Um what? It's clear that Waratah is going to make sure he plays this game one way or another. If he hadn't been able to pirate it, he would probably have gone out to his local EB on the 14th and bought it.
I haven't played the game yet and don't think I will now. Now everyone’s happy.
It's clear as water that Waratah is one of the bad guys, yes...
Yes, it was wrong of you to download Dawn of War. You deprived Relic of their right to control their own creation.
And this is our key disagreement. You think the important thing is that I violated the dev's (and publisher's) right to decide over their product, I think the important thing is wether they get the money they deserve for their product or not (which is what my oppinions on pirating in general is based on by the way).
Without the ability to exert that controll, it is impossible to make money from something liek a game/piece of music/piece of writing.
Radiohead makes money from their latest album (well, I don't know if the costs is bigger than the income since I don't know the cost), despite giveing it away for free, so it IS possible to make money despite pirating. (And besides, if it's impossible to make money without that ability (and today it's really, really frail since it's allmost impossible to get punished for pirateing), then howcome pepole are still makeing money from it?)
And that is with the world as it looks today. In general, there are two kinds of pepole: pepole who care and pepole who don't care. Now, we probablly can't get the pepole who don't care to care enought to stop downloading. But if we could move towards a culture where you don't think so much about wether downloading is right or not and more towards a culture where you download everything and then reward the things you like and delete the rest (you'd might even manage to automatise this in computers), then I'm sure we'd get most (or way more at least) pepole to pay for their products (exept for the products they don't like).
Now, I know this isn't magically going to take away the problem with pirating. But with morale like this we'd get the pepole who's fooling themselves that what they're doing doesn't hurt the gameing industry. If we could get these guys to pay for their games (I don't think they'll buy into the "pirateing is stealing so don't do it" thing, right or not. I know I wouldn't.
), then the gameing industry would gain from it, and from my pow that's never a bad thing.
The most common argument for pirating (used by pirates to justify their actions) is the following: by downloading your products before deciding to buy them you can pick out the good from the bad products. Take Oblivion, for example. Without pirating you would have been able to buy the game in order to find out wether it was good or not. Since there was no demo you would have had to go on all the reviews and on what Bethsoft said about the game. And (if what the "Let's Rave and Rant about Oblivion" thread is correct. Might not be the best source , but I hope you'll get my point) the reviews were usually overpositive to say the least, and a lot of the things Bethsoft said was if not lies then at least exaggerated (radiant AI is supposed to be the shining example of this). So, in a world where pirating doesn't exist, you would have to base your oppinion on wether to buy Oblivion or not on hyped reviews and lies from Bethsoft. And that isn't good for gamers, no matter if piracy is wrong or not. Now, if everyone went by my model then this wouldn't really be possible (them fooling pepole into buying it, I mean). In other words, this would shift the focus from the player to the devs. The devs would have to do it right before they get their money (now it's the other way around, the player have to do it right (pay money) before they get to play the game). It would be a buyers market more than a sellers market (which benefits the buyers, who are more than the sellers). And besides that, this would reward devs who creates good games, and not devs who creates decent games and tries to compensate by hypeing it.
I know I'm biased, but I think this is a good rule (it benefits the gamers without takeing too much from the devs (exept their possibility to cheat their customers, which I won't shred many tears over them loseing)), as long as it is applied correctly. Something an awfull lot of pepole have a problem with (applying it correctly, that is).
The 'pirating as demo' is another wonderful excuse. However, what do you honestly think the 'paid for it' to 'just pirated' ratio is even in people who claim that as their approach? 0.1%? Less? more? I seriously doubt it breaks 1% ... because then people figure, I already played, why pay when I won't replay. And then it is piracy with an excuse, and honest folks who actually pay to play and never pirate get draconian hoops due to self-proclaimed 'honest pirates'.
Agreed. But that doesn't mean the argument in itself is wrong, the problem is when they use it as an exuse. And IMO we should try and get them to realize that they're lying to themselves when they download it as a demo, and then keeps playing (and enjoying) the game without buying it, and that what they're doing isn't determining wether the game is worth buying or not, it's something that's allmost (but not exactly) stealing.
Übereil