Piracy in the gaming industry: Am I the only one seeing a pattern here?

originally posted by CaptainCrunch on prophecy forums 22 February 2010 - 01:41 PM

I've called you on it before, but this time your plagiarizing has reached a whole new low.
Your blog post over at MyGaming is a blatant rip-off of a recent PA article.
You stripped out some parts verbatim, modified others slightly to include in your own post with no quoting or reference to the original article.

I especially like the red parts i've highlighted below where you went as far as to modify their words to pass it off as your opinion.

This is seriously pathetic, dude!

Larch's blog post over at MyGaming: http://mygaming.co.z...ll=1#post181271

This blog post contains massive amounts of truth based on reality laced with sarcasm and humor. If you dont have any of the last mentioned dont bother reading. But if you insist reading might I suggest you go buy a sense of humor and some sarcasm online. If people can sell there virginity online I am sure you would be able to find some sarcasm and a sense of humor for sale online.

Am I the only one who is currently seeing a recurring pattern when it comes to piracy and DRM? What bought on this epiphany you may ask? Well the latest DRM versus general gaming public debacle. And for those of you who have been living under a rock the past week, what it boils down too is the fact that when playing Assasins Creed 2 for the PC you need to be online while playing if not you get kicked out of your game. Now before I start discussing this pattern I have been seeing lately, lets just forget about the legal and moral issues regarding piracy for a moment because that horse is dead and beaten already. And just for the record I dont agree with this type of DRM for a single player game if it was for a multiplayer game then yes that would be understandable. But I can see were the developers and publishers are coming from in trying to protect their work from piracy on a platform, that to be honest is diseased with it like a crack whore is with AIDS.

Sir Isaac Newtons law of motion describes this pattern in the gaming industry perfectly: "To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." Simply put the reaction in this endless pattern is piracy and the people who pirate. And the equal and opposite reaction to this is DRM protection that is implemented by the developers and publishers. Then the reaction on the DRM by "some" of the angry and discontent raises is by raising the god damned Jolly Roger flag and say they'll pirate the game as a gesture consistent with some comprehensive ur-morality they've ginned up, one where stealing things is alright provided they were very angry when they did it making to okay. The gaming industries reaction too all of this? They start focusing on platforms that are less piracy prone, and you guessed it some of the gamers start complaining that they are receiving dumbed down console ports. And so the cycle continues....

It's entirely possible that you don't like my opinion right about now, but somebody has to say what needs to be said. What Ubisoft is doing here is Draconian - I don't mean those lizard dudes, I'm talking about laws which are characterized by their severity. Before they eventually get dismantled or in this case the game gets cracked and pirated even more out of spite, it will have achieved exactly the opposite of their intention. But what I won't tolerate from rational beings is the idea that you don't understand why they're doing it in the first place. So who do you blame for the endless "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction" cycle? Do you blame the developers and publisher wanting to protect their intellectual property or the gamers who admittedly started the cycle with their actions.

The trouble is that this dialogue between pirates and publishers, one which was always characterized by falsehood and ill-will, has ceased to exist in this case. A maneuver this extreme means that they're finished talking altogether: this mechanism is their response, the final word to high levels of piracy on the PC.

The original article over at Penny Arcade: http://www.penny-arc...+(Penny+Arcade)

Alright. So, Ubisoft's new DRM. Supports unlimited installs and Cloud-based save data. Requires absolutely unbroken access to their master servers, or the product ceases to function. I can boil it right down for you:

Nobody wins.

Well, except pirates. Pirates always win, on a long enough timeline. Honestly, the timeline doesn't even need to be that long.

Visit any thread regarding the topic, and I mean any thread, and it won't be three postsuntil someone raises the Goddamned Jolly Roger and says they'll pirate the game as a gesture consistent with some comprehensive ur-morality they've ginned up, one where stealing things is alright provided they were very angry when they did it.

It's entirely possible that you don't like being spoken to in this way, but somebody has to get this done. What Ubisoft is doing here is Draconian - I don't mean those lizard dudes, I'm talking about laws which are characterized by their severity. Before they eventually dismantle it, and it will be dismantled, it will have achieved exactly the opposite of their intention. But what I won't tolerate from rational beings is the idea that you don't understand why they're doing it.

Every avenue of convenience for the user is also a vector of exploitation.

They have given up.

As fiery rhetoric goes, this sucks. It doesn't have that revolutionary quality that rallies the faithful. The trouble is that this dialogue between pirates and publishers, one which was always characterized by falsehood and ill-will, has ceased to exist in this case. A maneuver this extreme means that they're finished talking altogether: this mechanism is their response, the final word. Only it's impossible to get the final word here in The Cloud. Ever.

And no-one of any sense has ever bet against the scorn and resourcefulness of young men.

this should do it
 
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Wow larch the iron-knee is shocking in this post!

Plagerism is just as bad as piracy, take a leaf from your own book...
 
They arnt making any easier for the honest end users - I was laughing at Zap ranting the other night trying to get his Bioshock 2 installed - He has no intention of playing online but he still had to go through the mission of trying to open a windows live account and then downloading the patch
It must have taken well over an hour for him to install.

The irony of the whole piracy issue is that I had to download a crack exe file in order to play my LEGIT copy of Medal of Honour, since the DRM whatnot just wouldn't budge.

No, I agree that DRM methods are becoming much more of a hindrance to legitimate buyers than anything else. But as larch has pointed out, increasingly restrictive DRM is simply a reaction to increasing piracy. Who backs down first?

DRM doesn't last - it always gets cracked, so rather spend the time and money on more titles - or savings for the consumer. Or, you know, strippers.
 
Ahh I love this. :p

This just just goes to prove so, SO many things I have been thinking. Your credibility has taken a serious knock larch. Nothing is in true isolation.
 
Oh be careful there Shadowfox, by you trying to understand Raven's views it may lead to the same witch hunt to be lead against you that I am currently experiencing at the moment.

Yeah ... I knew I was walking on the edge of a flaming pit with that particular statement ... but if anybody called me on it my reaction would be similar to yours - I'd ask them to re-read ... and understand.

Understanding someone's statement doesn't mean you necessarily agree with them.

Anyways - regarding Tank's little expose above - I only have this left to say - (0.o)
 
I agree with Isengard here. It's the whole basis of whati've been trying to say. PC gamers get shafted because there the only ones who stand up for them selves.

When I 1st heard of MW2, I was really excited, the R500 pricetag would well have been worth the greatest game ever when I 1st heard about it. Than everything elce that was part of the game slowly got leeched away. Than I just got a R10 DVD, copied it from someone, and just played the SP because I was curious about what happened to Soap and the lot.

That is NOT worth R500. It was barely woth the DVD and the effort to put it on there.

Some games I'de gladly pay R1000 for. Even the PC versions. But games as great as those are become fewer and fewer. And I won't get a console because than I'll just be supporting that trend.

Gaming is my passion. It's almost a religeon to me. And it pisses me off when it gets flooded with heathens that don't apreciate it. If you're not going to do something because you love it, don't do it at all.

lol, your an idiot.... or worse, your a cheap idiot.... dude you've basically been going on about how you pirate games because they're not worthy of buying.

it's a simple fact of life... if there is something available that you want but feel it is not worth the money, you wont get it.

now you propose to get it without spending money... so your not actually sure on whether you would have bought the game or not, had the option to pirate it not been there ... you may very well have bought the game.

and this sums up the problem of piracy. it doesn't allow you to stand in a store and wrestle internally on whether you think a game is worth it or not.

instead, moronic cheapskates like yourself just pirate everything... from what i've read in your posts you do seem like the kind of idiot who is too cheap to buy anything.

go to hell, you claim that you love PC games yet your the exact person who f***s it up for everyone... instead of buying barbie dolls with your cash go buy some games you freekin flamer
 
I love it how everyone likes to tear into someone when they aren't around to defend themselves. So since no one tried to see my point I will explain it here not that it matters anyway. Yes the last piece of my article was plagiarism, but it was not intentionally believe it or not. Some people know that I use MiRC a lot to chat to other gamers and we had this discussion that bought on my blog post I made. And someone posted that which at the time I assumed was his own words as I dont read penny arcade for the most part only look at the pretty pictures. So I asked him if I can use it in my blog post and he said yes, unknowing of course that it was something directly from Penny Arcades website. Only after Skurm posted the original in my post did I noticed what happened. So I made the changes accordingly by quoting it and adding the source both on the Prophecy blog and Wordpress blog, and I will make the changes on the MyGaming forum accordingly.

I take full responsibility for what happened and I shouldn't have in hind sight used anything that comes off a public chat room, as I probably got trolled and did not even notice it. And I am usually thorough with doing my research on blog pieces. I apologies to everyone for miss leading them and using someone else's work in my blog piece and stating it as my own. I will make a blog post apologizing to all the readers for miss leading them. And in hind sight I should have handled it better by replying to Skurms post and updating my piece by saying the above. But I didn't so I will gladly take any criticism that comes my way.

[Edit] I will also post a written apology on both forums.
 
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However, Raven, I understand your sentiments, and those of the guys who have issues with game pricing - unfortunately, I can't agree with them. If you can't afford the game, or you are not willing to pay the price, don't buy the game, and don't pirate it either. Just go without. Whether gaming is your passion (or your life, if you want to put it that way), you won't die without it. I'm not a doctor, but I can pretty much guarantee you'll live.
Oh there you done it! now larch thinks your a dirty rotten pirate, enjoy ;)

tehNihilist Just ignore necuno, when you get like this you can't have a decent discussion

I love it how everyone likes to tear into someone when they aren't around to defend themselves.
Frankly I find it kind of ironic that the people that have been supporting you in such threads are so quick to turn on you, for the rest of us, it was just extra ammunition ;)
 
It might be better to in future quote anything you yourself have not written when posting something like this. All this did was call to question anything you said in response to others comments. But you are human after all and as humans we all make mistakes. You explained your situation and I think it should just be put to rest now.
 
I wont take part in the discussion anymore because plagiarism is just as bad as piracy itself and by doing what I am preaching against I am no better and my credibility and opinion because of this does not matter in this discussion anymore.
 
I'd probably be the last person to leap to larch's defense, but there's a world of difference between intentional piracy of a game, and unintentional plagiarism of an author. On the internet, information is fluid and often copied and recopied. Is it larch's fault for not indicating in the blog post that he was reposting something from IRC, as he stipulates in his side of the story? Probably. It certainly would have covered his ass right about now. Lesson learned? For his sake I hope so. Always, always post your source.

But branding him a heretic and using his mistake as ammunition to justify something that remains clearly illegal - software piracy - is a case of trying to make two wrongs into a right. You're playing the man and not the ball.

Now, of course, if it was intentional, then i advocate the man being flayed alive. :p
 
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Regarding the Penny Arcade plagiarism: OMGROFL. That's kinda like pirating something, isn't it?

Oh the irony :D

misting-black-cauldron-767706.jpg


(Ok fine - so it's a black cauldron, not a pot, but this IS a gaming forum after all. :D)
 
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