Genuine call for emails from pirates

302 thoughts on Genuine call for emails from pirates

1. You know call me crazy but it seems a bit disingenuous to post a request for people to email you an anonymous comment about why they pirate your games…

   Without posting your email address

   Just saying

2. props on the articles Cliff, (I only found about this when reading the follow-up article you posted) and I have to say that its very refreshing to have a developer engage the community the way you have.

   I pirate everything I can get away with(singleplayer games that can be cracked), because i cant afford to buy games/movies/dvds. i study full time and in Australia its not uncommon to spend up to $100 on a brand new AAA+ game. I simply cant afford that, and to be honest most small-time developers dont come out with a finished product thats as enjoying as an AAA+ title.

   Your games looks good, I would seriously consider buying the space trading one if there was a little more gameplay content. no offence but it appears to be ‘spreadsheets in space’ and while i DO enjoy management games i also need a bit of eye candy and personalisation with my character to really get into anything.

   Anyway, once again, props on engaging the community and congratulations on your success, I know its hard but your living the dream we other gamers dont have the balls to attempt ourselves. peace.

3. On top of what has been said, I always tend try to guess buck per hour value. I finished Splinter Cell in 8 hours, and would have payed €45 for it. That is €5.625 per hour of play time. Of course this is not the only definitive criteria, but I do use it as a guideline.

   GTA: San Andreas cost me €50, and was said to take 100 hours to finish. That is 50 eurocent an hour!! So I DID buy San Andreas. I must have spent 150 hours in that game. That is some GOOD value for money right there!

   Obviously meaningless content just to make the game longer is no answer, but the general principle for me is, “how much would this entertainment cost me”. Is this a game I would play again, does it have side missions etc?

   A good example I think is the Orange box. Normally a game like HL2 is beeing sold for about €50 here. To me that is a bit pricey for what I am getting. The orange box was sold for about €75 8 hours HL2, 8 hours portals, many hours of TF2, 3 hours for Epi one (can’t exactly remember, but you get the point ^^), 3 for epi two…

   So even without TF2 that is 22 hours right there, for €3.4 an hour, assuming i do not replay any content, and not count TF2 THAT is good value for money. the 2nd Splinter Cell was €45 in the shop. I finished it in 6 hours. That is just too much…

4. There are several main reasons I have resorted to Piracy in the past.

   1.) Cost – I found the “Orange Box” from Valve to be a tremendous value, so I purchased it. I haven’t bought many games because I felt that I wouldn’t get my moneys worth out of Playing the game.

   2.) Replay value – Many of today’s games lack this quality. Once you complete most FPS games, the game is over, you’re done. They story lines in some games can be quite dry and bland. HL2 on the other hand, I found to be a very encompassing storyline, I can hardly wait for HL2 Ep3 to come out in fact!

   3.) Compatibility – Why should I pay something when I’m going to have to emulate it anyways? I’m a non-windows user, so many big titles never make it to my desktop. When emulating a game on a non-windows platform you lose quality of play. If companies would have other ports of the games (in my case, Linux) where I don’t have to emulate them, I would be much happier.

   4.) Developers, developers, developers, developers! – Not that I’m in any way a Ballmer fan, but from many reports I’ve read lately, it sounds like the programmers and developers of games have really been getting the proverbial “short end of the stick” as compared to marketing campaigns and executives. I’m a Software Engineering student, and have some realization on what it takes for these programmers to do what they do. Put them on the pedestal instead of the guy in marketing who decided to add the word “EXTREME!” or “ULTIMATE!” to the title.

   5.) Subscriptions – Don’t like ’em. Probably never will. I’m not an MMORPG fan though, which the work that goes into keeping a MMO running, so that is a bit of a side note. As far as most FPS’s go (Unreal, CS, TF) for the most part there isn’t a lot of server management necessary that’s why I like paying a small premium up front to not have to pay for gaming subscriptions.

5. Replying to your blog response (the summary of findings from this project)…
   “Steam got a pretty universal thumbs up from everyone. I still don’t get how buying from steam is any different to buying from me, other than you may already have an account on steam.”

   Steam gets a major THUMBS DOWN from me and a double fisted showing of “You’re Number One” with the prodigious use of certain fingers. ** Steam IS DRM ** If Steam goes down, so does all of your purchased Steamed games. If your account gets screwed up, pwned, or you get baned from Steam, you lose all of your games. Banned- BS, they ought to let you at least play single-player. Read the Steam forums for reports of people having problems with Steam or their accounts.

   Steam, according to my neighbor who lives for Half Life 2, is a PITA when it comes to updates. His Portal, one of the HL2 episodes and Team Fortress is it?(?) decide they want to update every time he starts Steam, meaning he can’t play anything for long periods of time while Steam farts around pooing the screwch or whatever.

   Yeah, Steam works, but so does the other DRM’d crap out there- depending on who you talk to. You say the overall consensus was the “DRM was bad”. Well, look beyond the Steam fanboyz and realize that there is a monster behind that mask.

   Frankly I’d rather buy directly from you rather than use Steam and line Gabe’s pockets with any cash. Steam looks a lot like the RIAA to me. You (artist) make the game. Gabe will distribute it for a cut. And distribute any of your updates for a cut. Maybe he’ll nick you for initial bandwidth, future bandwidth, marketing fees, electronic packaging fees, anti-piracy fee ad nauseum. Suppose Steam gets more intrusive like Securom or Starforce and begins hating at lot of 3rd party software. The fanboy base will keep Gabe’s income rolling in. I just hope customers at that point will start to complain back to folks like you (artists) about the hostilities. But by then, your Steam contract will have your hands tied.

   For me it’s distro on CD/DVD, electronic distro minus ALL DRM, or BUGGER OFF to the game/manufacturer in question. No Steam, no activation, no DRM or phone-homes for me.

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7. Now that I’m employed full-time, I tend to buy most of my games, spending ~$1000US per annum (10 games or so). I WILL pirate games in two instances:

   1) Games in Australia tend to come out a few weeks later (or more) than the rest of the world. Why? Surely they are all made in the same factory and shipped around the world at the same time so why do they come out later here? If I’m excited at a game coming out, I’m not going to wait 2 weeks until it comes out here when the rest of the world already has it.

   2) Downloadable games – I won’t buy anymore so if they are only available this way, I’ll just pirate. I did buy one from Atari once, and after I rebuilt my computer I couldn’t get it licensed again. Many emails to their support section went unanswered so I won’t buy a game unless I can hold the DVD or whatever in my hands. I also won’t buy any more steam games – I got too pissed-off with the whole process when I got half-life 2. Having said that, I have bought lot’s of games from the PS3 PSN, but at ~$10 a game I’m not too worried.

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9. I just took a look at your games. Maybe I’ll pirate some of them someday.

   1. No bank account or associated online payment method
   2. Even if I did, I would have better things to spend on that would please my parents/not get wiped out in a reformat.

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11. Oh yeah, and there’s the fact that I had to go down to Singapore just to get an original copy of Curse of Monkey Island. If I didn’t know better back then I would probably have pirated it. Luckily I didn’t regret it, and it’s… somewhere. I have to look for it.

    I also bought Sakura Taisen for Windows because I actually liked it.

12. Hello there.

    This is a rather unexpected move from a developer, so its a refreshing move after all the recent “piracy killed our childrens” from a handful of developers.

    Personally I had never even heard about your games. I’m an avid gamer, and follow regular games news. That right off the bat tells me that you aren’t really getting enough publicity. I’m sure that at this point that i’m beating on a dead horse, but here are a few sore issues that may also influence piracy in general (yes I know you posted you didn’t want a general response but bear with me).

    * Price: In some countries, the price of the game gets way out of hands. The direct $$ -> Euro conversion or even worse $$ -> pounds makes more than one wonder how that math adds up. In Australia, the price of import games can be lower than getting the game on a local store too. Dowloadable games should have a fixed (and lower) price than the retail product. You are cutting pretty much all the middle man and skipping shipping, packaging and pressing the disk yet charge the same or nearly the same? and charging different prices for a downloadable depending on region is just as retarded.

    * Availability: Some publishers seem to think that releasing games in one territory and leaving the rest of the world waiting for them is a good strategy. If you have a game that is highly desired, making day 1 availability across all territories should be top priority, or people will definitely find a way to play the game. The worst offenders are downloadable titles that are regionally locked.

    * Different versions: While obviously hard to control for developers, sometimes due to rating boards and what not, some versions get censored or content is simply cut out. When added with point #1, this is hardly going to help sales in those markets (Germany, Australia come to mind).

    * DRM: A favorite of many pirates, but as many people probably pointed out already, when the pirated copy offers a better experience than the legit product, something is wrong with the business.

    * Cross platform titles: If you release on platforms X and Y, and then release the same game many months later on platform Z, its very likely that the people legitimately interested in the game got the game at or soon after the release on platforms X and Y.

    * Perceived worth: A single player games with no multiplayer and little replay value is definitely not going to appeal a potential buyer like a game with a good single player mode, a fun multiplayer mode and other features like user mods or simply good replay value.

    * Downloadable content: this is a muddy terrain. Charging for content stored on the game disk, frivolous add ons that should be on the game and other similar tactics is not going to gain any favors from the “technologically literate” people.

    * Lack of demos: how is people going to know whats the game like?

    * Release now and patch later mentality: Get the game DONE first and then release it, not hunt for paying beta testers and then have the game working 6 months later.

    The bottom line for the developer is polish to spit shine your game and make it so that it BETTER vs the pirated version (ie additional online perks, multiplayer modes,achievements, ladderboards, additional free content, etc). Release it at a reasonable price and make it widely available. Many of the most successful games meets most or all of this criteria.

13. I just wanted to add a couple more comments to my previous post (around post 110 or so)

    A lot of PC gamers are fairly savvy with their OS and Hardware, mainly because they usually have to tweak a game to get it to play right, on the settings they want (Compatibility issues with thousands of hardware combinations in the Windows world). For me, it’s even more natural since I am in the IT industry.

    The point I’m trying to make is, some of the copy protection schemes are outright insulting to our intelligence. A lot of us have a full understanding of what a given copy protection scheme is doing to our systems. Some schemes should be outright illegal. But so far… the only consumer won battle has been against Sony’s rootkit on music CDs. I’ve seen software copy protection schemes just as bad, if not worse.

    Also, a business that accuses or assumes that everyone of their customers is a “potential pirate” doesn’t sit very well either.

    That said, I’m glad that you chose to go the “no DRM” route (Although I think the word “DRM” is a misnomer to the other copy protection schemes). Anyway, I hope your good faith efforts pay off. :)

14. One reason only– because there’s a No Return policy on games.
    This policy was created to keep people from copying games, then returning it to the store. That policy was created before the internet was popular, so nowadays it’s actually WHY people pirate games. I’ve bought so many games this year and ALL of them were shit. $400 gone, thank god for ebay though. My only decent purchases this year were Rock Band and Peggle.

15. I have to say this.

    Steam inspired me to start pirating games.

    I bought Half-Life 2 when it was new, fancy 5 CD stuff. I bought a new video card, I was ready to go. I was so happy. Then, a month, a reformat, and several days of downloading updates later, I finally got Half-Life 2 to work. Counter-Strike Source? No… Any of the other games? Nope.

    I figured it was a fluke. I eventually built a new machine and also found my original Half-Life 1 CD. I was like, wow, an antique or something. I tried installing it and it didn’t work for XP. I looked through databases, google, steam support, etc… just won’t work. So I did something unthinkable. I actually threw caution to the wind and bought Half Life 1 again. I thought since it was old it would not be a pain in the ass to install. Wrong.

    Another week later I finally got Blue Shift and Black Mesa workin’. OpForce and TF will be a while.

    I really really didn’t like steam but a few years later I’m looking at Team Fortress 2 and the Orange Box and say “Fuck it”. I buy them on CD, again, and try to install. Another 4 weeks go by and they finally work

    I am so sick of dealing with Steam I will not buy another Valve game until they make games installable in less than 2 hours and playable in less than 2 hours. I don’t want updates, I don’t want patches, I just want to play the game. I also don’t want to be connected to the internet in order to play, I just want to pop in the cd, run an installer and play.

    I now run a linux box and don’t play games though.

16. You ask for emails and then you don’t give your e-mail address anywhere. So where do I send my message?

    I don’t pirate games, since I only run Ubuntu Linux. But I am a consumer of pirated movies and music and can explain my reasons in an e-mail. Many of those reasons would translate well into the game sphere, if you are interested.

17. I don’t know if I have pirated any of your games but I have pirated thousands of gigabytes of game titles in my career in computing. Let me explain why I do it and what I actually do as a result of it.

    First off I pirate because I want to try a game out before I spend ~$50+ on a title. Unlike console games I cannot rent a game to play for a couple of days so I choose to download my full trials to get the full experience. Reviews, screen shots and videos can only take you so far. If I like it, believe it or not, I buy it. I have dozens and dozens of purchased games in my personal library and I am damn proud that I spent the money on them. If the title is worth the effort the developers actually devoted to the game then it is well worth the money to support them and the franchise. On the other hand if it is obvious the developers rushed through a title just to get it out to the market then I delete it and spending hard earned money is not in the equation.

    The PC market is such a stringent and fickle market that I choose to pick my games from first hand experiences rather than any other source. I’ll put up with Starforce and the like if the game is fun to play and possibly replayable.

    The bottom line is people pirate games, movies, music, etc. etc. for a slew of reasons, all of which maybe be illegal or immoral but I earn my money and no one can tell me how I may choose to spend it.

18. You asked a good question. I’m going to post an answer you will not like. After seeing the post this morning about your results, I’m not convinced that you will succeed in lowering prices etc. And here’s why.
    The human heart is deceitful and wicked. We are all prone sin in many ways. If we think we can get away with it, we will. The Bible talks about the increase in crime and why that is happening and gives a simple answer, the crime isn’t being punished quickly enough. People pirate, because they get away with it.
    Your lowering of prices is not dealing with the wickedness and greed of the human heart. You may increase the sales of your product in terms of volumes sold, but you will not solve the piracy problem and I doubt you will make more money (bottom line) than you currently are. Although your experiment would is interesting and I’d like to know what happens to your bottom line profit.

    Good luck.

    FWIW. I do not pirate games, nor copy movies, music or software except as a personal backup.

19. Well, personally I pirate because I only have a set amount of money I budget for games – money I don’t HAVE to pay (since everything IS free online), but money that I pay so that more games will be made.

    I split up my entertainment budget into games, movies, and books, to make sure that money is going to each, and spend that money on my personal favorites in each category. I justify my piracy by spending the exact same amount I spent before I found P2P, but now I read watch and play _everything_. You can not make me spend more overall money, but you can change which games I spend money on and which I pirate.

20. PS: if you view the source of the page, the obfuscated comments are plainly readable.

21. Hi

    i have read your article ‘talking to pirates’ and got nothing more to add. i agree with most points and wont be another voice saying the same. i would however like to congratulate you with the new title of ‘smartest game developer’. its too rare someone actually takes the time to ask why, thinks about the feedback and tries to implement it. i wont deny i have pirated games in the past, however i will swear that i will never pirate one of your games. the changes you make might make a difference, might make people feel different, or they might not. the thing that counts is that you actually stopped and listened to your costumers, something rarely seen. if all developers would do the same thing and actually work with the community around them to solve this instead of working against them there might actually be a solution. its a shame that so far i only know of one person seeing it, but i deeply respect that person, being you in this case.

    i dont have much else to add. not even sure if you will read this. but the fact that you did and what you did was something so utterly brilliant and well thought of that i just wanted to leave a note.

    Regards
    Repr

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24. What makes ppl(and me) to pirate games:
    – too high price
    – 59$ or € for game that you play one night (i call them “one night game”) and no multiplayer (not worthy or 59$ or €)
    – Poor quality
    – no mod ability (yes i like add thinks different games)
    – bugs
    – stubit drm protections
    – swapping cd:s / dvds (particularing keeping that game dics inside cdrom while playing i usually use no cd crack just to avoit that)
    – no support or poor
    – high system requirements (you spent 600$ or € get new grabhich card to play latest games, that basically eats your moneys)

    I do copy/ware my games from internet but i also buy good ones(there are good games like. When they are low price(it takes 2-3 years to prices to drop).

25. I dont want to buy original games because their boxes smells disgusting. (Only PC games, not console games, consoles are from white plastic) They are made from black plastic and I think they are carcinogenic. Even the smell has been stinked to discs and booklets, so throwing the boxes out has no effect.
    So if the publishers has no respect to their consumers and use the cheapest metarial, they must not wait for respect from their customers (By costumer I mean who really buy original games). And I dont like downloading gigabytes of data which lasts a few days for me. Also I’d like to have a physical mass of something I buy, I have interest in collecting things.
    As a result, I bought games from pirate game sellers. And believe me, their disc quality is better than original ones.

    I think one other problem with games is their demos. Not all but most of the game demos are insufficient. You cannot make decide if their story and gameplay is good from the demo. All you can do is to see if your PC can run the game and have a idea of the graphics.

    Also most of games copy protection system bothers me. (Well but not a reason to not to buy a game). Lets compare, if you buy an original game you have to insert its disc every time you play, you have to validate it over internet, you are not allowed to install a virtual driver etc.. But if you are using a pirated one, you have to do none of these. I really appreciate Stardocks for their copy protection policy.

26. I don’t really consider myself much of a pirate anymore, but I did when I was younger.

    I think age plays a huge part. kids don’t have money but they want to play games so they copy them / download them, whatever.

    It’s a different type of theft. It’s a theft of ideas really. Taking something from you that you are selling, yet you are still left with an unlimited number of copies to sell. Kids aren’t quite as good with thinking black and white in a seemingly gray area.

    Here is your dilemma as a seller of games:

    I have never pirated a console game. I don’t pirate console games because it is difficult, and in many cases impossible without hardware modification. I have to very consciously spend money to facilitate it, so I don’t do it. I also like supporting game developers. I buy games new rather than used when possible so the game industry profits instead of Gamestop.

    Console copy protection is perfect. It does not get in my way. It does not prevent me from playing games on my console, so I don’t feel the need to remove it. It’s transparent.

    PC software doesn’t work that way. The games people buy REQUIRE you to buy them to get the full benefit. Look at world of warcraft. What is it without payment? a coaster. But they don’t GET IN YOUR WAY.

    I’m sorry to say there is no solution on the PC for a standalone game. IF you aren’t tying it into a service that continues to give back value in place of the money taken, you can’t keep up. your solution might be as simple as giving constant add-ons and updates to paying members.

    Serial numbers never bothered me. They are pretty transparent. They offer a way to kill bad serials that have been compromised. They rarely fail.

    When you install software that makes me feel like a criminal, I feel like I would have been better off BEING a criminal, because cracked versions do not nag.

    That is how I will end my rant. Cracked versions do not nag.

    At this point in my life, the only game I would download without paying is one that is no longer for sale. I don’t really see buying a used copy off ebay as contributing to the developer of the game.

27. Hey, I just wanted to point out something I didn’t see anyone else mention. Some people pirate games because they simply can’t get them any other way. The game may be too rare or old, or they might have bad credit and can’t purchase using a credit card as some digital distribution requires. A big help would be to accept paypall as payment.

28. Oh and also yes, as Noni Mause stated used games don’t profit the developer. Why pay money when it’s not going to profit the developer anyway?

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30. I know I’m late to the game but I thought I would chime in. I do not pirate software anymore, and I did not pirate your games, but I used to pirate software a good bit. The main reason? Money. I could afford a game, but the variable quality meant I was taking a risk. So after a few times of blowing cash on a game that sucked it made more sense to just get the free copy.

    Here’s the rub though. Yes, I pirated the first Command and Conquer. but I loved the game. And because of that one pirated game I have bought every other game in the C&C series. So I ask, did they lose money on me or not? Had I not gotten that first pirated copy I would never have grown to love the games and may have never given them a dime.

    Now that I am older, and have money, I don’t mind taking the risk as much and tracking the moving target that is warez is more trouble than it’s worth to me. I think game developers should worry more about their brand than a single game. Most pirates wouldn’t pay for the game if there were no piracy, so really are you losing money if those people get a free copy? But, if you build a kick ass brand, such a Blizzard, people will crawl over razor wire to hand you cash. I’m willing to bet some of the most avid supporters of Blizzard started out with a pirated copy of Diablo. Now they will fork over the cash for Diablo III without a second thought.

    Just the opinion of a old ex-Pirate! Arrrgghhhh….

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33. Hey Cliff,

    Here is my opinnion. First of all, i never downloaded your games i only own one of your games
    and i bought it in the store. The reason we “pirates” sometimes download games is because
    sometimes there isn’t really a difference between downloading them and buying them.
    If a game has no multiplayer that requires a serial, why buy it in a store ? If you download
    it you got the exact same result. There is one game that was succesfull in keeping it to itself
    and that game is called Alone in the Dark 2008, many people had and have problems
    downloading that game becuase of the crack required to play, it’s too hard to get.
    Another way to stop pirates is to, as mentioned, make sure the game needs a legit serial
    to play or an account you make using a serial key. I also think the prices of some games
    are rediculous, i guess this is yet another reason why people download games instead of
    buying them becuase really, 50 euro’s is quite alot for the avarage man.

    Just my 2 cents i hope it will help you a bit becuase one thins we don’t want to see happen
    is people like you quitting what you do best, making awesome games.

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36. Boils my blood.

    We live in a a world where money is traded for goods and services, if you dont have its then there is no deal. You cant walk into a convince store and just grab a coke, and walk out uttering the phrase “no money”, hopefully the clerk will pump you full of lead with his shotgun.

37. I wanted to play dawn of war today with some friends, to buy all 3 expansions and the original was going to cost me 60 dollars each for two of them, and 50 dollars for the original and first expansion, so in order to play a game that all my friends owned it would have cost me $170 dollars. (this is New Zealand dollars also known as NZD) I don’t know about others but thats more than my rent… hell, can’t fork that out for a game unless I save up a week.

    So i think for me price has to do it, however that being said, before I even think of piracy I go check my second hand shop first, and I never pirate a movie unless I am waiting for it to come out on DVD over here, and just can’t, however go out and buy it when I can afford it.

    Another reason I do pirate at times is the fact that some games are just to rare to find and I know that theres no way I will ever find an original. Which is true for some of those early PS1 games.

    I always wanted to ask the developers of consoles, if you discontinue support for the console, such as the Sega Master System, does that make emulating the games on your computer legal, because some of those games will never make a comeback. And what a waste that most will sit in a collection never being played.

    Well back to playing doom 1 on my Nintendo DS (No its not pirated I tracked down a copy of the GBA doom and it took a good 6 months to find)

    Good luck with your research.

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39. In Brazil the games are too expensive (something like 3x in US) and even if you buy genuine game you must avoid import taxes using some tricks.

    I cannot understand why a US resident pirate games. Isn’t US the best quality life and economy of the world?

    Sincerely, in third world the things are hard and we have no alternative to pirate games. For example, a Xbox 360 costs to us US$ 1.000 and a launch game US$ 120. So if youre in first world country with good salary or conditions and is here complaining, think about if you born and live in third world country. Here the nextgen systems are for very few people called by others “rich people”.

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41. I am a very, very, very low income individual. I had the amazing luck several months ago of being offered a place to live for free while I found a job, and tried to get on my feet for the first time in my life. To stop being homeless. It’s important to note that while I have been homeless on and off since I was 14, I finished high school, played video games, and had friends. Okay, I played A LOT of video games. Sometimes I borrowed them, or occasionally they were bought for me as gifts. I eventually got a laptop as a present from a family member, and I would play them on that. Of course, the industry being what it is, games are about $50 a pop, despite the fact that the market for them has grown exponentially since I fell in love with the NES. I understand that development costs are rising… Most of my friends worked for the late(kinda) Flagship Studios. I feel there must be a way to work around development costs in order to cut a better deal for the customers… Of course, I’m far from knowing how and being able to execute it. A lot of people pirate for the same reason I did, being dirt poor or close to it and not being able to shell out $30-60 for a piece of software they can obtain illegally online for no cost at all.
    The rise in piracy has created another problem: responsive defenses. As someone who
    1. Now BUYS the games and
    2. Still understands the viewpoint held while pirating, I feel just a little insulted every time they put an anti-piracy measure in place. The fact that they don’t trust their own fans is hurtful. I understand the basis, but to essentially call the people who back you liars is a little bit… wrong. Interestingly, the warez community seems to look at these measures as an added challenge, and they’re usually broken by day 2. S defensive measures anger customers and tempt pirates? How is that useful to developers?
    I have a job now, and a home, so I put aside my very meager extra funds for one or two major hits that are forthcoming instead of pirating everything that comes out this month.

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43. forward: i can’t seem to find your email addy posted anywhere so i will answer your question here:

    in a nutshell i have pirated games, music, and movies as a form of revenge, a way at “getting back” if you will, for all the times i have been screwed out of my hard earned money.

    on the music front, i can’t tell you how many cd’s/tapes i bought over the years just to find out that there were only 1 or 2 good songs and all the rest were crap, and even worse, all the times the record companies obviously knew that most of the songs were garbage as evidenced by the fact that no singles were released on the one or two songs from the album that were proving to be the most appealing as evidenced by song requests on all the radio stations.

    this holds even more true for pc games: i have spend good money after bad on games that were buggy, poorly thought out, poorly tested, resulted in the player not able to complete the game because of some silly logic bug, needed to be patched repeatedly or perhaps most appalling, were designed to screw the customer out of their hard earned cash as evidenced by a new “director’s cut” or similar such revision being sold 2 months later, a revision that corrected things wrong with the first one that should never have made it past the testing faze in the first place.

    the same holds for dvd’s, i have a collection of dvd’s, all purchased legitimately and you can’t imagine what a slap in the face it is when you pop it in only to discover that the dvd’s are poorly mastered from sub-optimal quality sources (the 21 jump street dvd’s are perfect examples) and the dvd you bought looks like crap.

    content creators always bitch about how pirates are stealing from them, well i got news for you, the pirates didn’t steal first, the unscrupulous content creators that were only interested in making a quick buck stole from the general public first by selling shit they knew was crappy (they must have known, if the didn’t then they are stupid) but didn’t give a flying fuck so long as they lined their pockets.

    i’m looking at you madonna, metallica and a slew of others, i’m looking at all the first person shooter clones “developer’s”, i’m looking at most of the racing game developers, i’m looking at the movie industry, i’m looking at all of you who decided to fuck the public first and then sue when the favor is returned.

    how many times can i, as a consumer, get shafted before i say fuck you all and just “steal” your content?

    lastly, this is coming from a guy who co-majored in computer science and who at one time wanted to be a software developer.

    i would never have marketed and sold software that was not fully tested and of the highest quality, maybe my feelings arise from the realization that others didn’t feel the same way.

    now you know….

44. Pirating games, movies and music… Not easy topic.

    I’m going to try to show you my opinion and why i did it when i did it. I am around 40 right now and i have a long pirating story behind me. My first own computor was ZX Spectrum and i also owned many other, like C64, Amiga, and pcs. There are even few consoles in my history. At one point in my life i even worked for one games publisher. So i am you typical target audience for this question you asked.

    Yes, i pirated games in my past. Many many games. If i try to count them through my life, the number would be mid 4 digit number. Did i play all of them? Did i spend at least 30 minutes with each and every title? Of course not. I just collected them at that time.

    Human beings are collectors. Most of us want to have a lot of money, many luxorious things, a lot of power, etc, etc… Yes, you too. This is our nature. And this is why many people just simply collect stuff.

    Games and movies are generally expensive. 45 Euro or 40 Dollar for console game. Ups… Did you notice the price? As i remember these days, you can get 1 Euro for 1,40 Dollar. So why should i stuff my money into game publishers throats? As example: Search for Mario Galaxy for Wii on amazon.com and on amazon.de.

    Games and movies mostly do not deliver what they promise. Do you like to buy a pig in a poke (in german: cat in the bag)? I don’t. Yes you already sorted that issue by having a demo version of your games. In the past, you saw game box in the shop and you had to buy it … or not. I don’t want to count how often i threw money through the window for garbage game or movie.

    And last point is, people pirate games or movies, because… *drumroll* … they can. As long as nobody will punish them for stuff they do, they will continue to do. RIAA and MPAA are not doing it properly. They are hunting for these small fishes who trade music through p2p. They charge a lot of money and they want you to buy same product for different devices you own. And you are not allowed to listen or watch stuff on your dvd AAAND on your mobile unit.

    I know these points are excuses for pirating, but these are main points why people do it. To calm you down. I stopped with that practise years ago. These days i look for game demos or i rent movie or game at local rentals. But if i discover a game which locks me to my console or pc, i go buy it.

    I don’t buy movies or music, but i buy games. Rarelly, but i do.

    And now i’m going to look at your games and i may buy one of them if i like them. You at least have a demos :)

    Alex

45. I download games and movies, I download movies as a sort of demo to see if it’s worth buying the full thing (I don’t listen to enough music to bother downloading it), games I download are older games, or simply to use for a couple of hours at lan parties, never playing the campaign. Generally the games I download are fairly poor, average games, with little innovation, that hold little to no interest to me outside of a quick bit of fun. A game that does hold genuine interest for me I will buy every time, for the sheer joy of owning it, these are often from publishers/developers I respect and admire, have innovative features, technology, story or gameplay. The ONLY reason I would download a game from one of these developers is if it was banned in my country and so was only available through downloading, such as fallout 3 which has been banned here due to drug use.

46. You are a promising development. Here you are getting more advertising for your products than many many thousands of dollars could buy. Unlike some of your industry fellows you are using your head and not lawyers.

    Gaming is big business nowadays and like all big business it is about controlling the game (no pun intended) you are in. Big business gaming and big business movie and music entertainment dominates the physical distribution of the marketplace. That is why we see all the mergers for.

    Filesharing is a no cost global distribution system that is operated by enthusasts who have not monotised the system. Someone described it as a shift from one to many to many to many. Most people think RIAA are crazy but they relly have no choice. Its either make new distribution illigal or wither and die. They have understood this from the very first moment they looked up to see napster dumping on them from a great hight.

    The punitive sivil lawsuits that are their last stance is a loosing game. Nobady believes the punishment fits the crime. You could be sued by you local authority for litterin using the same legal mecanisms and be ordered to pay several years ernings but common sence prevents such acts.

    The legal instrument will be modified to maintain respect for the law and the inevatable encryption of all internet traffic will do the rest. Gain the admiration and respect of your audience and you are clever enough to find a way of earning a living out of it. You can worship jesus for free but people are throwing money at the church.

    Go forth and prosper

    Peter

47. Pingback: The Video Game Zombiecast » Blog Archive » Developer Asks Nicely, Pirates Respond Nicely, Developer Listens: News At 11

48. I haven’t pirated any games since I was young and poor. Then as now, it was completely socially acceptable to share software. Likewise it is, I suspect, still true that most of the games that get copied and shared don’t get played very much and wouldn’t have been bought in any case. Even when I was young and poor, I and others I knew made a point of buying the games we thought were really worthwhile: buying a legitimate copy of a game (or music album) made a statement about the value of that item. No amount of copy protection ever stopped us from getting a pirate copy: even at age 10, we all knew how to get around it.

    Computer games, music, movies, and underwear cannot typically be returned for a refund if the customer is dissatisfied. In the case of underwear, this is understandable, but in the case of movies, music, and computer games, it is both unacceptable and insulting. It is unacceptable because there is no reason why sellers of entertainment products should not be willing to stand behind their products and guarantee customer satisfaction. It is insulting because the implied reason why we cannot return these things is that we are presumed to be dishonest criminals who, naturally, really like the game but are returning it after making a copy for ourselves. Never mind that it has always been easier to get a fully cracked, pirated copy from the Internet, a BBS, or friends than it is to buy a copy, duplicate it, and return it. The fact that most computer games are, in all honesty, overrated, derivative, buggy, and just plain disappointing compounds the problem: buy a random game and odds are it won’t be fun and it almost certainly won’t live up to the hype. There are some gems that are worth every penny paid and then some, but these are the minority.

    I don’t know how much of this applies to you specifically, but I think it would do the industry a world of good if they started treating the people who buy their products as valued customers, not potential criminals who need to be shackled with DRM; authentication measures; and a no-returns, no-satisfaction guaranteed policy.

    Some people are going to pirate games no matter what. Some will buy when they can’t get it for free, and others will pirate what they could never afford or would never pay for. Some of those people might later turn into paying customers, if they like your games. If you want to minimize piracy, just don’t sell your stuff. Make only online games and charge for access by the hour. And probably go broke. If you want to maximize sales, focus on serving the customer and not protecting the product.

49. I know that one of the reasons I pirate is because of the quality of recent titles, including games movies and records. It’s a safe way for me to find out if something is worth buying.

    I think that although there are those who pirate because of greed or just being cheap I think the majority of us are just fed up with going to see a movie and not only being angry at what they are trying to pass off as entertainment. Also how often do you buy an album and out of the twelve songs you only enjoy one, it’s criminal for them to try to sell it to us so we in turn will act criminally to avoid the disappointment of having wasted $10-$20.

    The same with movies notice that the most pirated ones that are good (Dark Knight for example) are also the best selling ones, Hollywood is reading the numbers wrong because they see lost sales I see gained sales because someone watched it and realized it was worth their time to pay to see. Every movie I have pirated that I enjoyed I have eventually payed for either at the box office or on DVD\Blu-Ray and all my friends who also pirate are the same way.

    With games it’s no different if it’s a viable product that is worth it’s price even people who pirated will buy it to support their hobby, but when the industry puts out games like kane and lynch, or army of two, can you blame us for not wanting to drop money without knowing what we’re getting into? As for people who will say “Just rent it first.” Why, none of that money goes to the developers as the games you rent have already been payed for, so its the same thing encouraging someone else to stalk something by giving them money to try it.

    Games movies and music all used to stand on there own merits which is why piracy was so rare, but you put out crap people are going to start sniffing before they open the box. Just my two cents.

50. I pirate games because :
    – it is easy and fast (and easier and faster than to move to the mall)
    – games are expensive
    – games are short
    – not all games are good, and i don’t like to pay for crap

    i don’t enter into much detail, and some models exist to counter some of my points (Steam, demos, renting …)

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