Sometimes It's OK To Steal My Games 438
spidweb writes "One Indie developer has written a nuanced article on a how software piracy affects him, approaching the issue from the opposite direction. He lists the ways in which the widespread piracy of PC games helps him. From the article: 'You don't get everything you want in this world. You can get piles of cool stuff for free. Or you can be an honorable, ethical being. You don't get both. Most of the time. Because, when I'm being honest with myself, which happens sometimes, I have to admit that piracy is not an absolute evil. That I do get things out of it, even when I'm the one being ripped off.' The article also tries to find a middle ground between the Piracy-Is-Always-Bad and Piracy-Is-Just-Fine sides of the argument that might enable single-player PC games to continue to exist."
Sounds like some kind of liberal! (Score:5, Funny)
Me, I prefer the moral clarity that comes from seeing everything in black and white. If the founding fathers had taken the "middle ground" we never would have ended up with the Constitution, the most error-free and infallible document ever created.
Re:Sounds like some kind of liberal! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like some kind of liberal! (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, you have that backwards friend.
The Constitution explicitly denies the federal government any powers that weren't granted to it explicitly by the Constitution itself, and reserved them to the states individually.
It's PEOPLE who have allowed the federal government to slowly, and carefully usurp those powers. The CONSTITUTION forbade it, in the form of the 9th amendment.
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The Constitution explicitly denies the federal government any powers that weren't granted to it explicitly by the Constitution itself
The Constitution grants Congress the explicit power "To lay and collect taxes ... to ... provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States", "To regulate commerce [...] among the several states", and "To establish post offices and post roads". These three enumerated powers are big enough to drive a postal truck through.
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These three enumerated powers are big enough to drive a postal truck through.
Not really. Even the commerce clause (perhaps the broadest of them all) could not possibly be twisted so far as to (for example) force citizens to purchase a product; you can't say with a straight face that that has anything to do with interstate commerce, especially if the product isn't purchased across borders. There's not doubt congress has overreached and it's not because the constitution is too vague.
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Even the commerce clause (perhaps the broadest of them all) could not possibly be twisted so far as to (for example) force citizens to purchase a product
That's why Obamacare (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) was passed under "To lay and collect taxes [for] the general welfare". If you don't buy a product, the government reserves the right to tax you for its value and give it to you. Think of it as eminent domain run in reverse.
Re:Sounds like some kind of liberal! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why Obamacare (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) was passed under "To lay and collect taxes [for] the general welfare". If you don't buy a product, the government reserves the right to tax you for its value and give it to you. Think of it as eminent domain run in reverse.
I don't have to much of a problem with that when it's something that everyone needs, and it works out cheapest when it's centralized: roads, power and data networks, and public healthcare seem to fall under that banner.
The problem for me is that because we are all paying the same amount, everyone (or the government) thinks that we should not be allowed to take any risks with our own bodies, otherwise we'll "be a burden on the healthcare system".
That fucks me off. Again have no qualms about state run monopolies when: A) private companies are legally allowed to compete with them, B) everyone pays for real value of their own, so that I can smoke crack and ride a Harley with no helmet on, if I so choose.
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The problem for me is that because we are all paying the same amount, everyone (or the government) thinks that we should not be allowed to take any risks with our own bodies, otherwise we'll "be a burden on the healthcare system".
That fucks me off. Again have no qualms about state run monopolies when: A) private companies are legally allowed to compete with them, B) everyone pays for real value of their own, so that I can smoke crack and ride a Harley with no helmet on, if I so choose.
Thank you. The concep
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$695 per year (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sounds like some kind of liberal! (Score:5, Insightful)
Hm, I suppose that is true technically, but I think you're not really on target there.
Your problem is the second use of the word 'explicitly.' That word isn't in the ninth amendment. Instead the rights reserved to the states and the people are merely those that are neither granted to the United States, and not denied to the states. This, especially in conjunction with the elastic clause, leaves the door open to implicitly granted powers, which are fairly like penumbral civil liberties that are also not expressly protected but can be understood to be present by careful reading. (E.g. the First Amendment expressly protects a right to speak freely, but not a right to listen -- since the lack of the latter would effectively gut the former, and this would be an absurd result, we must infer that the latter is also protected)
Re:Sounds like some kind of liberal! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the Constitution is an agreement between sovereign states to create a federal government, and delegate certain powers, and only those powers, to that government.
The Supreme Court is not meant to be the ultimate arbiter of what the Constitution means. Congress, the President, and the judiciary ALL swear to uphold the Constitution, and if the President (for example) believes something is unconstitutional, he must behave accordingly, regardless of what the Court says.
But in any case, the ultimate arbiters are the states themselves. An entity created by an agreement cannot have the final word on what the agreement says. That just doesn't make any sense.
Or... (Score:5, Interesting)
You can get piles of cool stuff for free. Or you can be an honorable, ethical being. You don't get both.
Why not? [flattr.com]
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Um...Flattr is a way of paying for the cool stuff. You just pay a flat rate each month.
Sort-of. The stuff itself is free, but the service isn't. You aren't paying for the things you get, only the service. The service is just donations on steroids. Watch the video on the page; it says the same thing. With Flattr, you're giving your things away for free and people can choose to pay, and it's effortless to do so because it's all linked to your monthly Flattr payment.
Exactly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there needs to be a front company to sell the work of somebody else. But I believe this should only be true for circumstances in that the producer(s) can't maintain the quality of their work, nor the channels of distribution in a manner that maintains the quality of the original product. But something that is self-contained awesomeness that has a fairly hands off approach, well, find ways to monetize it other than arm-twisting and litigation. This guy seems to get it.
Re:Exactly. (Score:4, Insightful)
Radiohead is not really a good example. They had already achieved success inside the context of the music industry, not to mention critical acclaim and a huge fanbase.
Re:Exactly. (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, how about the Humble Indie Bundle then? They made over a million dollars in a month, with basically no advertising other than word of mouth (which turned into news coverage), despite the fact that the games have no DRM and were--and still are--easily pirated.
You do not understand (Score:5, Insightful)
All those middle men are not ripping off their artists. They are ripping YOU off.
In the arts, powerful middle men sell fame to artists, and sell product to consumers. Artists get an acceptable deal if they reach the end of their contract while remanning creative, as they'll sell more shit for vastly more then.
Yet *some* artists would achieve fame anyways, maybe very different artists. YOU are deprived of them because some middle man made another choice about who becomes famous.
And middle men are ripping off the best artists by preventing an egalitarian competition for fame, obviously.
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We do need front companies, bands like Radiohead already have thousands of fans reading their website daily but Google isn't good enough for finding new music to listen to.
However, as Magnatune [magnatune.com] and Jamendo [jamendo.com] prove, there's no need for that company to be evil either.
Dunno how that'd extrapolate to the videogame market, however. The thing about copyright is that it covers such drastically different areas that a "one size fits all" solution would necessarily be as flawed as copyright itself already is.
We need to stop saying... (Score:3, Insightful)
"Information wants to be free." That's a fine statement to make if you already know what's being discussed--that is, you know the difference between free-as-in-speech and free-as-in-beer, but it's not a statement that is at all productive when speaking to an adversarial or even a divided crowd. Part of the problem is that the default meaning of "free" to most people is the "free beer" version. Put quite simply, most people spend far more people in their day to day lives thinking about money than they do abo
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Instead I try to use the acronym "CPT"--for Copyrights, Patents, and Trademarks--as a more accurate, and shorter, qualifier.
Meh. I don't use 'IP' either, but it contains some other things too, like trade secrets, publicity rights, hot news, and other even more obscure fields. Given that most of these have nothing at all to do with one another, and it's fairly rare for them to all arise in conversation, I suggest not trying to glom them together, and just using whichever one is appropriate at the time. Plus
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Mmm. If you ever happen to encounter any CPT violations, contact your local theoretical physicist, and keep an eye out for rogue muon neutrinos.
Qualifications (Score:2)
Maybe there needs to be a front company to sell the work of somebody else. But I believe this should only be true for circumstances in that the producer(s) can't maintain the quality of their work
Given what is known about console game developer qualifications [warioworld.com], Sony and Nintendo appear to be under the impression that micro-businesses "can't maintain the quality of their work".
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I have to disagree here..
Mainstream games *DO* need exposure (just like any product to be sold).
However, they use another venue for this : commercial advertisement.
Just 2 different angles to address the same problem. One is going for the upfront lump sum approach (mainstream), the other one is going for the progressive scheme : If the product is a flop, nothing lost - if it's a hit - then the revenue is probably less than if it would have been a mainstream company.
Just my .02 (of whatever you currency is)
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Piracy creates fanbase for Indie producers which they can monetize upon. Established producers have the fanbase already, they need to reach for the fans, create additional extras or even franchise, make the fans want fan articles (by creating good game) and then sell them what they want to buy. Game publishing is more just software selling, especially if you are big and can afford creating a good franchise.
Re:Exactly. (Score:5, Interesting)
it's a different story for the producers of mainstream games who have no need of exposure whatsoever
I don't think that is entirely true. Why do game producers continue to make titles based off of the same tired-ass hollywood kids movies. How many games have you seen clutter the shelves at Wallmart, "Barbies Adventure in X" or "Comic Book X Action Game" or "SpongeBob's New X". Kids relatives, grandmothers, etc, continue to buy these games because of exposure. So saying mainstream games have no need whatsoever is a bit to closed minded. And if you contest those examples as not being mainstream, then what is mainstream? What the 'pro' gaming community deems quality? Well if thats your argument, then those games need even more exposure to sell, especially if they don't have some cookie-cutter Hollywood blockbuster to pound the IP into the heads of the masses. Mainstream needs exposure.
Remember the original Call of Duty? Fairly low key developer, but it was a bad-ass game, free demos were available online, the game received glowing reviews and gained a fan-base. There were dedicated servers, mods, etc. Then as it went mainstream, my personal opinion is that the quality went down. No dedicated servers. Rehashes of old maps being piece-mealed off ala the Sims series, and other blatant abuses of their mainstream status.
Counter Strike. Started of as a free mod. People loved it. Spread everywhere. Indie-devs were exposed to the mainstream through word of mouth. They didn't need massive advertising campaigns. And look at the games longevity. You don't see ads on television for Counter-Strike, and yet people still play on the dedicated servers. Compare that to Halo 2 for the original Xbox. Massive advertising from a 'mainstream producer'. And what do you get? Kicked off of your gaming experience once the company deems it 'unprofitable'. Sure they have to make money, but I am not arguing for money, but instead the longevity of longstanding, quality content. And generally, it comes from those who are not ruled by greed, control, and margins.
Aleks (Score:3, Interesting)
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Uhm (Score:4, Insightful)
You can get piles of cool stuff for free. Or you can be an honorable, ethical being. You don't get both.
http://www.fedoraproject.org/ [fedoraproject.org]
They're freeware, and they look it. (Score:2)
Your morals are not my morals (Score:5, Funny)
Reasonable people recognize this and go through life without calling people names.
You may feel piracy is wrong, and that's fine. We can agree to disagree. The Amish feel cell phones are wrong. We can agree to disagree. Tom Cruise feels psychiatry is wrong. Ok, he can go fuck himself.
Re:Your morals are not my morals (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody is entitled to get money just because they made some software or recorded some music. Rewards are handed out by the free market; if they don't receive the return they would like then they need to change their product or find another career not whine about other people pursuing their rational self-interest. Read up on free market capitalism sometime.
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Nobody said they are entitled to get money, just that they should be able to expect to be paid by people who use their products. In "free market capitalism," (which you should read up on sometime), when I use a product, I pay the entity that created that product (sometimes that's through another vendor, and sometimes that company says that the price is $0).
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That is a desire, not a reality. Nor, it appears, do you understand where the cost of games comes from. You purposely choose to incorrectly believe the cost per disk burining defines it.
Business models other than pay-per-copy (Score:3, Insightful)
Nor, it appears, do you understand where the cost of games comes from.
Wherever it comes from, it could be paid for by advertisers (e.g. Sneak King), or by companies or governments who use the game's engine for a training tool (e.g. America's Army), or by a bounty of preorders after the free demo is released (the Street Performer Protocol).
Re:Your morals are not my morals (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Your morals are not my morals (Score:5, Informative)
>> "Additionally, in a free market, I am allowed to make copies of something I buy, and to
>> sell those copies at the price of my choosing."
>
> That is a desire, not a reality.
Nope. That is reality.
The free market is distorted. Copyright is an artificial monopoly created by the
government based on the idea that this distortion of the market will lead to some
greater public good.
Copyright is active interference in the free market.
If copyright were less distorted, older works would be legal to trade on BT and that
would further dilute the value of new works.
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just that they should be able to expect to be paid by people who use their products
I don't think that's very reasonable.
First, copyright does not include a right to 'use.' Making more copies, distributing copies, etc., sure, but not mere use.
Second, just as mere use isn't protected, there are plenty of exceptions that dash your supposed expectation. First Sale, for example, allows people to resell copies without paying authors, and usually permits rental and lending as well, without royalties or other payme
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Certainly not. The creator of the content is not entitled to get money. However, the consumer is not entitled to get the content for free, either.
The content creator is entitled to set the terms for which his content is distributed. The consumer is entitled to choose whether the terms are acceptable to them, or to avoid the content.
If the consumer doesn't like the terms, that doesn't mean he is free to ignore them.
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Wow, if consumers are entitled to get content for free, why don't all of them do it? And if they did, why would content creators create it in the first place? Why do certain people think they deserve to get content for free while others pay for it? Sounds kind of arrogant to me. *Someone* has to pay for it. Why not you? Are you really that special?
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Don't take everything literally. In fact, I refused to reply to a reply you did to a post of mine some weeks back because you simply are too literal minded and have problems with nuance
Re:Your morals are not my morals (Score:5, Insightful)
And no one is entitled to prevent me from helping my neighbour just because it interferes with their business model.
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Sorry, if you feel that there's nothing wrong with using a cell phone, your morals are wrong. Sorry, if you feel there's nothing wrong with sex before marriage, your morals are wrong. Sorry, if you feel that god doesn't hate fags, your morals are wrong. Sorry, if you feel that womyn should not make all decisions in the world, you're morals are wrong.
It's subjective. Sometimes we just have to agree to disagree.
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So... should murderers be let off just because in their moral code it's ok to kill?
Re:Your morals are not my morals (Score:4, Insightful)
And this would be why no sane society bases itself on Moral Relativism, it sounds fun right up until someone with weapons and organizational skills realizes that he can set himself up as a dictator, and does so. And then the anarchist utopia ends and we get Somalia. Paradoxically, in order for a free society to function you have to have good laws which don't leave things open to such ridiculous interpretation. While some of the lines are pretty easy to draw, I think we can all agree that skull fucking someone is not OK, others are going to be a little tougher. Unsurprisingly, in those gray areas people tend to disagree. At this point, the best solution for deciding those gray areas, which we have come up with, is to have democratically elected representatives argue it out and make a final rule. And, in order to keep our society out of the hell of anarchy, we all go along with it and work though the system to change things we don't like. I think I'll have to agree with Mr. Churchill on this one, "Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
So which one sounds better to you?
A society based on rules which keeps everyone mostly free but brings overwhelming force to bear to maintain an acceptable standard
Or
Anarchy and the possibility of a random guy dropping by to skull fuck you
I'm gonna stick with my laws, even if they are screwed up from time to time. At least I have the option to change them without a gunfight.
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One final note: depriving someone of a potential sale is not theft, unless you are prepared to say that competing businesses are "stealing" from each other.
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One final note: depriving someone of a potential sale is not theft, unless you are prepared to say that competing businesses are "stealing" from each other.
How are those in any way even remotely similar? One is competition, and one is using the creativity and work of someone without compensating them. That's theft.
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What should be done about copyright owners that don't even want to take my money, in a way that "promote[s] the Progress of Science and useful Arts"?
Unfortunately, the idea that the copyright system is for the benefit of the public was forgotten by most people a long time ago. The copyright lobby has successfully infected the education system with their "copyright is for the benefit of artists" propaganda. The USA now goes around trying to force other countries to abide by our copyright system; at what point did a copyright system that was supposed to be for our benefit suddenly become relevant to any other nation?
As with so many things, the bene
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Two random examples (one of which is incredibly unlikely)
It has happened several times before: Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music ("My Sweet Lord") and Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton ("Love Is a Wonderful Thing"). Slashdot covered another slightly different case [slashdot.org]. In a past life, I analyzed the probabilities [slashdot.org].
that have complicated solutions do not mean that you should be able to pirate whatever you want.
I never said it did. But a lot of copyright absolutists post on Slashdot with strong words, such as "always" or "never" or "you are wrong", in a way that utterly fails to address these complicated cases.
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That's because they're hypocrites and doesn't really disprove what the parent was discussing in the first place.
A matter of perspective. (Score:2)
One Indie developer has written a nuanced article on a how software piracy affects him, approaching the issue from the opposite direction. He lists the ways in which the widespread piracy of PC games helps him
It helps *him* because otherwise very few people would play his games, as very few people would pay money for them.
Seriously, if people are not *PAYING* for your games, any distro is good distro. On the other hand, if you sell your games for money, obviously if people are pirating your games, you're not making money on them, and this is not good for you.
seems like it makes sense to me. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Piracy squeezes the middle hardest (Score:5, Insightful)
You cannot look at top grossing games (or movies or music) to get an idea of the economic impact of software piracy. You have to look at the not so successful games.
The kinds of games that are going to have problems from piracy are the games that are good but not great. Think of any game that you do not ever see a commercial for on television. The impact of piracy on a high profile title is probably the difference between making 50 million dollars and 40 million dollars profit. Significant, but not really that damaging to the company that made that title.
The impact of piracy on a low profile title is probably the difference between making a modest profit and having to shut down the studio that made it.
An indie title is probably not going to be popular enough to attract that much piracy.
END COMMUNICATION
Re:Piracy squeezes the middle hardest (Score:5, Informative)
You'd be surprised.
We put an app out on the app store. We saw 1600 pirated copies that weekend. We know because that's how many more submitted scores to the scoreboard than we had in sales.
1600 people went out and pirated a 2 dollar game the weekend it was released. That was pretty surprising.
We made it free for a weekend, and 25,000 people grabbed it.
But at 99 cents it pulls in maybe 2 to 5 dozen sales a week.
Indie doesn't matter if people have easy access to it for free.
Re:Piracy squeezes the middle hardest (Score:4, Insightful)
So the downloads increased more than thousandfold when you made it free. In other words, most of the people who downloaded the free version would never have done so if it wasn't free. Likewise, most of the people who downloaded a pirated version would never have got it if they had to pay.
Copyright is an arbitrary social convention (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright is just an arbitrary social convention. Three hundred years ago, composers were happy when their music was used by others. Today, the staff at restaurants can’t sing the Happy Birthday song to their customers because it would constitute an unauthorised commercial use.
Copyright was a legal construct the printers (not the writers!) lobbied for in order to increase their profits, and soon, people got used to it and started seeing it as a god-given right. Perhaps in the future it will be possible to copyright individual sentences, and speaking them without the permission of the originator will be seen as ”stealing”. Perhaps there will be moral outrage, like the one over piracy, when people insist on speaking any sentence they like without paying the appropriate fee.
There are some morals which are very basic and vital to society, like the taboos against murder or theft, but copyright is not one of them. Copyright is a legal construct which gives priveleges to some (primarily large media corporations) at the expense of others (consumers). Copyright should be judged on how beneficial it is for society as a whole. It is an economic instrument meant to stimulate the production of literary and artistic works, not to ensure the income of writers and artists.
err... (Score:3, Insightful)
I, as a professional ISV owning developer, can only pay my bills because of copyright. This way, I can write software for a living and sell licenses of my work to my customers. What you wrote is IMHO one of the most stupidest things I've ever read about copyright: why would someone who created something NOT own that work? You seem to think that person doesn't own that work, 'society' does.
Sorry, but that's just an excuse for ignoring the fact that you don't own the hard work of other people, they do.
And what about talented amateurs? (Score:4, Insightful)
Some people make games for the love of making them.
I doubt that many would disagree that Cave Story, Iji, Knytt, Dwarf Fortress, or Seven Days a Skeptic are excellent examples of their genre.
All of them are given away free.
The article implicitly assumes both that game developers only make games for the money, and that a front-loaded payment model is the only way to go; both of which are not necessarily true. For example, Tarn Adams (Dwarf Fortress) earns his living entirely through donations. People torrenting his game actually help him by decreasing the bandwidth cost of his website.
So no degree of piracy or lack of piracy is ever going to cause good single player PC games to cease to exist, and, similarly, you'll be able to get piles of cool stuff for free... well, as long as net neutrality holds out, at least.
I'm a software co. owner and I don't mind piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Mr Vogel (Score:5, Interesting)
I knew as soon as I read the title this was going to involve him.
He's been around forever. I can remember when I first found exile so many years ago. Floating around a BBS.
It was probably one of the greatest games I played in the early 90s. I probably spent most of time between it and Curse of the Azure Bonds.
I hope some day he turns around and writes a book about how he did it. I don't know that you could duplicate what he has done now. He started at a time and built up his fanbase when the world was a very different place.
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Re:Actually.. (Score:5, Insightful)
He was speaking in terms of PC games. I've not seen a lot of high-quality PC games given away (Alien Swarm is the one recent exception that I know of).
The whole point of this article is what I've said in every piracy argument I've been involved in: if no one buys quality PC games, they won't be made any more. Buy the games you play. I'll go even further than the author: don't just buy one a year, you cheap schmucks. Buy anything you play for more than 10 hours.
The more money we sink into the PC games market, the healthier it will be. The more quality titles we support, the more we'll see of the same level of quality.
Re:Actually.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Actually.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Just a couple of weeks ago, I bought an older game. Just Cause. When I installed it, the DRM wasn't compatible with Windows 7 and there were no patches available, I had to go download a NOCD crack to play a game that I legitimately purchased.
LK
Re:Actually.. (Score:5, Insightful)
What other than DRM would stop a single player game from working when their network fails?
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Re:Actually.. (Score:5, Insightful)
And why should Blizzard's network have any impact at all on my ability to play a game, that I bought, in single-player mode, on my own pc?
Because my right to play that game must be verified via authentication against Blizzard's server.
That qualifies as DRM.
Re:Actually.. (Score:4, Insightful)
It had nothing to do with DRM. Blizzards network broke under the strain. That's why smart people wait a few days before buying a game that popular.
Actually, smart people don't buy products that require the publishers network to be up in order to play a singleplayer game. Having to wait a few days because of network load is a bit of a slap in the face when we're all subjected to the constant pre-order culture where playing on release day is the most important thing.. Paying for that just sends a message that its okay for publishers to pull that shit. Although, I guess if nobody bought it, they'd just blame piracy anyway...
Re:Actually.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe Randseed bought the game digitally, which meant he would have had to download the entire installer. Of course he could've done this several days in advance, as Blizzard made the downloader available beforehand to help people avoid the inevitable congestion issues, and simply activated it while installing the game on release day.
Re:Actually.. (Score:5, Insightful)
"I've not seen a lot of high-quality PC games given away"
You could at least define "high quality". If you mean high FPS, lots of bling, lots of gore, and flashing lights - yeah, you're probably right. Linux doesn't have a lot of high quality games. To me, nethack is pretty high quality.
Re:Actually.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd class Dwarf Fortress as high quality(with the exception of the graphics which are of a standard closer to a 1980's text editor) and that's given away free.
Re:Actually.. (Score:5, Insightful)
When the OP used the phrase "high quality" I read it to mean "expensive, technologically complex and with bells and whistles like voice acting/cut-scenes/whatever".
If your sole measure of quality is gameplay (and that's a damn good thing to base your judgment of a game on incidentally) then you don't need any of the above. Hell, there are games made fifteen years ago I still play. Bells and whistles don't age as well as core game mechanics.
All that being said, I would be a little sad to see the Starcraft 2's of the world die out, or migrate entirely to the consoles. So I'm going to back the person who wrote the article in the first place: Buy your games. I've no problem with people trying before they buy, or pirating abandonware they can't get legitimately (or otherwise unavailable through legal channels), or cracking games you own to get rid of obnoxious DRM schemes. But if all else is equal, we (the computer gaming community) should buy the damn things.
Because otherwise, the cost of making games gets spread around that many less legitimate customers, and I think the people who do pay have a right to be a little pissed off paying for someone else to play for free.
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However, bells and whistles are necessary to represent those core mechanics in an appealing manner. Many older games have awful interfaces, and most sprite-based ones run into the problem of low resolution making it hard to figure
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However, bells and whistles are necessary to represent those core mechanics in an appealing manner. Many older games have awful interfaces, and most sprite-based ones run into the problem of low resolution making it hard to figure out what's happening since everything becomes a pixelated mess.
One word: Nethack.
60 dollars for a single game is too much. At this point, even if BitTorrent were to disappear entirely, sales would not go up. People simply don't have that kind of money to spend on entertainment. So please don't pretend that you are paying for the pirates; you aren't, you are paying for the development costs.
People don't have $60 to spend on entertainment? Having seen so many people drop $500 on a console or video card I find that hard to believe. Besides, no one is forcing you to pay $60 for these titles, they just slap a high price tag on it and people buy it because they must have it now. If you can learn delayed gratification you can wait about six months and the price will drop.
You're not just paying development costs, you're paying the highest amount they think they can make from you;
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"The whole point of this article is what I've said in every piracy argument I've been involved in: if no one buys quality PC games, they won't be made any more"
The problem is game quality, even the recently released starcraft 2 was ho-hum. So many PC games are released broken and without tools. It's a catch-22, no publisher wants to commit the resources to make sure the game is really good, everyone pirates it and finds out it's so-so and they find out it's not worth paying for.
Take Supreme commander 1 +
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"same level of quality"
A couple of so-called "AAA" titles from recent years:
Fallout3 - Backpedal, activate v.a.t.s, rinse repeat. Bugs still not fully patched (too busy working on paid-for-dlc, sequels). Inventory management UI that makes 1st year compsci projects look like works of art. GOTY!
Mass Effect - A first/third person shooter game released in 2008 with no AI. No really, observe how the mobs act. They can be approximated with
if melee, run closer, punch
if ranged, stand, shoot
2008. I expected neural n
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
He was speaking in terms of PC games. I've not seen a lot of high-quality PC games given away
How times change! Back in the day the best and most popular games were free; registration was cheap ($20 to $30) and you got extras with registration that made it worth the price.
It was called "shareware" and was a great concept. For instance, the first Duke Nukem was actually three full three level games. The first three levels were actually a full game itself, when I registered it they sent three mors disks, with
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Insulting people is not going to get you anywhere.
I'll remember that the next time I see a Borg icon, a rotten Apple, or a stained glass Window.
Re:Actually.. (Score:4, Funny)
Insulting people is not going to get you anywhere.
Really? Some comedians seem to make a living on that.
Re: (Score:2)
You get piles of stuff for free with any Ubuntu distro
Piles of something, anyway.
I don't mean to sound unkind, but Ubuntu's games have an early 90's freeware-shareware look to them.
Re:Actually.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Actually.. (Score:5, Funny)
You get piles of stuff for free with any Ubuntu distro, and none of it is pirated (at least I haven't heard of any "Linux for Pirates", but maybe it exists)
Yarr... we be workin' on that, matey. These peg-fingers make the work slow, and it be difficult to motivate without promise of any booty. Ye have me word on the pirate code that it will be free as in grog when we be finished, yar.
Not all Linux is GNU/Linux (Score:3, Informative)
You get piles of stuff for free with any [Linux] distro
True, any GNU/Linux distribution distro either comes with a free repository set up or lets the user adds free repository. But not all Linux is GNU/Linux; embedded Linux tends to be less open. For example, the TiVo DVR runs a Linux kernel, but it's much more like a video game console because it verifies the digital signature of every piece of software from the bootloader on up.
Re:Not all Linux is GNU/Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Strictly speaking, what they're charging for is access to *their* repository, you're always free to download, compile and install any Free app you'd like, or even find someone kind enough to give access to their repository for free and use it instead of Red Hat's.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Actually.. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.centos.org [centos.org]
The distro you refer to also has their own totally free Linux distro/repository, which you also may have heard of...
http://fedoraproject.org/ [fedoraproject.org]
The business model of your example is not simply repository access. What you're paying for with their "main distribution" is easier access to support and updates/patches.
Re: (Score:2)
He didn't say "from", he said "with", therefore it is still true.
But honestly, this is a fairly stupid discussion on semantics if you ask me. The OP's meaning was clear and valid, and that's all that should matter.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They will give you the source, you just need to compile it. Still free though.
Re:It's not stealing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you think in a capitalistic society that having no copyright is going to promote the production of goods such as video games? Or basically any work of similar nature?
Yes, it certainly will. You are focusing on the production of the original game/movie/book, but the production of copies is equally important. And the production of copies will certainly be stimulated by abolishing copyright.
Without copyright, anyone can copy a game/book/movie and offer it for a lower price or in a more convenient form. Instead of selling a few copies for a high price, they will sell a large number of copies for a lower price, meaning they will benefit a much larger number of people. The ar
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The music industry would have us believe they are the verge of bankruptcy, but that is simply not true. The record sales have gone down during the last decade, but that is more than offset by the increase in legally downloaded music and the increased revenues from collection agencies like ASCAP. As a whole, the music industry is making more money than ever
Care to share any evidence for that? I have never seen anyone else suggest that downloads have made up for the CD sales slump, and I don't think ASCAP bridges the gap either.
Re:It's not stealing. (Score:5, Interesting)
It is still morally wrong. Sorry. I may not agree with the copyright law, but I know if I download a film, I performed something morally wrong however small it may be! Think of it like this: if I drive 26 mph in my neighborhood, I am breaking the law and I know this. If there was a way to catch me (for the sake of this argument assume this is so), I know I would have to pay for the ticket. Will this prevent me from going a couple miles per hour over? No.
The point I am trying to make is that just because it is not that big of deal doesn't make it right and it certain does not abstain one from a personal moral code. In the corporate world, this is what gets the big guys, you know the bastards you hear on the news who did these horrifying things and thought it was fine, in trouble. Having seen this moral slip, in my life, through a friend, I can tell you the slippery slope argument does not apply: what does it the ability to let one-self's moral boundaries slip without at least the acknowledgment that the change occurred. No, downloading illegal games will not cause me to go rob a store later in life or even steal a candy bar from the grocery store, but there is no gray area to a personal ethical code. (We each have our own!)
I am not trying to incite some type of response from you GNUALMAFUERTE, I have many friends who would agree with you and I sometimes find myself on both sides of the argument isle on many occasions, rather I am merely remarking on how we must guard ourselves as a society to where we really want to draw the threshold of "acceptable" at. You would say "Copyright shouldn't exist" and you are entitled to your opinion and I am not arguing this fact, but rather how you justify it. (Again, the fact that you infringe on copyright laws does not phase me at all) What bothers me is that by assembling what you refer to stealing as into physical goods, and generalizing stealing piracy as the duty performed by actual pirates (even the dumb ones who attack Navy ships [nydailynews.com]) the moral threshold for you is that stealing would now require that you perform something remotely close to those acts!
I say relax, grab a beer, go download a song, and say hell with it: yes you broke the law but just like many others going a few over the speed limit, even with full knowledge of the law...this isn't something that bothers you.
Re:It's not stealing. (Score:5, Insightful)
You say you reject moral imperatives, but you create moral imperatives of your own which you seek to impose on other people. You assign infinite value to freedom of information and berate people who value it differently. What is it that makes your view superior? You're taking issues with vast configuration spaces and reducing them down to one bit of information. Oversimplifying anything this much is stupid. You're trying to optimize one variable without considering what you're doing to all of the other variables.
I see in you an example of how people can become the mirror image of the things they hate. You're so eager to negate the things you hate that you just flip them in the other direction and end up creating a structure which shows flaws congruent to the original's flaws. Your opponents have certain problems that they want to avoid and you have certain problems that you want to avoid. Your opponents want to avoid their problems even if it means that the problems you want to avoid blow up. You want to avoid your problems even if it means that the problems they want to avoid blow up.
The only way that you're helping society is by acting as a counterweight against elements on the opposite extreme. But what would really be better would be for people on both ends to move a bit closer together and find some common ground.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I make games for a living and while DRM and other things are a pain in the ass some times, it's still nice to get a pay check........
Nice try at justifying being a douche...I think there should be a demo to see if you like a game....
but if your playing the game and enjoying it, pay for it and don't be a douche
right to freely access information? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me get it straight. Your need to earn money is more important than the right of all of the human kind to freely access information?
I have information in my head right now that you probably do not have. If I refuse to share any of this information with you for free (or just refuse because I don't want to share it with you), am I violating your rights?
Re:A question of justice (Score:4, Interesting)
So it boils down to stopping people from benefiting from something which doesn't hurt anyone.
If I devote time and money to make my garden beautiful, is it unjust of my neighbours to enjoy the sight of it, having done nothing to deserve it? Should scientists stop using Newton's equations because they have done nothing to uncover them? Should writers avoid being inspired by Homeros because they have in no way contributed to his works? If it is morally wrong to get something for free, then we have to answer 'yes' to those questions.