EVO was so hot =( I really do wish they had made evolution as important and integral to the gameplay as they did there. It had the promise of that.

The whole DRM thing is sort of the latest round of a vicious circle. It began when people who have no concept of morality decided it would be cool to steal products and intellectual property that they still have no right to take without the permission of the (gasp) creator of the game that actually made it possible for someone to get.

So, they tried to take measures to subvert it, but pirates kept at it developing hacks and so forth. Companies are only going to get stricter and stricter about developing this stuff. I mean, look what happened with Titan Quest and Ironlore. Absolutely awesome game, and a bunch of people simply stole it without any regard for the people that created it. They put in a shitload of work, and they got jacked by thieves.

It just sucks that innocent people pay part of the price for it, but it's hard to say some similar measures are completely unnecessary with all the scumbags out there.

I'm right with you, Venen.

Back to Spore, I think Spore is definitely worth the money. I really like it so far.

X3 is awesome, GalCiv has kind of a trivial AI but I did give it a run. The OS/2 version way back when was much better.

I'm all for copy protection, having been part of two gaming companies that went under due in no small part to poor sales of relatively highly rated games.

Sarissa Candyangel

I'm not touching it with the current copy protection. Though from sources I trust, it's a decent play, though relatively shallow until the space age. Evolution (building your creature from scratch) has very little impact on the game it seems, which is contrary to what the point of the game was supposed to be.

i don't know i have a much bigger problem with pirating games than i do music, because usually when i pirate music it's because it's something i can't find and if it's an artist i want to support after listening i'll go out and buy the damn thing, which i do a lot.

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You can't do the same with games? Honestly it's pretty fucking stupid, the DRM didn't stop anyone, the ones that wanted to pirate... are. Meanwhile people who would otherwise buy it, aren't because of stupid shit like putting up with their DRM bullshit. Honestly I think pirating it might send a message to EA, they've already pulled back on other stupid fuck DRM schemes in the past.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

The message pirating sends is "don't develop non-console games that aren't 90% online content"

Sarissa Candyangel

I don't particularly have a problem with that.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

I do.

^--- ditto, the PC has been the source of countless incredible single-player games. I like console single-players too, but PC single player games usually stand by themselves as different environments and genres. Strategy games, sim games, and various single-player RPGs would not really be all that enjoyable on consoles, even with a console keyboard.

Various single player RPGs? Like what?

Halo Wars is actually showing people how quality RTSs can be done on a console. The controls actually work pretty well. Supreme commander obviously flopped big time in large part due to piss poor controls.

Regardless, they need to get their heads out of their asses with some of these DRM schemes. I'm not all for the death of PCs, but it's seriously way easier not to have to deal with any of that shit when I game.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

Titan Quest as mentioned for one(you can play online, most probably don't, but it's not really built around multiplayer anyway and falls within the "90 percent online" per your response to Sarissa). The Fallout series, Neverwinter Nights, the Might And Magic series(some of those may have gotten ported over? not sure), Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, The Ultima Series(a bit older obviously, but we're going to get fewer examples as time goes on precisely BECAUSE of things like pirating, developers do not see it as viable anymore to make good quality PC games), The Witcher off the top of my head.

PC RPGs have a pretty long history dating back to the Ultima days/Might and Magic and beyond. But again, lately developers just aren't seeing much promise in developing them. PC RPGs have always had a niche, and often they devote themselves to true old-school D&D environments. I enjoy many different console RPGs as much as the next guy, but it would be a sad fate to see PC RPGs driven away as they do have a special place in the hearts and minds of many RPG fans.

Another thing I'd throw in that I appreciate about PC games is that they aren't restricted by only one machine's power. As an example, I know Mass Effect runs 10x as smoothly on my PC as it does on my XB360. In a gaming environment that continuously changes faster and faster, it's nice for developers to not be restricted.

Yeah, if you want to throw any of the Bioware games in there they've proven they can adjust those games slightly to run on a console.

*How well games run on consoles depending on how much optimization time is spent. Quite frankly it's easier to make a game run on a single set of hardware then it is to run on any fuckton of other sets of hardware.

Fallout 3 is going to be out in a few weeks, I think we can wait and see.

Shitty DRM contributes to the problems of PC gaming, it doesn't help.

*Edit: added words to make it make more sense.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

I'm not pirating it, I'm just not playing it. Fuck their DRM bullshit.

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I guess I am missing out on the big controversy that is DRM. Then again, I have upgraded my PC one time since I purchased it about 3 years ago. I am not like some PC gamers who are constantly buying the newest graphics card, or the newest sound card for their PC... just doesn't bother me that much. In fact, the only reason why I even bought a new graphics card/memory/additional hard drive was I came back to Everquest a year ago and I needed to upgrade my PC to run it. And since most of the PC games I do play are so old school (Starcraft, Titan Quest, Civ4, Baldurs Gate 2) and/or are so basic that you don't need anything to run it (online poker, spider solitaire)... I doubt that I will be upgrading my PC until it breaks down and I need to.

To me, DRM makes sense. It stops people from making 20 copies and giving it to 20 friends, which results in 20 lost sales for the company that made it. What I think it could do is maybe make the 3 installations happen every 12 months, instead of the lifetime of the disc. That way, those people who are constantly upgrading their PC can still enjoy the game for many years, instead of just one.

Maybe if people would not pirate music, movies, books, and games... then we would not need DRM. But society fails, and as such companies have to resort to tactics such as this in order to maintain sales expectations and not see 20 copies of their game given to 20 friends. Unless I am missing something major, that is, about DRM...

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Except it doesn't stop them. It doesn't help anyone, and hurts everyone.

This game has been available online since a week before it released.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

Cicely, that's the ideal of the DRM. The reality is it is ineffective, and with a 3 install limit before you have to beg EA to activate your game which you legally purchased, it's pretty much like pay full price for a rental.

The same shit was on Bioshock and some poor fucker was having OS problems, and had to replace some hardware which caused him to go over the limit. What did EA tell him? Buy a new game.

Fuck that noise.

Not to mention the DRM runs hidden in the background eating resources and is invisible on the task manager so that you cannot even end the program. It's also responsible for freezeups, BSoD's and crashes when you attempt to burn a disc sometimes. It's little more than a virus that installs itself with the game.

As for the pirating? The game was available a week before it hit store shelves. All previous forms of copy protection have done nothing more than annoy the end user as the folks that are going to pirate...are going to pirate. Cracks come out pretty fast.

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Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

DRM does nothing but encourage piracy.

In response to the 20 copies comment, it really doesn't stop me from making 20 copies and giving them to friends. The game is very easy to crack. As it is now, I don't even have to lend my legit CD, I can just burn a pirated copy to a friend so they can try the game and see if they want to buy it or not.

I was talking to someone about this the other day, and we just wondered why instead of restricting things or adding strict DRM shit, why don't they just reward the people who buy the game. Or offer something that a pirated version doesn't. Such as online content (something spore offers). Might not stop the pirates (something DRM doesn't do anyway) but will make people have an drive to buy the game. As it is now there's some people not buying the game just because of DRM.

Like Tarot! EA would have had her 50 bucks. And my towns would have her cool creations. But noooo. ;P

Ok, last sentence wasn't serious. But yeah, DRM is stupid.

I left off Bioware games because you asked for PC games, so no I didn't want to throw any of those in! =p

Their games are still easily adaptable to consoles because they appeal to both crowds. A large portion of the console crowd hates having numbers in their games(and hate thinking too), and prefer cinematic action with fancy dialogue boxes. Conversely there are a lot of PC RPG nerds that hate having any aspect of FPS or skill in their games.

As far as Halo Wars goes, I'm predicting a pretty watered-down RTS. Micromanaging units with a 360 controller sounds like a blast.



I would imagine that the majority of fairly casual PC gamers haven't a clue about how to go about cracking it - even when it's this easy. There are still countless people that don't even know how to set up a webpage; I've had people 20-30 years old asking me how to uninstall programs. The most pirating your average person has done is installing the game with a single CD on multiple friends' machines - and that's exactly what this targets.

And DRM probably isn't the answer, but what should people do to protect their own creations and property? The measures are going to have to be pretty forceful as demonstrated by the innumerable willing pirates out there. I just can't imagine a situation where a developer would say "Yup, we just won't even include CD keys and let everyone install it. Hopefully peoples' good nature will sell this game, even though games like Titan Quest went under with that philosophy!"

I dunno, I really haven't had that many problems with DRM on my machine. I think I have around 4-5 games installed on it, and if its taking resources I haven't noticed even a tiny difference in the way my games have run. No slowdowns, nada.

I just think a large portion of peoples' anger/frustration with DRM should be pointed at pirates, because without pirating DRM would not exist, period.

Should read: Haven't a clue about how to go about downloading it or where to download it, as well. Knowledge spreads, but we haven't gotten to the point where even a clear majority of gamers know about how easy it is to download free games. You've also got a ton of scaredy-cats who worry about viruses and so forth from certain sites.

I wouldn't be too sure about that. People know people, and Google is a mouse click away. It's not even hard these days to find it.

You have more confidence in the general populace's intelligence and general knowledge than I do =/

But that being said - what message is being sent here exactly? Ok, they cracked it easily - so now they should make even more robust DRMs? How do game developers protect themselves other than taking more extreme measures whenever pirates crack their property even faster?

It just seems like everyone excited about the readiness and availability of the cracks are asking for tougher and harder to crack DRMs and copyright protection. If the plan by cracking this stuff early is to get more restrictive DRMs, I'd say mission accomplished and they've just hurt the game industry even more by doing it.

To add to that... it just seems like people are shooting themselves in the foot. Everyone likes good games, and people are cracking them to get access to play them, and yet by doing so they only limit the content that comes their way. It just doesn't make much sense to me, seems all about instant gratification while ignorantly gorging away at the food source.

I might just be completely misinterpreting...

What bothers me the most is that it seems like the problem is DRM, when the real/major problem is preventing piracy. And everyone is talking about how crappy DRM is... but no one is saying anything bad at all about piracy. Hell, some of the posters on these boards openly admit to illegally downloading music, games, movies, etc. and they show little to no remorse whatsoever at doing so.

Isn't that the REAL problem of all this?

If I am a game company, I am going to do all that I can to stop piracy. Maybe DRM is not necessarily the best solution, but in their eyes it is their only solution right now. I am not a computer techie like a lot of you guys are, so I don't know much about stuff like this, but I wonder...

What if you have to have an internet connection in order to install a game on your PC. It downloads some files off of their corporate website or something, I don't know. So as you are downloading these files, it locks in on your IP address and matches it up with the CD-key authorization code that comes on the game (like how EQ used to do). So *assuming* that IP addresses do not change... when you go to play the game, it connects you to the internet and matches up the CD-key with the IP address. If they match, it lets you play. If they don't, then you cannot play. And you are only allowed one unique CD-key per IP address... which means a family can play the same game on their three PC's, but you cannot loan out copies to your friends- they have to buy.

Of course, all this assumes that IP addresses are the same all the time. I do not know if they are or not /shrug.

But as opposed to complaining about DRM, it would be nice to see some of us brainstorm some ideas to stop piracy. Because if there was no piracy, there would be no DRM... not the other way around.

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You're never going to solve piracy, ever. There are always those who feel they are entitled to your work for free.

The incentive then, is to make your games better, more inviting, and most of all...cheaper. That will make people want to buy them.

The main problem with requiring an internet connection to authorize your single player game is that...what if you go out of business? What if the servers go down? (see: half life 2 launch day) Suddenly you have a lot of customers who paid for your product and are unable to play your game. If you're still in business, then you've suddently generated a lot of ill will. Infecting your customer's pc's with DRM spy/software (read: starforce) that disables your CD burning software will generate the same ill will.

If EA had gone the right route, which means making spore $30 at most, and not requiring authentication for a cd key except for any online content, then I think it's sales would have doubled or tripled even. Bioshock for the PC had the same problem.

Valve has it right distributing it's software via Steam. That's all the DRM anyone needs, and they've already stated that if they go out of business, they'll break the walls down and put out a patch to remove the steam requirement from their products.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Yeah but even Steam is cracked. You can play TF2 and HL2 and all those games for free too. I've bought and paid for those though because I love the Steam method of distributing games.

Which is how you beat pirates, you make a quality product and offer them a reason to buy legit copies. And EQ really had nothing to do with IPs, it was a pure and simple account. You had to have a paid subscription to play and when you entered a serial key off one of their games it locked the software into your account and gave you access to it on their servers. Same as all the other MMOs.

The main community of people that typically pirate everything wouldn't pay for your game in the first place. It boils down to pirate it, or don't play it. So you're not losing anything, if you give them a reason to buy it they might just decide they like it enough to pay money for it.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

Because offering a quality product(one of the best Action RPGs since Diablo 2 IMO) without DRM worked so well for Titan Quest?

You're still asking developers to put faith in people doing the right thing, when the past has demonstrated they will do the exact opposite.

I'm still looking forward to the sales figures from Spore, honestly. I have my bets placed that it will sell a pretty good chunk of copies. Sure there's a lot of web chatter out there and people putting down the DRM, but how big a chunk of population does that represent really?



I again wish I shared this optimism about the purity of gamers everywhere and their noble ideals =p Nevertheless, I look forward to the day when throwing brand new Mercedes' into a public square with the keys on top of them actually translates into sales.



Single player only in the sense that you're not directly interacting with anyone, and there's no direct connection to other people etc. It says right on the box that an internet connection is required to activate it. I'm all for taking backup measures, but EA go out of business? I have a tough time visualizing that.

And BTW well-said Cicely. I don't think there's a way to stop piracy permanently... but you can at least make it a little more difficult by putting in methods to slow down or stop the average person trying to crack it. Like everyone else, I would prefer methods that didn't harm the average consumer who wants to buy the game honestly.

It's just hard to look at it from the developers' perspective and not come out with a similar conclusion. The question they are asking is, "Will this method protect my product, which I have dedicated 1-3 years of my life working on, from being stolen by assholes taking what doesn't belong to them?" DRM is probably a slightly easier thing that's more readily available to them without investing more of their money to make better systems to protect against it. It's hard to envision those people taking the alternative until more companies develop better solutions to DRM and sell it to developers.

Make better games. Only about 10% of pirated games result in lost sales according to most studies. The vast majority of people stealing it are people who would have never bought it in the first place. Vana has it right, lower the entry point and you open the door.

Punishing the people who are giving you the money, to get those who DON'T give you the money...is so stupid even the dumbshits at EA can figure it out.

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Cheaper = lower quality. It takes a lot of money to develop a PC title, even a bad one.

On the topic of piracy, ever notice how few PC title developers are out there these days? Ever notice how a company can produce a game of the year and then be out of business the next? Piracy is kinda crushing to the game market. And it's a huge boon to the hacker market. How else do you think they get botnets numbering in the tens of thousands. If you download games, at least don't be so foolish as to run the crew's custom installer.

Anyway, for giggles I bought Spore last night, installed it on my laptop and two desktops. I switched video cards out between the two and can still play on all of them. Not sure what issues folks are having but it doesn't seem as bad as it's being made out.

The only pain in the ass part is having to have an internet connection to start up. I did confirm that part. It wouldn't run on my laptop until I connected to wireless.

Sarissa Candyangel

They put crippleware in their system. By removing the copy protection, the game was buggy as fuck. Word of mouth was what ruined Titan Quest, because all the people who downloaded a 'demo' saw a bug-ridden crap fest.

How about Sins of a Solar Empire? How did that do?

Sins is doing ok, but Stardock's programmers make games for fun. Their real business is in PC applications and OS mods.

How they do saleswise versus a game with DRM would be interesting info to have.

Sarissa Candyangel

What Sarissa said.

Also, as far as Titan Quest being buggy - I think I remember the demo being buggy... but honestly, I've played the original game quite a bit through the 4 different acts and I haven't run into more than maybe one glitch(and it was a small one as I recall). Word of mouth didn't help them, and unfortunately it didn't matter that it wasn't true either. I still haven't downloaded a single patch for the game and it runs smooth as silk(same with the expansion).

Stardock is an admirable company, I will give them that for sure. I will say that almost all of their games are pretty solid(I had my objections to Sins but it's not a horrible game). I've never had any problems with Stardock, although I will say some of their games tend to crash a bit(but usually fixed with a patch).

Their games don't do too bad, either. If other developers had not experienced far different fates, I would almost count this as conclusive evidence that it can always be done. Like Sarissa said, this isn't their main business - only after they had been in business for I think 5+ years did they start working on their first games, and their primary business is still going. I'd also point out that their games(IMO) tend to appeal more to older players with somewhat niche strategy interests(Good luck getting that 10-year-old ADHD kid to play a full game of Galciv 2, or the big shot RTS veteran "TURN-BASED LAWL! Send it back to 1990). Spore(and Sim games in general) appeal to a much wider audience, and when a game is supremely hyped and popular as much as Spore was/is you'll tend to draw the gaze of the pirates en masse.

I just went from pirated version to real version with 0 problems.

I deleted my cracked.exe file, renamed the original file back to what it was
started it, put in my serial

tada

Logged into my previously created spore creature creator account, no problems.


Not sure why people are bitching about the DRM, then again I didn't install the EA download manager.

The EA Download Manager is no big deal provided you don't let it run on system startup.

Sarissa Candyangel

Isn't this a chicken before the egg kind of question? Those people would never buy it, because they can pirate it.

I'm also curious to read these "studies" and see how exactly they make this kind of determination. Studies show that 58% of studies that come up with your conclusion are making things up on the spot.

Can't people get all butt sore about all security?

I don't see people freaking out about airport security. Will it stop a determined terrorist? No. Does it inconvinient paying customers? Yes.

You can't be serious, are you?

Fucking who knows anymore. It's like a large portion of the world just woke up with a bad case of stupid.

Actually, I agree with him for the most part. Prior to the extreme security you see now, you saw a very very very low percentage of problems. You still would if you rolled it back. I'm sorry, but 9/11 REALLY didn't change shit. It's not a "Post 9/11 World".



Eh, Kind of. When I had shit for cash I would steal tons of games. I still download them now, and pay for what's worthwhile. The #1 reason at this point? Convenience. #2? DRM. I purchased numerous games from Steam. Bioshock is one example of a DRM game that I still picked up (after they made some DRM changes) due to the convenience Steam offers. In the case of Spore, my daughter plays it and enjoys it. I will purchase a serial I think, since I think the work is worth paying for in this case, but the ONLY reason I will is because she plays it on my wife's computer (her laptop can't run it), and she doesn't reinstall the OS nearly as often as I do, and wouldn't eat as many activations.

So, to answer your question, you'd be surprised Fribur. Shit, I just bought a piece of software called CompanionLink to sync my Notes account at IBM with my iPhone. I bought it before even thinking about cracking it because it was so useful. So, yeah I do believe folks who do steal can be swayed towards purchasing. One thing that really chaps my ass? Pricing boxed material the same as digital downloads. Bandwidth has some negligible cost, but not nearly that of boxed retail. Kinda like paying "convenience fees" for shit. It's not nearly as convenient for me as it is for the vendor. Fucking assholes.



It was gamesradar or PCMag. I'll try to dig it up, I was only reading it about 2 or 3 weeks ago and it was referencing the entire Spore DRM shit. The research itself was performed by an independent UK firm hired by the antipiracy unit over there. They weren't terribly pleased with the results. Either way, I generally don't pull shit out of my ass (at least in scenarios like this ;P) and am happy to state what I think is my opinion as opposed to "fact". Your intarwebz douchebaggery is noted.

It is illegal and unethical to pirate and download games without paying for them. I am sorry, I am completely baffled as to people who actually think this is ok.

And you have no right, at all, to say "Well I think that the game is stupid, so I am just going to download it for free." If you think that the game is stupid... don't play it. Simple as that.

But I see a lot of posters openly saying that the feel it is acceptable to illegally download games. Maybe they don't like DRM, maybe they don't like the game company, maybe they don't like the price, maybe they don't like the lack of features, IT DOES NOT MATTER. DOWNLOADING GAMES WITHOUT PAYING FOR THEM IS WRONG.

Why can't people actually understand this? Or has society dropped so far the totem pole that illegal and wrong actions are now justified?!?! I mean seriously people... what you guys are doing is WRONG and ILLEGAL. There is no justification, no reason that can be given in a court of law that would make a judge say "O well I see your point, the game is crappy! Not guilty!"

I am just saddened by many of your responses and actions. I know 99% of you don't give a damn, but it is really sad...

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I bet you speed in your car. Morality and such are subjective. I'm sure you break the law every day one way or another. So shut up. I know it's wrong and illegal to download things illegally, but I just don't care. I'd rather save my money for other shit that I can't get for free.

America went that way a long ass time ago. Illegal and Wrong are only Illegal and Wrong if you get caught. Don't you watch the news at all?

Exceeding the speed limit is illegal. But people do it ALL the time. Cheating on tests is wrong. But studies have found that 75% of students admit to have cheated on tests.

(This is not a post advocating piracy. It's a shitty thing to do. Though I do advocate downloading a cracked .exe to play a game you bought if you don't want to play crippleware.)

And people wonder why companies are going nuts with DRM. It isn't like this viewpoint is that uncommon.

Indeed. If I could count the number of overpriced piece of shit products I see whenever I go into the mall. Bank refused my loan, guess I should go rob it now.

I see your post and I'm nodding all the way through it... but honestly, people who have decided that it's perfectly ok to steal things are going to be pretty hard to sway over a forum =/ They've justified it over and over in their heads with countless "Well this company did something wrong, so it's ok for me to do something wrong too".

With regard to speeding: I personally make a pretty good effort not to go above the limit, and if I ever do it's because I'm not paying enough attention which is, admittedly my fault. When I see people speed, I must say that they're surprisingly fairly careful when they approach pedestrian crossings and so forth - most people from what I've seen speed in an area where it's a little more safe to do so, in part because of their own safety of course.

It's just not quite the same as knowingly stealing something that belongs to someone else. There is a direct intent to steal, and a direct consequence to the action - in either the sense that they lost a sale(perhaps they didn't), but also in the sense that you have something that is someone else's whom didn't give you permission to use it. Deceit, basically, and promotion of the idea that it's ok to steal. With speeding, you may or may not be endangering yourself and those around you if you're say, on an abandoned highway with no one within 20 miles of you. Insert various other examples where speeding can be safe and have no moral consequence.

breakin laws is breakin laws man. you're a great example of that subjectivity i was talkin about.

I'll download and play shit, if it's worth my money and I intend on playing it for more then a few hours, I'll buy it. Otherwise I don't particularly give a fuck, now I've got Live and practically everything has a demo of some kind, so I can actually see what it's like to play. Unlike most PC games you run across.

And yeah, I speed, 5-9 over. They generally don't give a fuck, gotta be 10 or higher to count on your insurance, it's served me well. If I get caught, oh well, boo hoo.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

If I speed and do not get caught, nothing happens to anyone else. I get to my destination faster, and I waste more gas.

If I speed and get caught, then I have to pay a ticket/fine. Nothing happens to anyone else.

If I illegally download a game and do not get caught, then I am costing the game company 40-50 dollars in sales. That money they cannot pay their employees with, use for future research and development, pay business expenses, and run a profit to continue to be in the business of making games. The more this happens, the less sales/profit the company sees... which results in the company being bought out by a much larger company that is probably more concerned with dollars than quality. Or the company just goes under and can no longer maintain a profitable business and is done.

In one illegal move, you are only affecting yourself. In the other illegal move, you are impacting profitability of others. And of course, the chances of being caught speeding are FAR FAR FAR higher than the chances of being caught illegally downloading a game. Maybe if security, police, government, whomever actually has a chance at catching people illegally downloading stuff... then we can discuss. As it stands however, the chances are slim to none that anyone is going to be caught doing so.

Again- I speed, I hurt myself. I download illegally, I hurt others. Big difference.

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How are you costing them money for a game you wouldn't buy? Fuck that. I'm more likely to buy a game because of downloading it then I am if I don't.

I'm not going to continuously drop $50 a piece for a game I'm seriously questionable about in the first place. If I download it I get an idea of how the game works and how it will run. I'm not content to waste money on shit, I'll find out before hand. There is no test driving in the gaming market. And I'm content ignoring the piss poorness of the driving analogy regarding the implications of life/death.

If you want to call that "losing money" then fine, me being a smart consumer is them losing money, glad to know.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

We have a winner.

Test drive a game? Isn't that what demos are supposed to do?

And how can you say that you are not costing them money if you don't buy it? If you illegally download a game and play it all the way through... then the game company sees no financial gain from this. But yet you receive all the gain from the transaction. Business transactions are a result of both parties giving up something to the other for mutual benefit. What benefit did the game company get from you through your illegal downloading? They could have received 40 dollars, and you could have received 20 hours of enjoyment and entertainment... not you receive 20 hours of happiness and they receive nothing.

The worst part is not only the apathy that many people have with regards to illegal downloading/piracy... but that it happens so much and it seems like nothing is done about it. I know if I am a game company and I could have sold 20,000 copies of my game to consumers, only to see those consumers download it illegally for free and thus costing me $800,000 in sales... I would be irate. But it seems like many of them just don't care, and that is sadness.

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Not all laws are created equal in my book. I'd throw up the old example that I'd jaywalk, against the law, to save the baby in the street. Just because a law exists doesn't make it right.

And while I agree all morality is subjective, there are things most people can agree make sense from a moral standpoint. Most people will agree killing innocent human beings is wrong, and with good reason and moral backing. In a similar context, stealing is also wrong - particularly because it has consequence.



For one, not everyone who pirates is exactly like you and wouldn't have bought it anyway. It's pretty hard to get the statistics on that because, well, not everyone is going to admit what they really would or wouldn't do =)

Secondly, it may or may not cost them. If you set an example by which others follow and piracy becomes more accepted due to countless people taking advantage of it and more people becoming aware due to that, then it may very well cost them.

More importantly, though, is the act of stealing itself. It's still stealing regardless of whether there's a direct impact on the person/people you're stealing from. You could steal various odds and ins if you snuck into a neighbor's yard or garage, and perhaps there would be very little or no impact on the neighbor. You've still taken from him/her what wasn't yours without his/her permission. The consequence is that of trust and honesty. Borrowing examples somewhat fit the bill as well, since games aren't entirely physical material: Suppose you hotwired a neighbor's car and took it for a spin - acceptable? You gave it back before the neighbor got home from work, and filled up the gas tank - no impact right?

The law here is in place for a very good reason, and it's particularly black and white: You've either stolen something from someone, or you haven't.

You get into pretty murky territory when *you* decide whether or not you've had an impact on the person you've stolen from.

Again, subjectivity. You find reasons for laws you agree with, and you use semantics for those who don't.

Case in point:


The speed limit is there for a reason. For the safety of drivers. You may not agree with the limit set, but speeding puts other drivers in more danger than following the speed limit. Just like driving impaired does (though they do not do so at the same degree). It's not your own little closed environment.

Everything in the world is subjective, at some point you do have to start drawing a line or two. You may as well point out that we might not even exist because we're all brains inside jars in a mad scientist's lab and that there is no true moral objectivity based on that, but that would get us no place quickly.

Stealing is one of those fundamental laws in practically every society since the dawn of civilization that exists not just for moral purposes, but for the betterment of society and to maintain a general economy of order. I have a hard time comparing that with an arbitrary speed limit(which I follow anyway).

There's a very real distinction when one has an inherent consequence all of the time, and the other has a consequence only some of the time.

If the game runs like ass and is a piece of shit, it'll be off my hard drive in a few hours or minutes if it runs that bad. If it's worth playing and keeping, then I'll pay for it. I'm not going to waste my time playing a shit ass game all the way to the end.

And when was the last time you saw a decent demo for a pc game? The last one I can remember was UT2k4, that was what, 3-4 years ago?

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Marauder Harabakc Goat