Videogames piracy - Why so much hate?

[FifthElement]

Films, music, games, and so on are called 'intellectual property' for a reason - they are owned by someone.

Exactly.

Intellectual property is still a property.

People who pirate digital content most likely never had any of their own making (at least not any worth a damn)

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Yes, entertainment is a basic human need. But human beings managed to entertain themselves before video games existed. Did that make it acceptable to steal cable television, to steal a radio or a book, or to sneak into a theatre without paying?

Why is it OK to steal older games and not newer ones? If there's an older game you like and can't find it for sale, suck it up and do without.

I don't follow your multi-platform argument at all. The clear analogy is that an author should only be paid royalties on the first edition of her novel, or that if you own the hardback, it's perfectly acceptable to steal the paperback version.

It continually amazes me that people who would never even consider stealing so much as a piece of candy will come up with endless rationalizations to justify their theft of digital media.

Boru

[FifthElement]

To answer original OP question: Why so much hate?

Personally, I do not hate people who do this, but I do not approve it either.

Just don't try to give me a "free" copy of what you downloaded (like that's gonna make you feel better or it's gonna "hook" me up or whatever), if you do, then we are going to have a problem ...

CREATIVE people who are trying to make living out of it are the ones who most likely hate it though, they might have kids too who need food at the table, putting oneself in their position might help to correct this childish behavior

What I HATE is these "business" type cocksuckers who actually make copies and then sell them under table for few bucks a pop, Mexican and Korean food stores and flea markets, anyone ?

[Aractus]

I don't follow your multi-platform argument at all. The clear analogy is that an author should only be paid royalties on the first edition of her novel, or that if you own the hardback, it's perfectly acceptable to steal the paperback version.

No, the analogy would be that somebody who bought the physical book should also get a license to the kindle/ebook version. That license would be inseparable from the physical book.

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Why is it OK to steal older games and not newer ones? If there's an older game you like and can't find it for sale, suck it up and do without.

I only mean ones that are no longer sold.

[Dystopia]

I think older games are not worth any less than newer ones - I mean, from a purely economical standpoint, more modern games usually are more trendy and sell more, they are the current concern most publishers and developers have - However older games, specially if we're talking about a certain videogame series (For example, let's imagine TES Morrowind compared to TES Skyrim) are still intellectual property of their respective owners, even if they are not sold anymore, unless the creators voluntarily decide to make it free. I do not think a game not being sold excuses piracy, but in my case it is the most common cause - I'm not even talking about pre 2000 games, but sometimes it is really hard to find an old copy of a game I really want to play unless I use Steam, which I do not want to be forced to used and I think it is unfair, I shouldn't be required to have internet connection to play a game, unless we're talking about multiplayer - For instance, if I wished to buy a copy of TES Oblivion it would be bloody hard, even the GOTY edition (actually I've bought one recently but I was lucky - I'm talking about retail versions).

I don't think downloading a torrent equates with stealing a retail copy - Stealing a physical copy means there is a tremendous loss for the manufacturers, developers and publishers, as well as other companies involved with the process of creating and developing the product - Downloading a torrent means a loss or not - Because some people wouldn't buy the game - It also means you are getting an exact copy of an official version - You aren't stealing a physical copy - Most torrents are uploaded by people who own the game and burned an ISO file - You aren't exactly stealing a copy, just duplicating one that already exists.

Personally these are the reasons that bring me to play pirated versions of videogames:
- Games not being sold anymore.
- PC ports are sometimes terrible - I need to test them, I've been tricked by terrible ports so many times (example being Resident Evil 4, it was awful) that I need to test and if there isn't a demo available I will pirate the game
- If this game is only going to be played once, for example if I played the predecessors and just want to know the remaining plot, I will pirate it.


I can't really talk about piracy and bring ethics into the table, considering I own almost 3000 songs on my computer and about 95% of them are pirated. I'm not even going to mention the 720p MKV anime episodes, I didn't pay for any of them. Nor did I pay for movies. Except when I go to the cinema.

[Violet]

You don't believe in intellectual property. Great. Go read a book.

You believe you can own an idea? Great. Better keep that idea secret if you want it to stay that way.

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This strikes me as a particularly egregious sort of theft, because no one needs video games. If you're hungry and steal food, I'm ok with that. If you're ill and the only way to get the meds you need is to steal them, dandy.

Importance is goal-oriented... you can need literally anything for literally any reason. I need video games to survive particularly brutal bouts of insanity... if I didn't have a huge mountain of games, and if I didn't have the money to pay for such a huge mountain of games... then I would be taking them anyway, as they are vital to me.

I also do not necessarily believe that video games are priced fairly... if I believe some fucker's trying to rip me off to the tune of 50 dollars for a six hour experience: damn right I'm going to take the avenue what isn't ridiculously overpriced.

Regardless... piracy is a fringe issue. Most consumers prefer to buy their goods... you can ignore piracy so long as you don't make your consumers feel they need to pirate your game. Say... Spore, for an example of what to not do.

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(at least not any worth a damn)

We'll see. Hard to pirate that which is free... shame if they don't link to me, though. If my site isn't itself good enough, then I shouldn't be too surprised to find my stuff elsewhere

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I'm not even going to mention the 720p MKV anime episodes, I didn't pay for any of them. Nor did I pay for movies. Except when I go to the cinema.

I only ever 'made right' on a few of my imported japanese music... because it cost a good 100 dollars for each 'album' of it.

It's just an unreasonable sales figure...

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CREATIVE people who are trying to make living out of it are the ones who most likely hate it though, they might have kids too who need food at the table, putting oneself in their position might help to correct this childish behavior

Creative people tend towards terrible business practices. Perhaps they should try alternative revenue streams. If their art isn't selling, then they need to market it better, or at least give it a better sales pitch.

Probably, their art is priced too highly. I'd buy more art if it wasn't so incredibly expensive. Try porn's most successful models, or donation bonuses a la kickstarter.

[DemonicLemon]

At this point I'm "pay for a game cuz people worked on the damn thing."

[paulpablo]

To answer original OP question: Why so much hate?

Personally, I do not hate people who do this, but I do not approve it either.

Just don't try to give me a "free" copy of what you downloaded (like that's gonna make you feel better or it's gonna "hook" me up or whatever), if you do, then we are going to have a problem ...

CREATIVE people who are trying to make living out of it are the ones who most likely hate it though, they might have kids too who need food at the table, putting oneself in their position might help to correct this childish behavior

What I HATE is these "business" type cocksuckers who actually make copies and then sell them under table for few bucks a pop, Mexican and Korean food stores and flea markets, anyone ?

Personally, from my perspective as a person who's in a rock band, at this stage I'd love it if lots of people did pirate our music. I'd be very proud that so many people wanted it.
Filesharing and youtube broadcasting and all these other things which have a negative effect on the profits of bands who are already wealthy, have a positive effect on working class creative peoples work by show casing what they have to the world for free.
People used to have to either do gigs over and over and over and over.
Or sell their CDs on the street, which relatively no one will by because it would involve spending money on someone's music you never heard before.

I can't think of anything I have pirated which was created by anyone who doesn't, or didn't, have collections of sports cars and mansions, so it's difficult for me to feel guilty from that perspective too.

But yeh it annoys me extremely when people make money off other people's work like you mentioned, and it would annoy me also if I wrote a book or something and didn't get credit for it.
Credit, compliments and the fact I like the music I make, are the ONLY reason I do what I do right now.

There's situations where I would be annoyed if our music was used without our permission though so I'm not totally one sided with my opinion

[Napoléon]

You don't believe in intellectual property. Great. Go read a book.

Don't tell me what I do and do not believe in pal. Piracy is a whole other issue to stealing as you talk about it. My beef with people who see piracy as an equivalence to stealing is that it just isn't in any traditional sense. There's numerous studies that show piracy has very little impact on actual sales and even a few that show it can be positive. The assumption that people like you seem to have is that everyone who pirates would necessarily otherwise buy the game. For one that's simply not true, and for another there's nothing stopping them from purchasing said game even after pirating.


I personally don't consider piracy "stealing" as you call it because nothing is actually lost and in many cases something is actually gained from a game being pirated (just look at Minecraft's history). Everyone loves to equate piracy with stealing candy from a store when it just isn't the same damn thing.

So as for your petty and childish "go read a book" comment, I'd tell you to do some research on the topic yourself.

[The Grand Nudger]

Hmn, solutions....

Crowd source your funding, release for free, add an ingame cash shop. You know, like all of the big new projects. I feel for the game houses, I understand their gripe...but, ultimately.....their gripe originates from their stubborness to abandon a model that no longer gives any reasonable expectation of control over IP (while simultaneously being a relatively poor model in the field of it's competition). Remember the big music industry hubbub a few years back? Uh, huh. I cannot stand it when people -choose- a shitty business model and then complain about their poor performance.

@Nap. I generally grab a game and play it for a little while before I purchase it. I can't think of a game in the last decade that I hadn't played before buying. On the other hand, alot of the time I'll grab that game, play it, and realize it's utter shit and the devs were bold faced liars. I'm sure they;d love it if I had to buy their product sight unseen, based upon their jerried cutscenes - fuck those assholes. To put this in perspective...the gamer is being asked to buy art -in a box-. I bet that would be a real winner at a gallery.

Minecraft rocked. I actually bought minecraft after having played it on a private server for months -because- of a patch that added new redstone content (for my toy computers). People buy content. Now I'm snatching up voxel titles left and right, most of them free with an ingame shop. I def fall into the "piracy generates profit" camp. Now, as to people who get a title and never pay for it - without those people...I wouldn't play. I would never spend the money myself because I don't play games to crawl into a shell of solace and privacy. Those non-paying players are the ones providing the experience that the devs are only -facilitating-, and the experience is what I am buying - I don't give a shit about their art-in-a-box (I recently tried out a couple of titles that, to my mind...are the most incredible and robust offerings in their genre - decades ahead of the curve and even ahead of the tech...but no one plays-so neither do I). I only play mp titles, and this wouldn't apply to sp titles, obviously.