got what they deserved. It's going to happen again with sony, etc and all there lackeys, but nobody learns to stop and completely ignore that line of thought. Quality over Quantity is the key to long term sucess.
 
Raven Gold said:
I used to copy allot of games before. Only recently have I rally started buying games. But do still copy and download allot. The games I buy are only the best of the best, while the rest that I copy and download ar just to fill the time until I get that next great title. But if I already have a game copied, that would have otherwise bought because of my recent standards, I'm not gonna go and buy it again. So for thats just bad luck for whoever the victim is.

The real threat to gaming is not the pirate, but the casual gamer, the idiot who doesn't know how to set up a PC. And the for that you can thank the console, it brought gaming to people who don't deserve it. And now the Wii, that thing is causing the most damage, killing gaming by a billion tiny cuts.
Click to expand...

No. The real threat to gaming is greedy attitudes like yours. How would you expect publishers and developers to continue funding game development if everyone behaved like you, only buying games when it suits them to do so and just taking them the rest of the time? And people who "don't deserve" games? How do you deserve the games you pirate?

And your fatuous elitism isn't doing you any favours either. People who can't set up PCs? Seriously? The Wii is "causing the most damage"? I'd love to know how you back that up logically.
 
Raven Gold said:
Because there are some individuals that have never even heard of myBB before they joined this forum. :rolleyes:

I used to copy allot of games before. Only recently have I rally started buying games. But do still copy and download allot. The games I buy are only the best of the best, while the rest that I copy and download ar just to fill the time until I get that next great title. But if I already have a game copied, that would have otherwise bought because of my recent standards, I'm not gonna go and buy it again. So for thats just bad luck for whoever the victim is.

The real threat to gaming is not the pirate, but the casual gamer, the idiot who doesn't know how to set up a PC. And the for that you can thank the console, it brought gaming to people who don't deserve it. And now the Wii, that thing is causing the most damage, killing gaming by a billion tiny cuts.
Click to expand...

You're an idiot! Really, this PC fanbooism is way over the top.

Azimuth said:
No. The real threat to gaming is greedy attitudes like yours. How would you expect publishers and developers to continue funding game development if everyone behaved like you, only buying games when it suits them to do so and just taking them the rest of the time? And people who "don't deserve" games? How do you deserve the games you pirate?

And your fatuous elitism isn't doing you any favours either. People who can't set up PCs? Seriously? The Wii is "causing the most damage"? I'd love to know how you back that up logically.
Click to expand...

+1
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top