The moral high ground.

Necuno

Necuno

The Piper
I really don't want to go into the discussion of piracy VS stealing VS wtf. This is merely to trot out the moral ground on the following. If you do need to feel to discuss piracy and stealing please rather make a new thread thereof.

Additionally fight clubs should be kept outside please.



Presented with a choice here:

1) Do not buy the game
2) Torrent the game.
3) Buy the game.

However choice 3 is not so simple as it is not released in your country yet. Now you can fake you way in, but that would still be wrong right?

What is driving your need to have the game... Should that not be the very first question you ask yourself? Obviously there are some games you can't just torrent and well have to go the legal route one way or the other to play it. These are obviously MMOs like TOR/WOW.

Haven gotten my key through something like g2play or a friend abroad, everyone was paid and no fraud was committed. This seems to be the ideal win win.

Now comes the more gray area. Looking at LA NOIRE on steam I had to get my key by using a vpn connection, dropping it and then paying as I would normally do. In essence only wrong I did was spoofing my IP. Next up comes Mark of the ninja and steam has gotten smarter. Now I have to flip my country to US and add a US code, rest of the detail is as it was.

However now I'm bordering on fraud... But how different would this be from my US Apple ID or my US and UK Live account. All three of them are on the same method.

Seems that if you take the high ground here you will go with option 1 or 2, but 2 no one gets payed and noted this was a guaranteed sale not for tryouts. If I go with 3 and fake my way in, I'm lying about my origin and billing, but still the developer got paid.

White lie much ?

I think I would feel more in the wrong in using a key sale place that just sells the key and you need to get the ISO. How would I know for sure that anyone got paid by using their services. For all I know they skimmed the keys. Option 3 then seems more likely to be good than bad...
 
I feel in that particular grey area everyone needs to make their own choice. Its an artificial restriction & breaking it via artificial means doesn't *really* harm anyone directly like stealing their car would. That being said its not exactly squeaky clean either.

I've never encountered the situation & probably wouldn't do the VPN thing if push comes to shove, but totally understand people who do. Going forward I'd recommend stopping though...Valve is cracking down on account with activities like that & presumably you've got a couple of bucks invested in you game lib.

Pr⊕phet said:
However now I'm bordering on fraud...
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Personally I wouldn't classify that as fraud. More like misrepresentation & perhaps unethical depending on one's point of view.

[TABLE="class: vk_txt ts"]
[TR]
[TD]Fraud - Noun
[TABLE="class: ts"]
[TR]
[TD]
  1. Wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain.
  2. A person or thing intended to deceive others, typically by unjustifiably claiming or being credited with accomplishments or qualities.
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
Click to expand...


Pr⊕phet said:
But how different would this be from my US Apple ID or my US and UK Live account. All three of them are on the same method.
Click to expand...
Kinda weak argument there tbh.

Grey areas like this are always very much a matter of opinion & people will disagree quite energetically. Ultimately the only things that matter is 1) legal consequences 2) whether you can line it up with your own moral compass. Regarding the 2nd people have wildly different tolerances for dark grey & black.
 
I feel it is important for the guys to get paid. Most of these dev are under a company,thus shareholders and a focus on a healthy Net profit. Thus in order to keep us happy they need money to keep investors happy which allows dev to grow and create better games.
On a desperate note I find series more fun than single hits since they provide a better world to be drawn into and if a great series doesn't sell it's very easy to can a story half way.

Thus my view is to give credit where due and to reward them for their investment. Once you start pirating you start a cycle that leaves gamers starving, one which PC games are already feeling. So long as devs get a cut then the cycle of happy gamers will continue
 
My view is the same as what Ike has. As long as you are buying the game legitimately, I see no real issue other than the 3rd parties here in our country not getting their cut.

One of the reasons I get so p'd off with our country is having to buy everything through a re-seller and not directly through a manufacturer (even though I do understand and support re-sellers) and finding a reasonably priced re-seller is often difficult as their mark ups can range from okay to ridiculous.

Example:
Randomly googled re-seller selling an Alienware M18x: R78k
Similar Specc'd from Dell: [email protected]: R43k
So R35k for import costs, duties and markup.... "whistling: The only benefit I can see is the on site warranty (which is a big thing when spending R78k on a laptop!)
 
Region blocking is a pain in the ass. I have no problem using a US account in order to gain access to a product which is otherwise not available to me.
 
Have no issues with people bypassing region blocks in order to buy products. Should not be any region blocks anyway imho.
 
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