Genuine call for emails from pirates

302 thoughts on Genuine call for emails from pirates

1. Do I pirate? I can’t answer that because the definition is so wishy washy that you can’t exactly define it anymore.

   As far as newer games that are available via the market, and via e-bay, I do use cracks, patches, shortcuts, emulated disks and the like. I do that because as a consumer it is easier for me to protect my investment, and to reduce what is seen as exposure to potentially dangerous copy protection schemes (Starforce, SecuROM, etc.).

   I feel as a legal purchaser of a license that I should have the right to be able to play the game. That is where it stops. Unfortunately, compatability issues with SecuROM, Starforce, etc. can and does cause damage to system performance, either because of processes running in the background, stealing resources when not needed, or increasing load times for authentication. I know that /I/ myself paid for these newer titles when they were available, so what does it matter to the developer/publisher if I make it a little easier for my own use?

   You probably hear the “Draconian” word thrown around alot. To me and to the people I talk to, the problem is that DRM doesn’t stand for “Digital Rights Management”, rather “Digital Restriction Management”. We paid to have the rights to play the game, and enjoy it, yet we end up with basic usage denied because of the fear of other people’s actions.

   The second scenario is for older games, or games that just can not be found. Ebay, or otherwise.

   For example, I bought System Shock 2 via E-bay for a little over $40 USD. This was fine to me. However I cannot find a copy of System Shock (DOS). Obviously I’m not going to find a reprint of it, and it is absolutely ludicrous to expect these games just to fade out.

   If a developer and or company were to make friends out of their client-base, then consider what they would do to support that company. I frequently find myself shifting stock on retail shelves to better present games from companies I like. Putting Sins of a Solar Empire for example along with Darwinia at eye-level. Putting crap titles like Battlefield 2142 out of sight to dissuade others. Your customers can be the most useful advertising tool you can have if you don’t piss them off with trying to ‘secure your work’.

2. I use cracked games because trials don’t last long enough. If you made a non time limited trial with say just slightly limited features I would not use cracked ones at all. once I get done evaluating the game usually I go out and buy one.

3. My main reason is DRM, things like Securerom and other technologies that protect the producer but hinder the consumer. I enjoy using things like Daemon Tools and Alcohol to mount images that I have created, I outright won’t buy games that use such technologies, in fact I’ll pirate it in principal.

   Secondly, the opportunity to experience an unmodified and true demo of the game. Games are expensive, especially in Australia when compared to the local prices in other countries such as the US, Canada and the UK. Rarely do games come out with a true representation of their gameplay in their demos. Ideally I would be able to download the first hour of a game and then if I like it I can purchase the remainder of the content online or through a retail outlet.

   Finally its important to note that if I pirate a game and don’t like it, I won’t play it. Its simply saved me a purchase that I would have regretted. If I pirate a game and do like it, I’ll purchase it. Chances are I’ll continue to play the pirated version, its already installed and I don’t have to bother with changing discs but I have shown my support to the developer with my purchase.

   I’d like to see a game company try the Radiohead stunt, let people download your game for a donation or download it for free and then make a donation at the end. A lot of us like to support the developers but feel we’re constantly getting screwed by the distributors.

   For what its worth, Steam is an almost perfect distribution mechanism. I say almost perfect because I’m totally against their region restrictions. The internet is a global not local economy, just because my local economy is overinflated by distributors gouging consumers doesn’t mean it should prevent me purchasing the product at the price it cost to produce plus a reasonable margin.

4. I’m sorry I can’t give you something specific to your games as I don’t think there is anything you can on a small scale. To truely affect piracy it will take an effort by the industry as a whole. However, I will tell you my ideas as to what I think is motivating pirates. Perhaps in that you can find something that will help your company. I can’t find your e-mail address so I will post here.

   1. The most important thing any developer can do to help sell their games is to produce a good demo. Most demos are nothing more than a single level with no explanation as to what is going on or how to play. It tosses the player in and leaves them to fend for themselves. Most of the time it leaves the player confused and annoyed while ruining part of the full title. Some demos have been so awful that they needed a patch. The demo is the first contact we have with the gameplay elements of your game. It is critical that the demo introduces the gameplay in a good way preferably without ruining part of the main title.

   2. Another problem is graphics. This may not affect you as much as it does with other companies but I am going to say it anyway. The over emphisis on high end graphics needs to stop. This only leads to more reviews about how you must upgrade or hype about SLI. The only thing this does is say you can’t afford to play, go away. Some will go to consoles while other will get the pirated version.

   3. DRM is a big one. This may sound childish but it holds true. Treat someone like a thief and they will be inclined to act like one.

   Those are the three big ones I see. I’ll leave it at that.

5. Why not embrace the power of the amazing mass distribution system, which is the Internet, instead of trying to fight it? Encourage people to copy and share your software, rather than try to restrict them. You’re not being successful in your attempts to restricting the unlicensed redistribution, so much so that you’re pleading here for advice from the very people you look to restrict.

   There are a couple of articles up on LGW that I thought you might find of interest. One of the two mentions your RPG specifically, as a “what not to do” example.

   http://www.linuxgamingworld.com/index.php?q=node/167
   http://www.linuxgamingworld.com/index.php?q=node/152

   Best of Luck. Hope you will start looking at releasing Linux titles, soon.

6. I’ve occasionally pirated a few pieces of pc software.. Why? I guess the reason is based on the fact that here in Australia we’ll pay AUS$99 for a game that I have friends buy in places like Singapore or the US for less than 1/2 that price – even taking into consideration the exchange rate.

   Recently, the AUS dollar was almost 1 for 1 with the US dollar. Did we see a price drop? No.. The retailers continued to sell games and software at the regular prices.

   With console games, I’m no longer buying them locally. I’m buying them from Hong Kong and Singapore online. Even with postage, I’m paying less than half the price retailers demand here.

   It’s like music CDs and movies on DVD. Once people learn that they can buy the same product substantially cheaper elsewhere, that is where they’ll shop. Can you really blame people for ripping music and movies when they are being charged outrageous amounts, not by the developer/musician or actors, but by the retail stores all seeking to make that mark up in price.

7. When I have pirated a game or other software, it was to try it out and get a feeling for whether I liked it or not. If I don’t like it, I delete it. If I like it, I buy it. After having bought too much software that claimed too much, I don’t trust the authors, publishers, distributors, reviewers, etc., etc., etc. Of course I haven’t pirated anything recently because there seem precious little out there that appeals to me. I like thinking puzzle games, not time adrenaline boosters, and there seem precious few of them out there that are truly playable.

8. When I was a kid of 3 years, we got a Commodore 64 and a floppy drive. When I grew up, it was customary to switch and copy floppies with classmates at school. Or copy tapes with a cassette recorder. How else would a kid get games in a rural small town in a small country?

   This disk-swapping tradition carried on to Atari, then PC – mostly because it was hard to get software any other way.

   Then came internet – and the ease of trying games out for free. But funnily – every game Ive played for a longer period – the games Ive actually liked – I have always bought as long as Ive been using a PC. Ive tried them out as pirates first, if Ive liked em, Ive bought em. Now Im not using Windows anymore, so whenever a Linux native game comes out (commercial that is), like Quake Wars some time ago, I buy it as soon as it hits the shelves if its any good.

   All of the games I play today are multiplayer games – except for the free / open source games I also like to play. Enemy Territory – Quake Wars is a good example imho – The demo contained one playable map, that you could play online as well. The pirate available online was identical to the demo in gameplay, and contained all maps. Only thing being, you couldnt play the pirate on servers. I tried it, bought the game, then put in the serial to the game installed from pirate image (it was 1:1 identical to the DVD :) ) and went to play happily. (In this case – the game wasnt available in shops in my country for a good while after its release..So I got the pirate and played that against bots until the game arrived in shops. I dont shop online nor do I have a credit card)

   Also DRM is an issue. I will not touch anything with that crap with a ten foot pole. Thats why I dont use Windows either – I used to pay for XP as well. No customer support, just customer bend-over-please. I had activation issues and other related woes, until one last time broke my back. I took a big knife to the original XP cd, whacked it to pieces gleefully, and installed Linux for the first time in my life. Thats now, over 4 years ago.

   To sum it: I want to try a game before I shell over my hard earned, sparse cash. If the game is good, I will happily pay – given that theres no DRM or such issues, and if the game is out for Linux – Im a sure customer.
   Also the game has to be original, and have good replay value. Darwinia I liked for example, http://www.darwinia.co.uk. Also an indy game publisher.

9. I used to pirate games because they are often not adequately priced for the entertainment value they bring. I don’t have much disposable income so I’m extremely tight with my purchases.

   I used to pirate movies until I got a Netflix subscription which gives me access to alot of movies at a very decent monthly fee. I stopped pirating games when I got a Gamefly subscription which works similarly. I’d use Rhapsody or a similar service for music if anything decent had been recorded since 1986.

   If your games were available in a method like this I’d be more willing to take a chance on a small developer like yourself and buy the product. Paying full price (even if it is heavily discounted) just isn’t very likely to happen.

10. First, let me say I don’t pirate games. Seriously being 100% honest… I have milk crates full of PC game boxes, in a closet, to prove it.

    Recently, (Last few years) I have found that I have to download commercial games.

    What? Why?

    I still buy them, but I won’t install them (the retail copy). Copy protection has gotten to a point where I have to get a pirated version in order to get a CLEAN version. How sad and ironic is that?

    You as a developer have a right to protect your game.

    You (or the publisher or whatever) DO NOT have the right to install MALWARE on MY Machine.

    Rootkits, Blacklisting legit applications that I use, phone-home-ware (activation – privacy issues), crap that encumbers and slows down my hardware that I’ve paid thousands for, and hundreds in upgrades annually.

    Keep the copy protection to the media (as it used to be)… don’t install SHIT on my machine (Other than the game). Period. Having to apply a no-cd hack is a small inconvenience compared to wasting my bandwidth for Gigs just to get a “clean” copy.

    I do buy fewer games… not because I’m older (42)… but because most PC games nowadays are crap. Console ports with poor game-play, buggy as hell, shitty controls, and graphics graphics graphics. Seriously… the last game I bought (That wasn’t an MMO) was Oblivion. There hasn’t really been anything since that interests me, nor would I waste the bandwidth to “pirate”. I’ve downloaded Demos like Crysis, played newer games on friend’s computers, etc… but they didn’t grab me. Good PC games are getting scarce, which is one of the reasons you see a lack of sales.

    Piracy is going to happen no matter what. The more the industry locks shit down by putting “crap” on our machines, the more it forces a ridiculous hardware upgrade rate by concentrating solely on eye-candy instead of game-play… the less sales you are going to see.

    Good games sell well regardless of the piracy problem (Look at Oblivion sales with just a simple cd-check for copy protection). Crappy games don’t sell for shit. So what’s wrong with the big picture? Oh… and a blockbuster on a console doesn’t exactly translate to good sales on a PC… totally different gamers – which a lot of devs haven’t “figured out yet”.

    As for your games (specifically)… I’ve never even heard of them, so you may have a marketing issue as well. (But I don’t play RTS’s, so maybe I’m wrong about that).

    Hope that helps.

11. Piracy is simply easier to carry out: Regardless of the moral implications, it is simply much easier to go about, download a game from torrent and crack it, than to be annoyed by the rubbish CD protection of the original copy. Just as with Video and audio streams, the “pirated” version offers me far more freedom and convenience. That said, I usually -crack- the games I legally buy, just to get away from the draconian protection schemes. Most of the times I pirate the game because I happen not to live in the US, and more often than not the game publishers will not sell the game outside that market, or only offer it over online distribution to Americans (wtf? Seriously…). Besides, if i buy it in my local country, i get it in spanish, even though I’d prefer the english version… I usually end up piarting to avoid paying the huge overcharge of games here (twice as expensive in Latin America), the language (how about some choice of language?) And because i simply will not go to the mall for a game, i should be able to buy it online.

12. Heya guy, I wouldn’t pirate any of the sim’s like games / clones, they’re just not my style.

    The reasons I buy games:
    a) I’ve played a demo from a magazine disc or the Internet and I liked it. (Diablo, Quake 1 & 2, Need for Speed, too many games to list)
    b) My friends are playing it already and it requires a serial key to play online. (Half Life)
    c) It’s something I have played pirated and enjoyed and want to support the makers (Bards Tale I, II and III)

    The reasons buying games sucks:
    a) Can’t play most of them now because of forced upgrades (OS, hardware etc)
    b) Stupid copy protection that doesn’t work even when you have the MF’n original game. Graaaahhh!!!
    c) Too much garbage comes with them (cases, advertising, leaflets) Should be minimal.

13. I don’t personally pirate many games. There have been a couple that I have gotten less than legal copies of but those are very few and usually they were for titles like Diablo II that I wanted to play with some friends but didn’t feel like a game that old could still be worth the money that they were selling it for. The main reason that I would pirate games is because I simply don’t always have money. I know that this can sound a little weird, considering that I’ve paid full price for over 50 Xbox/Xbox 360 titles, have around 25 XBLA games and about 20-30 DS games. PC games are easy to pirate (in comparison with console games) and this makes it very attractive for pirates as these games are easier to circumvent.

    Another reason that I thought of recently is with the latest news about Rainbow Six Vegas 2. Ubisoft was caught in the act of using an unofficial crack for the game to allow it to play without a disc and claiming it to be an official update. It is a sad state of affairs when professional game developers are forced to turn to the warez groups for a solution to their problem. This kind of action makes purchasing a game for the PC less attractive to me. It only makes sense in Bizarro World but when devs can’t figure out their own shit then why should I trust them to give me my money’s worth of hard earned cash?

    The only other reason I can think of as to why I would pirate games is because of region specific titles. I know that devs take long, hard looks at what market a certain title will drum up the most business. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a dedicated fan base of a certain title or genre of game in another region. Sometimes trying to import the game from, say Japan to the US, is extremely expensive. Why go to all the bother of trying to find an international shipper and pay for not only the game itself but also for the shipping and handling? Wouldn’t it just be easier to find a cracked copy or an emulator to play this game? For most gamers the answer is yes.

    I am very happy that someone from the game dev community has opened up to the gamers and asked an honest question. So many game companies seem to treat gamers as just a consumer of their product. Sure, some devs listen to feedback and adjust their games accordingly. But so many companies are stuck in the loop of cyclical reasoning by saying to themselves, “We make the games. Those people just buy them, play them, and complain to us. Who do they think they are trying to tell us how to do our jobs?”

    I hope the feedback that you get from myself and everyone else that posted is useful and I sincerely hope that you can create games that will lessen the impact of piracy. If you make a product that is worth the money of customers, worth the time investment they are looking for, and a fantastic piece of art, it may be just what you need to put a small blockade in the way of pirates.

    A final note, copy protection is not the way to go. All this does is allow pirates to show off how quickly they can crack a game. The best route to go is to make something worthwhile and enticing enough to spend real money on.

14. Whoops… made a boo boo… I meant to say last game I bought was Bioshock (I had Oblivion’s lack of copy protection on my mind)…. and yes I bought it… and no I didn’t install the version I bought… I downloaded a “clean” copy for installation.

15. Personally, I pirate games for 3 reasons.

    1. I want to try the game first. Demos usually cut the features down so harshly that I want to know what I’m purchasing before I do. If the game is worth it, I will purchase it.

    I think that putting out full function demos is a must. Pirates are going to crack the game anyways, so why not let legitimate customers test out the game to it’s full capacity.

    2. I’m currently in a financially tough situation. All of my friends play games online each week and I can’t afford to keep up with some of them. I will pirate the games they currently are playing but only buy it if I plan on playing it by myself in the future.

    For instance, I downloaded a copy of Sins of Solar Empire. I have found that I love that game, so I’m going to be putting it into my budget. Also, I want to support companies that do not put DRM in their games so I will purchase it for that reason as well.

    Which leads me to…

    3. DRM. I will pirate anything put out by Electronic Arts period. I hate their DRM scheme. It’s the same reason I avoid iTunes. If I purchase something I want to use it on my home computer, my laptop, etc. I want my friend to come over and be able to play against me even if I’m the only one who bought the game. If I buy a game for a gaming console, I can usually play 4 players, why not on PC games?

    The last game I purchased from EA was Command and Conquer 3. I had a tough time playing it purely because I had Daemon Tools installed on my computer. I will never ever purchase from them again. Their DRM just makes playing their games unenjoyable.

    And for God’s sake, please remove a CD requirement. I hate having to download NoCD cracks every time I want to play a game.

    My suggestion is to charge a very reasonable price for a game ($20 or so) and then charge a fee for upgrades and add-ons.

    For instance, why would I want to pay EA another $50 every time they re-release Madden with new teams each year when they could just charge $10 for a new team update every year and re-release the game with new graphics every 3-5 years (on par with new console releases and major updates to computer graphics). Heck, they could even sell new features or mini-games as a $5 upgrade.

    Strategy games could release new maps and races. First person shooters could release new single player levels, multi-player maps, and even weapons.

    Granted, this style may not work for all games, but it would help the pirating issue and give gamers a continued gaming experience. It’s also a smaller financial investment for gamers on tight budgets, but if they truly enjoy the game, they will continue to purchase upgrades.

16. Have you ever noticed how the threshold for when piracy happens is always different? We’re happy to pay $80 for some console game, but we bitch & moan about some $15 download.

    The insignificant answer is psychology: a console game or thing in a box is tangible and invokes a sense of ownership. We’re willing to engage in a transaction to have it. A download, on the other hand, is intangible. We dislike paying for things we can’t touch & feel, or that are indirect in our lives. We like to pay driver license fees because we get that important little card. We hate paying the gas tax, even though it makes the roads possible.

    But, like I said, that’s the insignificant explanation and doesn’t do enough to address why people pirate. The larger answer is that it’s a simple matter of budget.

    The gamers’ WHOLE budget.

    I bought a $2,000 gaming rig. Or I bought a $500 console. I bought a $2,000 flat screen. I bought an $800 surround sound system. I bought home owners insurance to cover it all. I spend $50/mo on my shitty internet connection. I pay for a MMO membership. I buy extra controllers. I’ve been bled dry just to have all this SHIT as my gaming foundation.

    And on top of that, you want to charge me more for your DRM-ass-raping shitty-play fuckball-graphics buggy-as-fuck have-to-put-in-the-fucking-cd doesnt-work-with-my-$2000-gaming-rig can’t-return-it extremely-gay-plotted little video game? WITH FIFTY BILLION ADVERTISING SPLASH SCREENS EVERY TIME I FUCKING LAUNCH THE GAME?

    Are you fucking kidding me?

    Gaming is too expensive of a headache. I’ve been raped by my ISP. I’ve been raped by my hardware provider. I’ve been raped by all the 3rd party providers. And now you want to come along and get some of that action, too?

    I’m so goddamn angry at the whole world, I’m going to rape you the only way I know how. I’m going to pirate your shitty game and laugh at you the entire time I play it.

    How do /you/ like it, bitch?

17. I’m just going to keep this short and simple. My main reason is cost. DRM can be a headache, but I know my way around a computer enough to blast the occasional SecuROM.

    No, I can’t afford to be paying 50-60$ per game up to 3x a month. Especially for a mediocre game like Crysis, or a re-hash like Medieval 2. Sure Crysis was pretty, but the gameplay added up to a so-so shooter. Now, if I play a game and like it, ex: Portal, Mass Effect, I will buy (read: have bought) the game. I still buy .5 to 1 games per month.

    But the fact of the matter is, if I were forced to pay for the games I wouldn’t be able to buy them. Not off of a federal work study pay. As far as I’m concerned, I’m getting my games with a speedy delivery, the people who deserve the money are getting it, I get my entertainment, and I’m guilt free.

    It’s a vicious cycle, but maybe there are too many game developers asking for more pie than there is. I wonder if that ever crossed their minds.

18. I just wanted to say that originally, I started when I was in high school, no money broke parents. Now, I do it mainly because of quality or no demo. If I can’t easily gain access to a demo, I can easily gain access to the full game. And by demo, I don’t mean 1.5GB demo from some slow ass site that takes 20 hours to download. I mean under 1GB, high speed server, BEFORE the game comes out. If a game’s entire size is 3GB, why bother with downloading a 1.8GB “demo”?

    Quality. I will buy games, frequently if they are worth it. Simply put. A game with lots of variety or modding capabilities or even just good amounts of replayability.

    That’s really it. Like for example, if I actually spent money on Crysis, I would have shot myself in the foot. Terrible game. Looks nice, sorta, but just a downright lame shooter.

19. Reasons for pirating:
    (These may not apply to you as I haven’t played any of your games before)

    1) It is convenient to pirate. If I read a good review for a game and want to try it out, I can just download it immedietly with a torrent and give it a go in a few hours. I’m usually too lazy to go and buy the CD unless it’s an impulse buy when I’m out shopping for something else.

    2) Why pay for what you can get for free? Ok – this is selfish I admit. However, I mostly did this when I was still at school/uni. Since I started working full time my rate of piracy has drastically dropped!

    However, I still pirate movies/music out the ass…. but this is more so out of hatred for the RIAA/MPAA rather then the desire to save money (honestly it is. I consider the MAFIAA to be worse the the church of Scientology). My advice to you is – don’t be jerks to your customer base, even if they are pirating.

    3) DRM doesn’t really bother me at all because I can download cracks for it just as easilly as for pirated games… Although I imagine it bothers a lot of other people

    Main reason I *BUY* (This may be a more important question to ask):
    1) Multiplayer access. I don’t wanna go through hassles to play online. This does not necessarilly apply to subscriptions services like WoW where it is required – I also buy legit copies of games like wc3, starcraft etc just cause I can’t be bothered setting up games on alternative free servers.

    2) Ease of getting patches. If games are constantly tweaked I’d like to be able to get the patches without goihng through trouble (e.g. Moment I finished uni and got a job, I formatted my cracked winXP and went out and bought a legit copy for 200 bucks. Never regretted it once).

    3) Shiny CD cover/box/manual etc.

    4) Impulse buying when I’m out shopping.

    5) Friends are all playing the game and I want to join in with them.

    If you have any further questions feel free to email me!

20. Ease of use….

    Ripped versions of games can be loaded on hard drives, memory cards, etc. without keeping and swapping out drm protected game disks or cartridges.

    Games should be able to be purchased online, downloaded and installed on a variety of storage devices.

    It would also be great if commercial games could allow limited sharing. Let me send a copy to a friend that lets him play online with me.

21. I have not (yet?) pirated your games, but I have been known to “pirate” other games and things… there are often many reasons, but here are some ideas and alternate payment methods that I WISH were in place (and not just for games):

    – some games are “free” but ad supported, with the option to remove the ads and things. I find the ads annoying, but I like that I can play without having to pay anything… often I end up paying something if I play it for any length of tim

    – Or to offer a free version (like a full demo) but small paid upgrades. I think if the upgrades were priced fairly low, then you have multiple chances to increase sales. Actually, a small ($1-4) monthly subscription would be really great – and easy to “forget”

    – for some titles, it might even make sense to release the game and then just ask for donations from the fans… no, I AM being serious. If its a good game, I’d be willing to give back if there was an easy way. Plus, this allows people to scale their contribution based on their ability. A kid might not be able to afford anything, but a 30 year old programmer in the US might not think too much about giving $25+

    – another idea might be to do basic game development, and then ask for donations to develop the game further (add features, add levels, make a sequel, etc.). If there were clear financial milestones and an easy way to add to it, this could help to pay for production (and profit) before doing all of the work

    – consider, also, that if you make good games, then it is going to be helpful to have those games seen/played. If you are in the biz for the long term, then this can help you build up momentum and a solid fan base. You might have to accept a certain amount of “spoilage” as part of the system… and just try to focus on long-term customers and potential upsells (especially like shirts, books, guides, etc.)

    In the end, there is nothing you can do to stop piracy (like you don’t know that)… but that doesn’t mean you can’t find creative ways to reduce the damaging effects.

    A few hundred years ago, some radical thinkers got together and built a system of government that actually DEPENDS on the greed and ego of humans to make it work. Its not perfect, but it works way better than many other forms before it.

    Perhaps you can experiment and find a new business model that is somehow aided by piracy…

    thats the smart money

22. I don’t really play video games at all, but came to share my opinion since you’re asking for it. I really admire what you’re doing – asking the general public why they pirate your games. I used to play video games until I was about 14. I only pirated a few games and I did so because I wanted to get the latest game to play with my friends. I literally had no income except for begging my parents, and I’m the type of person that has always felt guilty of begging my parents to buy things for me, especially and expensive $50 video game. Now I don’t look at $50 as much, but for a kid with no income, $50 is a ton of money. I remember I pirated Unreal Tournament 2004 because I had bought an earlier version, and I felt wtf I bought this game already, but I just want to play the new version w/ my friends. So I just pirated it.

    Another thing I’d like to mention is all the DRM crap. I’m not sure if you use anything on your games, but I never understood the “Put in the CD to play” once you already installed the game. It’s not like you can’t pirate any game if you do enough searching, so why even bother with trying to stop it? It’s going to happen, period. There is no stopping it, merely because it only takes *ONE* person in the entire WORLD to make a no-CD crack, and then everybody can pirate the game. Such annoying tactics piss off 100% of customers and prevent NOTHING. People that want to buy the game will, people that don’t will pirate it. That’s how it is and how it will always be. So companies should work to make sure their product is at least of equal quality as the free version – NO DRM – because the companies are literally selling a lesser quality product.

    So in conclusion, I pirated because I was a kid and didn’t have money. If I were to buy a video game now, I would probably pirate it first to make sure I enjoyed the game. Nothing would suck more than to buy a $50 game and then get home and find out you’re not even entertained by it.

23. Honestly, I tend to buy a lot of games rather than pirate them. The reason I would pirate a game is because quite frankly the general quality of games has gone down over the recent years. I cannot count how many times I’ve paid 40-60$ for a game that looked fantastic then get home and pop it in and it sucks so bad that I don’t play it ever again. Can I bring it back to the store and get my money back? Hell no I can’t. In these situations I’m just flat out a good chunk of cash.

    Obviously certain developers disappoint less than others, for instance I’ll always buy a Blizzard game, but I will never purchase an EA game again.

    Cheers.

24. I think my answer will not be surprising. I live in a low income family. We cannot afford all the games that come out. I -do- buy games that deserve it. Such as today I reserved a Copy of Fable 2 Collectors edition. That and Fallout 3 may be the only games I buy this year, because I can’t really afford others. Some people may want me and my parents to ‘get a better job’ but that’s hard right now. My father does heating and Air conditioning and work is so slow right now he doesnt even work the entire week, nor all of an entire day sometimes. $60 Stacks up, plus $50 for XbL, $ for internet, batteries, etc. I don’t feel I have a right to free stuff, It’s just that I only want to PAY for something Im going to use as MUCH as a T-shirt

25. @randompirate
    So you won’t buy an EA game? That sorta stinks. I don’t work there anymore and I used to think the same way about EA games. But I can tell you this, the quality of the games EA are putting out now should be looked at by you. Games like Skate and NHL. The fact that NHL was voted best sports game of the year by many of the media outlets in the states is saying something. Especially when the people reviewing them aren’t even hockey fans. And skate was an all round good game.

    At the same time I do see where you are coming from randompirate. Too many times people have gone to the store and bought games for a large amount of money just to be screwed over. As we all know Marketing generally is far from the truth. Prime example for a PC game of that nature is Age of Conan. Game looked great, its feature list was fantastic. The only issue was none of those features worked, the game ended at level 50 even though there are 80 levels. So why should someone spend their hard earned money on something that is subpar? They shouldn’t, and game development studios should pride themselves on getting the job done right and on time with the features advertised.

26. Why do I pirate games? Well lets look at my experience with the last two games I bought: Test Drive: Unlimited and BioShock. I was so excited for Test Drive and it’s promise of unlimited gameplay. I had actually pirated the game to see what it was like. Finding that I loved the concept and wanting to play with my friends online I went out and bought the game. What a mistake that was. While the pirated version of the game worked perfectly (only in single player of course) the store bought version would hardly work at all. I never did get to play with my friends because the netcode in the game was so bad that even if you were sitting on top of each other, it was very unlikly that you would actually SEE the other player! Beyond that it was buggy in general, crashed constantly, there were framerate issues even with my beefy machine, and promised content never actually appeared. In order to play the game at all I had to use the pirated game and the mini-ISO.. that was until the patch came out. The patch that fixed exactly NONE of the problems, but updated the DRM to the newest version, so I was back to not being able to play the game at all! It has since sat on my shelf gathering dust and serves as an object lesson.

    BioShock was another story. Great game, fun to play.. would have been awsome all round except for the stupid DRM. I actually had to format and reinstall Windows to get rid of the stuff! Like always there was no mention of the DRM in the EULA, no warning that I was about to install a product that would be imposible to remove.. basicly it was Malware! Had I just stuck to the priated version it would have been far less of a hastle!

    The fact is that in general, pirated games offer a smoother, easier and far less frustrating experience for the end user. DRM is such a nightmare that I now have second thoughts about purchasing ANY game with it installed. I have been burned far too many times. The methods used are the same that virus writers use and, in reality, aren’t even legal as there is no warning that the game is installing such software and generally no way to uninstall it once it is on there without using specialized tools or reformatting the computer.

    But DRM is just the most current issue. There have been others outstanding for far longer. The biggest factor is the lack of any ablity to return a game after it is purchaced. With any other product I would have 30 days to return it to the store and get my money back. With PC games, once it is opened, that is IT. There is no return on the product. My average time playing a game is maybe 2 to 3 hours before it is deleted off my computer. Most of the games I download and try are complete shit. Some aren’t even actually completed (Black and White 2 comes to mind.. yet ANOTHER title I was burned on). If I had the option to return the game, then perhaps I would feel differently. But as I can’t, I feel I had better make sure that it is worth my money BEFORE I go out and shell out hard earned cash!

    Technical support is also and issue. The indie developers are at least offering their games at reasonable prices. $10 – $15 or sometimes even less. But main stream games still run between $60 – $100. For that you get the disc, in a box and NOTHING else. If it doesn’t work, to damn bad because there is no support offered. Certainly no telephone support and most of the time, no email support as well. What other product would I spend that kind of premium on and recive no support? What other product, when it doesn’t work, would the responce from the company be “Too bad for you sucka!”? Let me say again, this is on a product THAT I CAN’T TAKE BACK!

    I buy games that I play alot. I think that is fair. However, it seems that development companies have gotten themselves in the grip of lawyers and have bought their story hook line and sinker. They worry about the profits they AREN’T makeing, instead of looking at the profits they ARE making. The most pirated games are almost always the most sucessful. They make big money for the development companies but that profit is overshadowed in their minds by the profits they COULD have made if all the pirated copies were actually paid for. That is a false economy that states that all those people would actually buy the game if they had no other choice. The reality is that only a very very small fraction of those people would do so. Another fraction would play the game to test and buy it if they like it, but that leaves the vast majority of those people who would never buy a copy at all if there no option to pirate.

    That means the reach of your game, the number of people advocating your game, would be much much smaller. You don’t think THAT would affect actual sales??? I have news for you. Pirates tend to be Alpha consumers. While they themselves might not buy the product, they act as conduits to people who DO. You WANT these people screaming from the rooftops that your game is great so their friends will rush out and buy it! Of course that all falls down if the retail version isn’t a smooth and easy option for the end user. If the DRM is a headache they are more likly to ask their friend to install the game for them, rather than head to the store and purchace a copy. To be honest, even when I have purchaced a game, I STILL used the pirated version (with the new valid CD key) because the DRM on the retail copy is such a huge pain in the ass.

    Other, better options DID exist. Steam WAS such an option, but is no longer. I love my old Steam games like Half-Life 2. I can install them anywhere, play them on any computer and don’t have to worry about CD keys and discs. However, games like BioShock, Test Drive and Mass Effect show that even this great thing can be killed by DRM. Developers, again worried about fictional profits they COULD be earning, limit the number of installs of a game and therefore take away ALL the advantages of digital distrubution. I have had HL2 since I pre-ordered it and it has been installed on every computer I own (which has been quite a few.. I get a new one about once every 6 months). Had I bought BioShock this way I would now have to buy a new copy, or fight with their customer support each and every time I got a new gaming PC. WHY would I wish to do this?

    So those are some reasons why I pirate games, however; I think you are asking the wrong question. The question isn’t “why do people pirate”, but rather, what reasons do YOU, the developer, give for people to NOT pirate? So far it seems to be only a moral argument comming from the side of the developers. That it is wrong to steal. Granted, but shouldn’t you be more worried about producing a quality, bug free game that offers a superior end user experience to the pirated version? What do you give to me, the consumer, that makes the non-pirated version worth the money? Why wouldn’t I pirate a game if the experience is significantly better than the retail product? Those are the questions you should be asking, and not to the end users, but of yourselves. Stop worrying about fantastical, maybe, could be, if only, profits and start worrying about making a product that people want. Pirates can be your friends (Look at 3d Studio max and how piracy helped it distroy SoftImage for instance) and start using them to reach a wider audience than you ever could before. Pirates LOVE games. They are gamers, THEY ARE YOUR TARGET MARKET! Start treating them as such. Going to war agaist the very people who buy your product has never, and will never be, a good idea.

27. I don’t game as much as I used to, but I’ll still pirate something every now and then. Two main reasons:

    1. It’s hard to find games I played when I was younger (Caesar III, for example), and so downloading a pirated copy is often the easiest, if not the only, way to get a copy, and

    2. Economics. It’s not a matter of, ‘I’ll pay for it if pirating is no longer practical’. I’m a college student living away from home, money is tight, and my budget for big-ticket computer games is slim at best. I only play the game(s) because I can get them for free. If I had to choose between buying or not playing at all, I just wouldn’t play.

28. I feel like PC gaming has burned me with bugginess, unfinished crap, and the move to console ports rather than made-for-PC stuff. I don’t feel entitled to free software but I don’t really feel bad about taking it either because I’ve dumped a ton of money into the industry and a large amount of that was for stuff that should have never been released.

    I will absolutely buy anything from any developer who earns my money by releasing good games that aren’t 4 hours long and are actually finished and debugged. Valve, Blizzard, and now CD Projekt RED all have a subscription to my wallet for life because their stuff is always good or, in the case of CD Projekt, the level of dedication to their product is astounding.

    Convenience is another issue as it’s likely I’d pay money for a good game on Steam regardless of the developer’s track record. I don’t want Best Buy or Gamestop to have any of my money when digital distribution is so much better. If I can’t send you money and download your game via Steam then I’ll probably just not send you money and download your game from somewhere else. I hate dealing with DVDs and boxes and I hate going to buy games from stores that retired PC games to a shelf in the back and I hate waiting a week for Amazon to send me stuff.

    In summary, make something good and as bugfree as possible, make me feel like I’m getting value for my money without using the word “replayability”, let me purchase and download it online, and continue to release good and bugfree games so that your reputation makes me want to buy everything you make.

    Or move to consoles so I can rent your stuff from Gamefly and not pay you for your games the legal way.

29. great idea. i’ll offer some insights:

    1. laziness: the disc medium as a delivery method has been made obsolete by torrents. it’s easier (and sometimes faster) to click a few buttons and wait than it is to go to a store, buy a game, get it home, sit through a multiple-disk install, find and download patches, install patches, see if the game feels like running on your hardware. then download a NO-CD patch so i don’t have to fiddle with disks and listen to my CD drive spin while i play. 99% of the time, a pirated game is ready to play and has all the recent patches (on top of having the annoying copy protections removed). this delivery method is far superior and game companies need to realize this and alter their behavior to compete. there are games that i actually own from my pre-internet days, that are sitting in a box in my basement, and if i want to play them again, i will download the torrent rather than crack out the disks and play the install / patch game.

    2. copy protections: they are all a pain in the ass. when given the choice of something that’s easy to use, or a pain in the ass to use, people will choose the former.

    3. risk: who knows if this game is something i’ll like? who knows if it will run satisfactorily on my PC hardware? the only thing i know is that once i buy it and open it, i can’t return it.

    4. price: you can’t beat free. i would suggest you look into a business model where you give away the majority of the game, and sell additions as downloads (or cd’s through the mail for non-connected folks) for a very reasonable price (~$5).
    to give an example: Firaxes’s “Alpha Centauri” could have given the game away for free, with only 4 civilizations available, and charged $5 for 4 more. yes $30 is more than $5, but once you make a game downloadable for free, you reach the majority of gamers who either don’t know how, are scared to, or don’t believe it’s right to download a pirated game. you also reach the people who would not have purchased your game otherwise. you could reach a hundred times more people. and once we are talking about $5, it may no longer be worth people’s time to pirate.

    i feel the market is going to change soon and pioneers will pave the way any day now. good luck.

30. The answer is a variation on the tragedy of the commons. The forces of economics do not make an exception for you. However if you choose a different business model (MMORPG subscription for instance, changing scope of games, price structure, release frequency) then you may be able to make those same forces work for you instead of against you. Think about other areas of popular entertainment: movies and music. The term ‘starving artist’ was not coined for nothing. Without financial backing, actors and musicians often have to make ends meet doing other things. Welcome to the arts.

    Good luck in all of your ventures.

31. I find it amazing that through this whole discussion, nobody has brought up open source software. By making the source open, you remove the ability to “pirate” the game in the sense that there is nothing to steal. The developer in that case has shared his code with all the potential users and people are free to download it, or its corresponding source code without any moral or ethical dilemma at all.

    Now, the PC gamers among you will surely cry that there are no good open source games. So the question is why not?

    Console games, surely can never really be open sourced because you are moving atoms, the cartridge, CD/DVD, Blue Ray, etc.

    But with most (all?) PC games, what are we really moving around with CDs and game downloads other than bits?

    This dev’s question, and his outreach seemed to be about pay for use PC games.

    So, what if he decided to release his games as open source?

    Well, for one he would surely solve the piracy issue. He would also save on packaging, distribution, warehousing, printing, and shipping.

    He still has the issue of how does he pay the bills. I admit, this is a real issue and don’t mean to suggest that he should go poor. But pleanty of folks, myself including make a decent wage selling not software but the service and support involved in installing, configuring, patching a, supporting this software.

    Why is a game any different?

32. There are only a few reasons why I pirate games(rare as I do it.)

    1) The game is unusually difficult to find. Like some of the NIS games(Disgaea, Phantom Brave. I’ve bought most of them, but damn they’re rare). I end up playing the pirated game until I can find one I can buy, and then I pay for it.

    2) The game costs too much and/or has expansions that cost bunches.(Seriously, I wouldn’t ever spend $150 for a game and two expansions for a game that’s about four years old, unless it’s an internet game, which means it’s constantly updated and is more fun) The only game I’ve ever downloaded for this was craptacular and I deleted it… In fact, I can’t even remember its name…

    3) It’s an old/outdated game(Usually extremely difficult to find… See #1). This is where most of the pirated games I have are. Old PSone/NES/SNES games that nobody ever sells anymore(Played with emulators on the PC, or for the Psone ones, on my PsP).

    4) (Perhaps my biggest gripe…) I get the game… and then it has some amazingly stupid, STUPID DRM on it that takes powerful programs to eliminate.. or editing your system folders. Sweet fuck, I don’t need my computer slowed down just so you can be happy that I bought the damn game(4 or 5 DRMs running in the background is noticeable to people that play a lot of counter-strike and fast-paced games. A fraction of a second lag is still a measurement of time that my reflexes are able to keep track of, and sometimes everything rests on that fraction of a second. Far more noticeable is when you have that tiny lag, and it keeps adding up throughout the course of a game, UNTIL YOUR SESSION CRASHES HALFWAY THROUGH THE GAME. Usually I close nearly everything in the background while playing so that it’s as fast as possible, and a lot of these DRMs won’t close).
    In this case, I’ll generally buy the game… and stick it on the shelf and play my pirated version. Maybe the mint condition game could be worth something in about a dozen years.

33. I used to pirate a lot of games and never play them back in college, i would do it mostly because a game looked cool and i didn’t wanna pay for it just to be disappointed. A good example of that is heroes of might and magic; loved that series, 3 was my fave, when i heard about 4 cause 3 rocked so much i bought it… and i hated it… i pirated a copy of 5 when it came out, thought it was pretty awesome so i bought it.

    That gets me to my other reason why, lack of demo’s I download demo’s of games that might be cool off steam and just about anywhere else i can find one constantly, if its awesome i’ll buy it, if not i’ll dump it… i loved audiosurf and for 10bux i couldn’t beat the fun factor even if it was fun for a few days and then forgotten… which i’m still addicted to it. Unfortunatley most companies just don’t release demo’s anymore, i’m glad positech does; starship tycoon looks pretty badass… but my favorite series probably ever fallout is getting the sequel on everyone’s mind.

    Fallout 3 from bethesda, who has stated they are not releasing a demo to the public so if i buy it and its a beautiful pile of crap i’m stuck with it. I can take it to gamestop for a pittance of what i paid. Most places if software is opened can’t be returned which with piracy is understandable. But if a game sucks there’s no way i’m keeping it.

    price to me never played a part in piracy as its been pretty much $20-$90 here in the US depending on the game, if a game was good it was a keeper no matter the price… back in the day i bought phantasy star 4 on sega genesis for $90 and it was well worth it at the time… hell i’d still buy it if it’d just make it to the virtual console on the Wii. so for me its about being able to try it out before hand and if its even remotley enjoyable i’ll more than likely buy it… i mean i still really love playing audiosurf and its a simple cheap game with so much fun factor.

34. Why I used to copy a PC video game (I don’t game anymore):

    I attended a regular lan party that consists of about 30 individuals. Sure there are about 4 games that where always played but then there are games that people want to try out to see if people like it at “The Lan” and worked in that environment.

    Under the way publishers/developers want things; we’d have to buy a game before we could ever try it out. At $49.95 per game and 30 people bringing new games to the LAN every month, this is completely unstainable economically. Not only that but to buy a game I may only play less than 2 hours worth is crazy. There a ton of Junk games. Demos you couldn’t test either because they were crippled or lacked enough content for a full run.

    Usually though the top 4 games in the rotation at the LAN would be purchased by everyone as they were truely great games.

    Lastly, if things were fair the consumer would be able to return their product for a full refund (cost/tax/return shipping) to the publisher/developer if the game was buggy, security problems, displayed artifacts etc. But no you never can because they never stand by their product which of course makes a person less easily part with their cash when they know they are going to be stuck with a product that may not be all that the packaging purports it to be.

35. Personally, I pirate because I wouldn’t purchase the game in the first place. If I plan on purchasing the game, I will.

    I will often pirate a title because I’m bored and want something to keep me occupied for a little while. Being a mostly casual gamer (with bouts of long periods of time spent in FPSes online or MMORPGs during the summer), I don’t feel comfortable shelling out 50-60$ for a game that is going to last me a week at most, but I won’t mind downloading it and saving my money for a better game that I will get a lot of use out of later.

    Regarding single player games – these games appeal the least to people like me (casual gamers always looking for something new) because once you beat the game (or once you play until you’ve had enough of it), there isn’t much else to do with it. For a next-gen FPS ala Half Life 2 (which is a GREAT game and didn’t suffer at all from piracy – hint hint: make a great game and people will buy it), there is always online play, user created content, new updates, etc… that keep your purchase fresh and interesting.

    You drew a similarity to purchasing a 15$ t-shirt to a 15$ game and asked why they are different. Well, here’s why: a t-shirt becomes your property- you can wear it whenever you want, for as long as you want, until it wears out – and if you don’t like the t-shirt you can always return it or sell it to someone else for a little cheaper. A 15$ video game can last, at most, a few hours and then you’re done with it and probably won’t be playing it too much more after that. That’s if you like it, mind you. If you just shell out 15$ and find that the game is crap or only the demo worked well and was enjoyable, then you’re out 15$ and there’s absolutely no way to get your money back.

    Those are just a few of the reasons.

    I don’t consider myself a thief because I feel that I am just testing their game and like I said earlier – I wouldn’t buy it in the first place because I’m not likely to spend 50-60$ on anything at one time, being a college student (which is a VERY large part of the gaming demographic). But, if the game is exceptional, then I will tend to focus on the developer and most likely make the purchase and future purchases. This happened with me and Bethesda Softworks. Their Elder Scrolls series was one of the first games I pirated. I loved it, so I saved up some money from my summer jobs in middle school and went out and purchased Morrowind and later Oblivion (which I was only mildly pleased with).

    Long story short, make your games good, don’t drown them in DRM, give your players a reason to continue using their product (through updates, online modes, user created content, etc…), and listen to and care about your customers.

    I currently have 24 pirated titles sitting on an external hard drive. Most weren’t very good or are old games that you can’t buy in stores. The rest I actually ended up purchasing, but I’ve found that it’s much easier to have an ISO and No-CD crack for a game than to have to insert the CD or find the CDs (which could be scratched) to install and play.

36. Hey,

    Just thought I would chime in with my $.02 on why people (sometimes myself included) pirate a given piece of software.

    I have to tell you I started out doing this in the 80’s, back when the Apple ][ was king and if you had 128k (yes k) of memory in your computer, you were a god :) Back then pirating games/software was a matter of collecting. Being able to have something that someone wanted that I could trade to them for something that I wanted. Very much like baseball/football cards. It was a matter of trading something, it was for fun, and more often than not, it cost us much more to pirate then game than it would have ever cost us to actually purcahse it.

    An example is a particular game in which you had to do a standard copy of the entire disc with copy program A, and then go back in with copy program B and do a byte copy on tracks 0a-0e, or the game wouldn’t work. Some of you old-timers might know this game ;)

    I would say it took us a good week to figure that out, and even at minimum wage at the time (around $3.35/hr) it cost us over twice as much to learn to pirate the game than it would have for us to actually purchase it. However, it was worth it to us to do so because not only were we getting this fantastic game, but we were also learning about the computer, how it worked and how to program, whch was FAR more valuable than the game and at the same time gave us a reason to learn to program, read 6502 assembler, etc.

    As time wore on, that trend continued and then just became a game of “who could collect the most”.

    Since I have gotten older however, while I still copy software, movies, music, etc. I now do it for different reasons, or maybe I don’t, that is really hard to say, however I will give some examples.

    Photoshop:
    Everyone pirates Photoshop, it is *the standard* for photo editing and once you have used it and gotten used to how much you can do with it and how incredible it is, nothing else will do. Other programs don’t feel like Photoshop, don’t act like Photoshop and just *aren’t* Photoshop.

    In business, I will spend the money and buy it, as using it in business is a part of bringing in revenue, etc. In other words, in business Photoshop helps me make money, so I pay for it. For at my house however, Photoshop, while still valuable, is not worth the money that it costs for what I use it for there. There are other programs that can do what I need, but once again, I am used to Photoshop, I can use Photoshop and the other programs require a learning curve that I don’t have time to deal with. Because of this, Photoshop at my house is NOT a purchased version.

    Games (Computer)
    I don’t pirate many games anymore because most games I don’t find compelling enough to care to play very often. Those few games that I have pirated in recent years however are pirated for a couple reasons only.

    1) I use a Mac and I can’t just go down to the corner software store where I live and pick up the latest version of “Game X” because Companies X, Y and Z don’t carry Mac software.

    2) Find an online retailer and trusting my Credit Card information to their website, ordering the game and then on top of the cost of the game paying shipping and if I want it now, well that is not going to happen, I will have to wait a few days UNLESS I decide to pay for FedEx next day shipping in which case I will only be waiting a day providing that I will be home from work that day to accept the delivery.

    or option 3. Get online and download the game which will take anywhere between 5mins and 5 hours depending on the game, the location I would get it from (BitTorrent, (s)FTP, private servers, etc.)

    Option 3 generally wins out because I will probably get tired of the game shortly anyway and just delete it. This means I have no fancy box to worry about storing so I can have a nice place for my instruction manuals, etc.

    Movies
    Most movies aren’t worth purchasing plain and simple, though there are a few gems out there which I dutifully purchase (Love & Sex, The Doors, etc.). Additionally, not all movie theatres play all the movies I would like to see, in fact, often times I cannot see a given movie because there are no theatres within a reasonable distance that are playing it. That in no way means that I don’t want to see it, and sometimes they are on PPV, but I am not going to pay $10 to watch the movie on my TV when I can only watch it ONCE either. I also would generally prefer NOT to wait 3-12 months until it comes out on an overpriced DVD either, and why should I? They put copy protection on them so I *cough* can’t *cough* copy it onto backup media so when my young children manage to get ahold of it and scratch the hell out it I can still watch it, nope, if that happens I have to go spend another $20+ to purchase a new original, whereas if I could make a backup copy, I could put the original safely away.

    Music
    Mostly to hear stuff I would not otherwise hear or to preview an album before I go spend money on it. Most of todays music is. to me 1-3 good songs and a bunch of CRAPTASTIC filler. It simply isn’t worth the money 9x out of 10. There are some artists that I will dutifully purchase every album, because they have been consistantly good throughout their careers, but most music these days sucks and I don’t feel that crappy music should be be rewarded financially.
    That is about all I can think of now, but you can always email me with more questions if you want. I would be happy to answer them.

37. Main reasons why people would illegally download;
    >Ease of access: no trips to the store, set it to d/l overnight, wake up to a game. This is a big one… it’s also nice to have a copy of the game that can be recopied, backed up, etc.
    ~~~How to help fix? Host online downloads of games for their price. This replaces the cost of discs, boxes, manuals with that of maintaining a server to host the download. This won’t completely solve the pirate issue, but it’ll be a start. Making it simpler and easier to access the game, removing the trip out of the house and waiting in line with something that can be initiated and left alone to finish.

    >It’s free! yea, it’s childish to want everything for nothing, but I’m sure many people feel that dropping $50 on a game every couple months after beating and completing another game in less than a week might be felt as too much.
    I’ve personally decided against buying a game (as in, not bothering to buy, download, etc.) because I didn’t feel it was enough to be worth the $50.
    Example: I’d pay $50 for Crysis, but not for Team Fortress 2. As a side note, Valve were geniuses in packaging multiple games together in the Orange Box. Portals was absolutely brilliant for how short it was and worth the $20-30 investment on it’s own… putting it with TF2 and HL2 just makes the deal sweeter for $50-$60.
    ~~~Suggestion? Put more content into games. I don’t want to complete the main story in 10 hours of play. I’d like something a lot more substantial! Portals was incredibly short; but the atmosphere, GLaDoS, and puzzles were fun and very enjoyable. Crysis wasn’t terribly long, but it was engaging and filled in the storyline enough to be a sound $50 game. A lot of games I’ve seen come close, but in the end the total experience isn’t something I feel is worth my money…

    >We don’t know how the game will be… some people (myself included) look at a game and begin debating if it’s something we’d like to play. I’ve personally downloaded a game here or there where I’m really on the ropes about if it’s gonna be good or not (and of course everyone’s judgement of what they’ll enjoy is different). Sometimes we want to test it and see if it’s worth buying. To point something out, I’ve never bought a game that I was indecisive about after playing through a downloaded copy… not because I had my own copy, but because it turned out to be very mediocre…
    ~~~Host game demos to download and try. Like a single level, or mini-scenario, or something to give buyers a taste of the game. Allow the demo to be played a few times before locking out the player and asking them to purchase. I’d say 5 plays through, then locked. This gives the customer a chance to test thouroughly, maybe show a couple friends, then decide. This goes back to making games more accessible to the pc/online crowd…

    In the end, there will always be a lot of people that pirate media because it’s there, it’s free, and they can do it. Rules of the internet, no perceived consequences- there will always be individuals doing things they’d never do in real life, all because they now have a computer screen in front of them.

    Also, it wouldn’t help to trim some of the fat from game packaging… no need to have 15 different inserts advertising merchandise inside the THICK cardboard box…

38. First, I’m disabled, and live on a paltry monthly disability check. This means that I rarely can buy things, yet my disability means that I have a great deal of free time, and need distractions and such badly.
    So, I eagerly seek “evaluation copies” of things. I grow tired/bored with most things fairly quick. I’m glad that I have the option to try these things. So many appear to be much more entertaining than they prove ultimately to be.
    However, occasionally there are those things that DO impress me. Where/when possible, I certainly buy a copy, the developers have earned my respect, and thus deserve what little “extra” cash I can produce. For those “evaluation copies”, it’s not as though anyone loses a sale, given my poverty.
    I’m not a thief.

39. There are a few reasons. First of all, in our household, we have 3 people who live off a relatively low income. We put a lot into games. Usually buy quite a number of them every month. In many cases they will be titles that are a little cheaper whether the result of age, being relatively unknown, or just being a smaller game. But there are limitations. And with all the games we play, we just don’t have the money to keep up. For what we can spend, we often try to go for the smaller developers first. Each single purchase means more there. Though we would like to pay for them, games we pirate are things we wouldn’t be able to pay for anyway. Though often times, if it’s a good quality product, we’ll go ahead and buy it when we do have money like Beyond Good & Evil. I am also very excited about finally seeing a sequel and have every intention of buying a copy as soon as it comes out.

    Another reason is anti-piracy measures. They actually make us more likely to pirate something. Measures like requiring an update every 10 days, permanently ruining the disk if it even thinks you might be thinking about pirating, getting limited installs and then burning through them because the RAM was updated, or when we have to use piracy methods on our legitimately purchased copy of the game (read: World in Conflict, Company of Heroes: Opposing Forces, etc.) just to make them work. It’s frustrating that so many of these advanced measures that ultimately fail to prevent piracy, cripple the product.

    The last reason that doesn’t come up quite as often, for us at least, is just general backlash against developers. General dickery like releasing a buggy, broken product that people pay a fair chunk of change for, and then refusing to fix it stating, “It’s working as intended,” or throwing a huge fit because someone who likes your product wants to produce fan work in honor of it and you get ridiculously uptight over licensing for a non-commercial product, does not a happy gamer make. We’re much more willing to support a developer like Valve. They actively work with the community when it comes to producing mods and make sure that their products truly are “working as intended.”

40. Habbit I think.

    I tend to collect video games, so I download entire packs of PC games. I just download, torrent, mount and play. I do it for everything on PC now.

    Even indy games now I pirate just out of habbit, Aquaria, EveryDay Shooter, AudioSurf… terrible really.

    I have a massive collection of Console games though. And still buy Console games when they are cheap ($30 AU). I guess I just dont consider piracy for that in the same sort of way. Never even had a mod chip.

    I used to buy a lot of games on PC, I used to pirate a lot to but still bought lots of games. I never bought a brand new game for $100, but when they had re-releases that were $20 – $30 I would buy them. But it would take so long for them to get down to that price so I would end up grabbing them at a LAN or from mates or if I was really excited would download them myself. Then I started to just forget or lose interest in buying the game at $20 – 30 when I saw it. It got to the point I just stopped doing it at all now. I did buy KoToR for $20, but had played it like 2 years prior to that, and I knew I wouldnt play it again, so felt silly buying it, but I did anyway. That might of been the last time.

    I was tempted to buy Portal for $20AU in EB the other day though. I only recently played it and its only about 4 hours long, I dont really want a game any longer then that. I didnt though because I was concerned it would install Steam on my computer and I really dont like the idea of that.

    Why why didnt I buy your game? Well I dont even have a credit card or paypal, maybe if I did I might have? Doubtful though… I think im just in the habbit psychologically that I have to download games on PC because I will be waiting years for them to be at a price im willing to pay.

    Maybe thats it?

41. I have not pirated your games, but in the past the main reasons I have pirated things are as follows.

    1. There was not a demo to try the game or software.

    2. The prices was too high for an end user to use for hobby or play.

    3. The demo was not enough of a taste of the game to make a solid decision.

    4. The game did not seem to be worth the shelf price, and want to play it till it becomes less popular and becomes cheaper to purchase.

    5. Downloading a game, instead of having a real physical copy or having the connect to the internet to play is not an assurance that it will be forever playable.

    6. having 8 computers in your house for lan parties, one person cannot afford the price of a seperate copy for the games, let alone not all the player might want a copy either.

    7. Bad reviews discouraged purchasing it till I tried it for myself.

    8. This is for things termed abandonware. There are no more stores selling the software or game and the only way to really obtain a copy is to pirate it, though usally no one will come after you becuase most abandonware is from companies going belly up and the copyright is still there but no one is holding it.

    9. The copyright holder is asking too much for an outdated peice of material.

    Personally, most of the stuff I have pirated, I either deleted after finding that it was not even worth my time to pirate it ( let alone spend money I worked my ass off to earn). Or I liked it and bought a legal copy. The only things I have not purchased have been the things with exuberate prices ( $300 ~ $3000+)

    And most of the time, unlike games purchased legally ( or pirated games that I like and buy a license of to have it legally), a pirated game or software is usually not playable online without a real key, and for the most part, most of the stuff that I decide to pirate I end up deleting in the end becuase I don’t like it and am glad I did not support it or spend my money on it. I also still to mostly not sharing anything I pirate as well. Pirating, for most peopel has a bad name, becuase usually the term PIRATE was more of a term for the act of taking something, to resell and make BOOTY ( money ) off it. Most of the pirating, done by people liek me is only for personal reason, not to make money selling illegal copies. Why would you buy something if you don’t like it, if you buy it, the company sees sales and then put out more of the same junk thinking it’s what peopel want.

    I can bable all night on this. But I think I got my oint out there

42. I wanted to buy a game for a very large distributor offering online downloads.

    Before getting the game I had to register, give up my info and place of residence, which is ok.
    (at this point they could have told me they don’t sell to EU or to my country)

    I then added the game to my shopping cart
    (at this point they could have told me they don’t sell the game to EU or to my country)

    I gave them my credit card details and accepted an overlong EULA.
    (at this point they could have told me they don’t sell the game to EU or to my country)

    I pressed the final “Accept” button maybe thinking the contract to deliver the product was two-way.

    … resulting a rather blunt text: “Some of the items you have selected are not available in your region and have been removed from your purchase”.

    Things like this inspire piracy.

43. I might be a special case here (I haven’t read through all the other comments, so maybe I am, maybe I’m not) as I have worked in the games industry, in various capacities, but notably as a producer and designer, and at the same time, I’ll admit to having downloaded or “illegally obtained” certain games.

    Here’s some of the reasons:

    1- I lost the original disc I’d actually bought, and wanted to play that game again. In that particular case, I feel I’ve already paid my dues.

    2- I want to try a game, and the demo is so ridiculously crippled or limited that I have no idea whether the rest of the game is worth it or not (by the way, too many of the “trial downloads” on XBLA are guilty of this. The right balance for this sort of game should be similar to the old shareware model, where you’d get 20-33% of the full game for free.)

    3- Friends are having a LAN party or are going to play an online game tonight,
    and I don’t own the game they’re going to play, and I suspect that I’m not likely to play it again after that night (you can’t rent PC games. At least, they’re not easy to find.) An extension of this situation is a game that I know I might play a couple of times a year, with friends, but outside of that, I’m not interested in playing it by myself, so I can’t justify the 60$CAN that is the common minimum for games that haven’t been discounted yet.

    4- The game was leaked before it was officially released, and I want to check it out, because maybe I’ll like it enough to eventually buy it. Actually, this is probably a game I was set on buying anyway, and the download is unlikely to prevent me from buying the actual game.

    5- Everybody’s talking about a particular game, and I’m curious but very uncertain as to whether I’ll like it or not. As demoes are often not representative enough, I’ll download the full game, try it, and in a few cases, eventually buy the full game.

    6- The game has one particular cool thing to it, but is otherwise ordinary, mediocre, or in a genre I don’t like. I’ll download it to check out that bit that everybody’s been telling me about, but otherwise, I won’t play it enough to justify a full purchase.

    7- I’m a teenager without a lot of money, and my parents only give me presents at Christmas and on my birthday, and those aren’t always video games. With what little money I have, I can only afford maybe one or two games a year. (I had to buy my own NES when I was 9 or 10, with money I’d saved over many years, and my next console — not counting a Gameboy and a GBA I bought later, as an adult, when I had a job — was an Xbox — and PC-wise, once I got a 386, I had to live with it for more than 5 years before I was able to work enough to afford my own PC, because my parents couldn’t justify the expense.) So you see, the only way I was going to end up playing more games was through piracy (and buying cheap shareware games on floppies at Radio Shack.) Anyway, you’re going to say that poverty in itself is not an excuse for piracy, and in some ways, you’d be right. The thing is, though, that if it weren’t for piracy, I wouldn’t have played so many different games, I wouldn’t know as much about the hobby, and I probably wouldn’t be into video games as much right now, leading to me not buying as many games now. It’s kind of like how so many rock ‘n roll records were officially banned in the USSR, but widely bootlegged nonetheless. Now, all those people who listened to the bootlegs before the “fall of communism” are way more likely to be avid consumers of legal rock ‘n roll (as long as it’s affordably-priced.) And since those people couldn’t have bought the records legally then, it’s not like it’s a real loss to the artist and record company, right?

    8- The unfortunately too common case of game discs with invasive copy-protection: at one company I worked at, I actually had to add the Securom (or however it’s written) copy protection on a few games I built the masters for. I still feel dirty about that. You see, all of us, in the office, knew exactly where to go to get no-CD cracks, or copy-protection-removal patches, which usually became available on the day the game was released. In particular, whenever a common copy protection technology was used, since it’s always the same code used to protect the disc, hacking the game to remove the protection becomes almost trivial. Which makes the protection pointless. And then there were also the tech support calls from people whose CD-ROM drives couldn’t deal with the protection, because copy-protected CDs actually deviate from the specs that all CD drive makers are supposed to follow. Not to mention those really bad protection schemes that somehow reduce your computer’s performance while you’re running the game, or even worse, the ones who stealthily install spyware, crapware or even rootkits on your computer, which sometimes actually made some drives completely stop working. All of this piled up and made PC gaming too much of a hassle and a worry. Which is why I applauded Stardock when they released GalCiv2 with no copy protection whatsoever. I’d loved the first game so much that I bought the sequel, which was, surprisingly, more affordably-priced than many other commercial games, and I loved every minute of the 100-plus hours I’ve played. That was probably the last PC game I bought.

    9- Many times, I won’t buy PC games on their initial release, mostly because it’s widely known that PC games usually need to get patched a few times before they’re working properly (with the rare exception of developers who can afford to release their games “when they’re done”.) So I’ll maybe download the pirated version to check out the game, and then wait for a “Game of the Year” edition, or perhaps a bargain bin version, at which point I’ll have a better chance of getting a properly-working game.

    In general, if I download a game (or music, TV show or movie, for that matter) and find that I really like it, I usually end up buying it, eventually. Often, the download will have some crippling feature or annoyance that will cause me to get the full game (again, only if I find myself enjoying the game enough, or playing it for long enough) such as not having a CD-key which I’d need to play online, or the difficulty in getting patches that add new and interesting features.

    And remember, in many cases, I’ve found that more easily pirated games build a community more quickly, and even though many of the people in that community might have pirated copies, the attraction for other players is often such that many of them will end up buying the game in order to join in to that community, which is the kind of vicious circle that can lead to success. I remember when the first Unreal Tournament game was released, and ended up going against Quake III Arena: the latter had heavier copy-protection, which helped the relative newcomer spread faster, and become a major competitor, at a time when the Quake series was THE reference in multiplayer FPS games. Yes, I have to admit I preferred UT’s gameplay to Quake 3’s, but I’m sure that the ease of piracy helped too. And I eventually bought a Game of the Year edition, and later bought UT2003, because I’d gotten hooked on the series.

    Yes, I’ve downloaded games so I could get them for free, but in general, I tend to vote with my money: when I want to encourage certain game development behaviors, I’ll throw money in that direction. Good games still bring in a lot of money, and you know why? Because most people are still decent, and if they can understand that the only way for more games to be made like the ones they like, they have to pay for the games, once in a while.

    It wouldn’t hurt to explore different business models, as well. For example, I feel that episodic gaming could work just as well as episodic television, if certain rules are followed, such as: a regular, and short release schedule, such as one episode per week for about 1-2 hours of gameplay per episode, or one episode per month for 4-6 hours of gameplay per episode. Any longer between episodes should be reserved for the time between “seasons” like on TV. I’m looking at you, Valve: one episode per year? What’s the point of being episodic, then? And the pilot episode should usually be double-length (or contain a normal episode’s worth of gameplay IN ADDITION to the tutorial and story/character introduction parts) and be given away for free. Make that pilot good enough, and people WILL pay to keep playing.

    Anyway, I should stop here, before I go on a whole rant about the industry’s alternately timid and greedy use of alternate business models.

44. Well first, what do you think is pirating? Some people understand word pirating as in selling illegal copies. I understand it as downloading a copy.

    The reasons that make me regret I have bought a game instead of downloading it:

    1) Ease of use
    Downloaded version of a program or a game often is much more user friendly. You don’t need to find the right cd/dvd every time you want to start it, and you don’t need to suffer from what ever copyprotection thingies programmers have chosen to punish you with. Even legit downloads of big files don’t make use of torrents, which is a pity.

    2) The quality of content
    Example: I’m happy I didn’t buy transformers game on pc. I tried it for 5minutes and understood it was crappiest game ever made. I was very sad because that game had a lot of potential, and doubly so, when I visited my little brother and saw he wasted money on it already. Another extreme example is blizzard. They always release a game that is ready and has bucketloads of quality. I can’t wait to _buy_ starcraft2 or diablo3.

    3) Regions and availability
    A game or a movie comes out at different times in different parts of world. When buying them online, ebay for example, you can never be sure what region settings they have. It is just easiest and surest to download it. Example: Buyers of The Orange Box got shafted buying it from another part of world. I’m guessing they won’t be doing that mistake again. If the game/movie is not available in your local shop (or even if it is) and the cheapest you found from ebay didn’t work then What Would Macgyver Do?

    Reasons I might end up downloading a game or a video even if all above are just fine:

    a) Habits
    When I was a kid, I didn’t even know you could buy games or programs anywhere. You probably couldn’t, in the little town I lived. Only way to get programs was to find someone that has it and go there with an empty 1,4M disk. So I learned to share files when I was about 9 years old.

    b) I like to collect stuff
    I download a lot of files usually, just to have them. Most of them I never open (watch/listen/install). I just want to collect them.

    c) Price
    Its free.

    An idea:
    Seems to be the thing now, that you have to pay many times for same media. Or at least they are trying very hard. First you pay to see a film in a movie theather, then you buy it on dvd, then on bluray, and then the uncut versions and whatnot, then on psp or ipod, then you buy a ringtone of the movie theme too. Am I the only one that sees anything wrong in here? Games are published on multiple platforms too, but nobody in their right mind buys the same game on all of their gaming devices (example pc-console-phone). I see a need for a system that you could use to buy a license to use a certain media. Then you could use that right in multiple devices.

45. Cliff,

    I used to pirate games (I still would, but I have less time) because I didn’t want to pay for them. I couldn’t afford them and even then, I’d probably just have bought something I had no choice but to purchase before I bought a game I could just as easily pirate. Basically you have little chance at getting money from me unless you are prepared to make it impossible for me to play without paying (and of course, the game is so irresistable I cannot refuse).

    Practically speaking, you make a game that is good enough and impossible to pirate (ie, online account based) and well.. in this particular instance, your qualms are covered. Will I pay? Probably not – but I won’t be playing pirated versions will I?

    If you are not doing this partially for the love of it, you’re basically out of luck. Because some of the payback that comes your way for doing this has to come in the form of satisfaction that people are enjoying your “art”.

    I should point out Cliff, that the most heavily pirated software is the most mainstream software, too. I have my doubts that you’re really suffering that much piracy. You only have to look at trackers to see that the more unknown you are, the less your software is available.

    I do have some final advice for you. Whenever I’ve paid for software it is because I have been genuinely impressed with it or (more likely) genuinely impressed with both the software and the developers. That means a fruitful community that particularly displays you to be a friendly guy working hard to help people out and put out good software. Those types of people, in my opinion, ignore piracy as something they cannot control and focus on their loyal users who do pay.

    Hope that helps. I’ve never heard of your games but it is a long time since XWing was released.

    Hope that helps, good luck in the future. Just remember. People who pirate masses of games rarely have any interest in playing your game to fruition anyway..

46. Why do I pirate games? Interesting question, with a number of reasons.

    To put it down to one signle reason is to ignore the true issues at play.

    Firstly, living in Australia our release dates can be months away from the US & Europe release dates. That’s actually a big one. Why should I have to wait 3 or 4 months for a game that the rest of the world can play on release day?

    Another reason for piracy is the simple fact that we’re overcharged here in Australia for games. I can buy something in Steam for the US pricing (approx AU$50 for a new release) or go to a shop and pay the Australian pricing (between AU$90 and AU$150). I know what I’d prefer, and if it isn’t on Steam, or the publisher demands that the price be put up (a la COD 4) for Australians, I’m going to pirate the game.

    There’s also the issue with quality of games, no matter the write ups (most are payed for by the publishers) or the hype, most games nowerdays are the same tired recipe that leaves a sour taste in any true gamers mouth – awe inspiring graphics with no real gameplay or story to go with it. Again, I want to play the FULL game to figure out if it’s crap or not.

    Another issue is the drm on games. I don’t want to have to connect to a server every time I want to play a single player game. Why is it neccesary for publishers to keep track of their customers? Why do they need to be so invasive? I know Steam does TRY to connect to servers, but if it can’t, it won’t. Most pirated games remove these invasive proceedures.

    There’s also a bit of a “fuck you” streak in myself and other gamers which goes like this. Big game publishers (EA, I am looking at you) tend to buy out any franchise that they can and destroy it with commercialisation, cowtowing to big US chains and right wing nuts who believe that there should be no sex in video games. The simple lack of respect for the medium by large developers is dragging gaming back years. I refuse to give EA or any other big producer who does not shift the paradigm from “games are for kids” to “games are for gamers” a cent.

    That said, I do buy games, and I do support independant developers – providing the product isn’t just another “we’ve got no money so pay us” game.

    I’ve never played your games I don’t think, and if I do and find they are crap I’m not going to pay for them. Simple as that.

47. For me, its because im not going to buy a plunk down 50 bucks for a game i may not play for more than an hour or two. Demos give you a limited view of the game most of the time, with no ability to feel for re-playability. Ive been burned by games in the past that i get excited for, play demos and then only end up playing for an hour after spending 50 bucks(bf2 for example, it got old really quick for me which is a shame). So i either pirate the game to find out, or i play it on a friends system to try it out, which has the same effect as piracy, i didn’t pay to play. In the case of tf2, i played it on my friends comp and loved it so i bought it. I really cant afford to waste my money, and piracy has helped steer me away from many one hour or two hour one shots that i would have wasted 50 bucks on.

48. The way I see it, there are so many terrible games mixed in amongst the good games….
    …im poor, if I had to pay for every game I tried, I wouldn’t have no food, in fact I would have nothing and still a very small stack of games.
    They are expensive and I love them, and so pirating lets me try games to see if I like them, and also lets me still have a good evening without having to take out a second mortgage.

    With this, games are getting crappier and. As time goes on, im wanting to pay for games less and less due to their been no refund policy if a game is crap.

    E.g. Prey. PC. Payed for. 2 hours gameplay. Crap game. Lead character is an idiot. I wish I had never laid out the cash for it…..

    …..we get robbed…. …you get robbed….. get over it this is a scum world we live in where governments are run like businesses.

49. For me, the decision to purchase a game or get it by other means is normally driven by whether or not: –

    a) my friends are playing it online.

    That is all.

    I recently shelled out for a legit download copy of CoD4 AFTER playing through (and thoroughly enjoying) the single player on the pikey version and because friends of mine had said that the multiplayer was really good. (Incidentally, they weren’t wrong.)

    I can hand-on-heart say that I don’t think I will ever purchase a game in a store ever again – by that I mean: I think that for too long game developers have seen what little profits they might make reduced by having to pay retailers/publishers etc. to distribute their wares. I firmly believe that the future (of pc gaming at least) lies in digital distribution. Granted, the few services available (Steam, and Direct2Drive to name but two) will no doubt take a cut of the profits, but it can’t be anywhere near what developers would pay a store like Walmart (ASDA in the UK) or Tesco to stock their product.

    The point I’m making is that if I can see a valid reason for purchasing a legit copy of something, (playing on-line with friends being the big-kahuna) then I’ll happily splash the cash.

    On the other hand, you might think why would I not want to pay for the single player part of the game? I think that the reason for that is that it has no long-term value to me. If I purchase a game, I want to be able to play it 6/8/18 months down the line. Heck, I’m still regularly playing BF2 and that first appeared on our shelves 3 years ago.

    If developers start making games with great (paid for) multiplayer aspects, but give away the entire single player portion for free (instead of a measly couple of levels), I think they might start to see a wholesale change in the way piracy is viewed. Obviously, there will be people who won’t want to pay for any of it (for whatever reason) but those are the people you will never please.

    Personally, if a game is good enough that I want to play it on-line with my mates, then I’m more than happy to pay whatever is a reasonable price for that privilege.

50. I’ve not pirated any of your games… Tempted to buy Democracy thou… So this might be of limited use to you.

    The games I do pirate are games I have no interest in the single player but want a quick blast of the MP (excluding MP-only games) with friends.
    StarCraft did this right, it came with a spawn CD, and by doing it right I later bought the game (after being sucked in from the MP).

    The other time is when either no demo exists, or the demo is useless for getting a feel for the game. This you don’t need to worry about, I found the demo for Democracy just right.

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