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Why buy the cow?

HardCode

Erudite
Joined
Aug 23, 2005
Messages
1,138
This is the dumbest fucking argument ever. If you can't afford a $49.99 game, then get a Saturday morning part-time job. In one month, that money can buy you 3 to 5 games. Then, play them Saturday night and Sunday. Lazy fucks.

However, if someone can't buy something in a country where the game isn't available ... well, that doesn't make piracy right, but it does create a dilemna.
 

obediah

Erudite
Joined
Jan 31, 2005
Messages
5,051
HardCode said:
This is the dumbest fucking argument ever. If you can't afford a $49.99 game, then get a Saturday morning part-time job. In one month, that money can buy you 3 to 5 games. Then, play them Saturday night and Sunday. Lazy fucks.

Way to miss the forest for a single twig. I also would have accepted 'if you can't afford it don't buy it'.

The interesting question isn't how to save money for games, the interesting questions are: Why do people pirate games? Does piracy hurt profits? If so how much? and are current methods the correct way to recover those losses? Are any of the reasons justifiable? do they put other industry problems under the spotlight?

The legal debate is painfully droll:

a) Some games are like buggy, and I can't take it back if I don't like it.

b) Then your legal recourse is to demand a demo and don't buy games that don't have one.

a) Then I just won't get any games, because stupid fanboys buy buggy crap.

b) So? That doesn't justify stealing.

a) Ha Ha mother fucker, piracy isn't stealing unless you take physical media

b) Alright, you're right there. It's steal illegal dumbass.

a) but it's not fair!


Piracy excuses/reasons seem to come in three major flavors

1) I'm broke nigga.

Good luck stopping these people. The morality of the poor is tested much more than the morality of the rich. And if you really wouldn't buy the game, or would wait and buy it used, you're not taking money directly from the developer which makes it easier to justify.

2) Content providers have declared war on their customers, so I'm fighting back.

Now old white guys will tell you, the correct way to change a law is to contact your representative, blah, blah, blah. History, however tells us that the way to change a law is either disobediance, or spend billions hiring a lobbyist to bribe a majority of representatives.

For the most part, reviews and less sensible friends can resolve this issue legally.

3) pokemon - gotta have them all or l33t ha><0r syndrome

There's no hope for these people.

Like the music and film industries, game makers lose any sympathy for their loss they may have had from me. It's like if the local strike team turned in their sniper rifle for daisy cutters. It's like they don't mind wasting millions on stupid-ass anti-piracy measures that shit all over customers just so they can pad their loss numbers their lobbyist shows to congress while asking for the death penalty for pirating games. That effort could be spent on getting better games out and improving relationships with customers - which I believe would be more effective.
 

AZ

Liturgist
Joined
Feb 6, 2005
Messages
467
I like the concept of leaving out the distributors, publishers, when just the developer selling the game. Like Mount & Blade. In this case I feel, I give the money to the developers to make more, not some publisher takes the money and decides weather it is profitable to hire the devs again.
 

kohla

Educated
Joined
Feb 28, 2006
Messages
70
Location
Roof of the World!
It is also the price of the softwares especially in the 3rd world countries. It is not possible to pay US$50.0 where the average income per year is ~ US$200/year. I bought 3dMax, the education version, last year for US$500.00. My roommate went home to Bangladesh last December and she came back with Poser 6, 3dMax 7 (plus Edition), Maya 6 (Unlimited), and the complete works of the Adobe (macromedia studio MX, Adobe Acrobat, PageMaker 7.0, Photoshop 7.0 etc) for 10 takas! For additional 100 takas she could have gotten the manuals too. The manuals were more expensive than the softwares!
And by the way, US$1 ~ 60-70 takas (Bangali currency).
I sympathize with the software companies and try to understand but crap like Sony's rootkit fiasco (yeah, I was rooted), and the entertainment industries scorched earth plicies, broadcast flag law, and software patents just drive me nuts. That is why I am slowly moving towards Linux.
 

mathboy

Liturgist
Joined
Feb 21, 2004
Messages
666
kohla said:
It is also the price of the softwares especially in the 3rd world countries. It is not possible to pay US$50.0 where the average income per year is ~ US$200/year. I bought 3dMax, the education version, last year for US$500.00. My roommate went home to Bangladesh last December and she came back with Poser 6, 3dMax 7 (plus Edition), Maya 6 (Unlimited), and the complete works of the Adobe (macromedia studio MX, Adobe Acrobat, PageMaker 7.0, Photoshop 7.0 etc) for 10 takas! For additional 100 takas she could have gotten the manuals too. The manuals were more expensive than the softwares!
And by the way, US$1 ~ 60-70 takas (Bangali currency).
I sympathize with the software companies and try to understand but crap like Sony's rootkit fiasco (yeah, I was rooted), and the entertainment industries scorched earth plicies, broadcast flag law, and software patents just drive me nuts. That is why I am slowly moving towards Linux.

Were the versions she bought legal?
 

FrancoTAU

Cipher
Joined
Oct 21, 2005
Messages
2,507
Location
Brooklyn, NY
In some bizarre ways, piracy can be pretty good for a company in third world countries. One example would be M$ and Windows 95 being so heavily pirated that it became the standard OS for all PCs back in the day. So, now they have a built in customer base since than and onto the future.

I was a pirate when i was a kid. I was poor, so the man wasn't getting any money from me anyways. It's still stealing, but if it makes any devs happy to know it made me a future customer to certain devs and series. I also bought pretty much all the collector/bargain editions later on in life of a game that if i played it significantly.
 

kohla

Educated
Joined
Feb 28, 2006
Messages
70
Location
Roof of the World!
I think you are right. See what 'Sir' Gates said here.
Gates shed some light on his own hard-nosed business philosophy. "Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software," he said. "Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
Of course now it is more of a wishful thinking in Gate's part. I gather the Peoples' govt is pursuing their own version of Red Linux very aggresively as are most of the Asian governments. I mean it makes perfect sense. Why pay MS and get 'verdor locked' when the alternative is cheap and in most cased better than Microsofts'.
Now, if VD were to release a Linux version also..:wink:
 

Roqua

Prospernaut
Dumbfuck Repressed Homosexual In My Safe Space
Joined
Apr 28, 2004
Messages
4,130
Location
YES!
I hate that “I was poor” shit. I was fucking poor, and I worked to buy a computer. Since I’ve been like 7 I would go around shoveling driveways or going to the store for old ladies and invalids. I made and saved. I had a paper root. I got a job with my father’s friend at 12 doing landscaping. And I did because if I wanted shit I had to get it myself. My parents are filthy immigrants and too proud for handouts. And they thought my sister’s hand-me-downs were just fine for me. Not if I wanted to get laid ever, or beat up less.

I pirated games, not because I was poor, but because pirated games were a lot cheaper. I still buy the cheaper option. But I don’t pirate and haven’t since I realized pirating was stealing from people that worked, not just buying the cheaper option. Now I also realize all pirating hurts the gaming community. If no one pirated, and bought games legally, there would be a lot more money to finance games.

If you complain about crap games, then don’t buy them. A game being crap doesn’t all of a sudden make stealing a-fucking-okay. Just as a girl being ugly doesn’t make raping her okay. The goodness of a game has nothing to do with legality.

If you want games to be better then buy only games you like and that you think are good. Buy VD’s game, as soon as he starts making some economic profit others will sweep in and we will finally have more real rpgs being made than we know what to do with. Its not going to happen through pirating--only people paying. If you don’t like the big boys and how they do business, don’t buy or play there games. If you can actually justify stealing, without the reason being “I want free stuff and fuck everyone else,” than you are retards.

Bottom line is=pirates are pieces of greedy shit who should be assraped. I want to fuck their eyeballs and cum all over their matta dermas.

If you live in a poor country here is a hint. Move. Don’t buy a computer or a house. Don’t waste time playing video games when you could be gainfully employed in a second job saving money. Take all the money you saved and buy a plane ticket to Massachusetts. My state loves illegal immigrants. You have more benefits and rights than real immigrants and citizens. You can live far better here doing nothing than you can in your shithole country. My hard earned cash will make its way to the government and then to you for no reason.
 

Roqua

Prospernaut
Dumbfuck Repressed Homosexual In My Safe Space
Joined
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Messages
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Location
YES!
p.s. When i piarted games it wasn't like you pussies did it with your fancy technology. We boought 5.25 floppies and photocopied manuals to get the page code things. Or the game just had the answers on a piece of paper, but then you were screwed since most games really needed a manual. If not for anything, just the bootdisk instructions.

There was actually software that cracked codes that you could buy, that was very heavily pirated. No more stupid questions popping up before you save.

The best was Liesure Suit Larry, that game made you answer questions before you played to test you and make sure you were over 18.
 

Atrokkus

Erudite
Joined
Feb 6, 2005
Messages
3,089
Location
Borat's Fantasy Land
In some bizarre ways, piracy can be pretty good for a company in third world countries. One example would be M$ and Windows 95 being so heavily pirated that it became the standard OS for all PCs back in the day. So, now they have a built in customer base since than and onto the future.
Yeah, that's EXACTLY the case here.

If you live in a poor country here is a hint. Move. Don’t buy a computer or a house. Don’t waste time playing video games when you could be gainfully employed in a second job saving money. Take all the money you saved and buy a plane ticket to Massachusetts. My state loves illegal immigrants.
Haha, ta's what I'm currently trying to do, actually. Not in Massachusetts, though (but close enough). However, I'm not going to be an illegal immigrant taxmoney-sucker. And I understnad that it will be much harder for me to get a well-paid job in US than it is here, but I have my reasons.

This is the dumbest fucking argument ever. If you can't afford a $49.99 game, then get a Saturday morning part-time job. In one month, that money can buy you 3 to 5 games. Then, play them Saturday night and Sunday. Lazy fucks.
Bullshit. It's easy to say that when you're outside and imagining things about life inside.

However, if someone can't buy something in a country where the game isn't available ... well, that doesn't make piracy right, but it does create a dilemna.
That's exactly what I was talking about several posts back. Here, in CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States = Post-Soviet bloc) we have only about 3 publishers, who are working quite slowly to get all those games localized, and you'd have to wait for quite awhile to get the one oyu need. Right now, things are improving: major and most popular titles like Oblivion will certainly make it to our store shelves in due time. However, it wasn't the case a year ago, when even Star Wars games (all of 'em) were not published in Russia/CIS! Can you fucking believe that? ANd CIS has a huge fanbase. Just imagine how much money Lucas just thrown down the drain.
And the older games are only now being published, like Fallout 2 will be released in April, and other classics will follow. Pretty late, don't you think? I mean, who would get the money now? I really have no idea. Though I worked at 1C, I couldn't ferret out this "classified" information. Herve Cain?


It is also the price of the softwares especially in the 3rd world countries. It is not possible to pay US$50.0 where the average income per year is ~ US$200/year. I bought 3dMax, the education version, last year for US$500.00. My roommate went home to Bangladesh last December and she came back with Poser 6, 3dMax 7 (plus Edition), Maya 6 (Unlimited), and the complete works of the Adobe (macromedia studio MX, Adobe Acrobat, PageMaker 7.0, Photoshop 7.0 etc) for 10 takas! For additional 100 takas she could have gotten the manuals too. The manuals were more expensive than the softwares!
Hah, it's like everyday routine around here.
500 bucks for a 3dsmax that I'm still going to upgrade next year, when the new version comes out? Well fuck that. I'm now owning three 3dsmax -- 4.2, 5 and 7.5 -- and all are pirated. And I'm not ashamed of that, no.
Same shit with Windows, Photoshop and other pgorams. I understnad that it's helluva lot of work to put these programs together, but I just can't afford to say thanks to the developers, no.
 

Roqua

Prospernaut
Dumbfuck Repressed Homosexual In My Safe Space
Joined
Apr 28, 2004
Messages
4,130
Location
YES!
What the fuck is 3dmax and why do you need it? I'm civilized and I get along fine without it? I only have adobe reader. Somehow, I get along without thievery. I can't afford $500. I can't afford to wipe my ass, not with the hippies making cigarettes cost so much.

Why would you want to come here and work? Are you retarded? You can make more without working? Its not even stealing, they just give it to you for no reason.
 

Vultok

Novice
Joined
Feb 14, 2006
Messages
46
Roqua: I see your point. On the other hand, it's obvious that though you say you were poor, you apparently have no empathy whatsoever for those who don't have a lot of money. Congratulations for working your way out of the cesspit of poverty. I'm sure there are plenty of people who haven't for one reason or another. Furthermore, when you pirated games, they were about $20-30?

In any case, we all know that any game that came out after Kazaa was released was absolute shit.
 

xemous

Arcane
Joined
Aug 6, 2004
Messages
1,107
Location
AU
i've bought over 500 games since 1997
 
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Roqua

Prospernaut
Dumbfuck Repressed Homosexual In My Safe Space
Joined
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Messages
4,130
Location
YES!
Vultok said:
Roqua: I see your point. On the other hand, it's obvious that though you say you were poor, you apparently have no empathy whatsoever for those who don't have a lot of money. Congratulations for working your way out of the cesspit of poverty. I'm sure there are plenty of people who haven't for one reason or another. Furthermore, when you pirated games, they were about $20-30?

In any case, we all know that any game that came out after Kazaa was released was absolute shit.

Why would I empathize? People that are really broke don’t have their own computer. Making pirating games pretty silly, no? So some fucking college fuck gets a free pass to pirate because his mommy and daddy don’t give him a big enough allowance to buy games, or they do and he wastes it on stupid shit. Fuck him. You know the chance of my parents sending me a dollar when I was in college, never mind paying for my college? Zero. You can’t give me a good reason for someone to pirate. Video games aren’t food. You don’t need them to live. There is no good reason to steal luxury items. Especially when the stupid bitches that do it here have parents that aren’t living hand to mouth. Little pussy kids who got a free ride through life and college. Where out making their gay little snow angels when I was shoveling driveways. Where taking the new car their parents bought them out to Olive Garden while I was pumping gas or washing dishes trying to buy some clothes made for males.

When I bought pirated games (I had to still pay money to actual people, I couldn’t just download) new games were fifty dollars or about that. Games have always been about the same price when they are new, older games were about $30. I bought pirated games for about 5 to 10 dollars, new games could be about 25 maybe if you were a chump and bought from the shady guys at the flea market. I stopped buying pirated games when I was about 16 or so. When I was old enough to connect in my head this wasn’t like shopping at building 19 or Filenes’ Basement buying cheaper or defective shit. It was stealing. Stealing from people who worked. I was also sharp enough to know I didn’t want anyone to steal from me, so I wouldn’t steal from others. All this while being the poor child of filthy immigrants and getting a 3rd rate education from the Brockton school system.

Yes, now I wear a tie to work and sit at a desk, but I put myself through school, working full time. I worked for what I have. Everything I have was bought legally with my blood, sweat, tears and sacrifice. I don’t accept handouts. If I want something I work for it and earn it. I sacrifice. I could have more if I stopped smoking, but I can’t be perfect, and smoking really bothers the hippies so that’s enough incentive not to stop.
 

Teb

Novice
Joined
Mar 11, 2006
Messages
22
Roqua said:
You can’t give me a good reason for someone to pirate.
Civil disobedience. If an individual does not believe in intellectual property rights, they may break the law in order to bring light to the issue. :)

My philosophical definition of property requires scarcity, so I don't believe in intellectual property rights. Nonetheless, I have only "pirated" two games (Diablo II and Dungeon Siege, games I wouldn't have bought).
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
That actually smells like bullshit to me. What civil disobedience? You don't believe in intellectual rights? Don't play games that aren't legally free. Do you steal books too? They also fall under the intellectual rights category.
 

Teb

Novice
Joined
Mar 11, 2006
Messages
22
Vault Dweller said:
That actually smells like bullshit to me. What civil disobedience? You don't believe in intellectual rights? Don't play games that aren't legally free. Do you steal books too? They also fall under the intellectual rights category.

Just to make this clear, I don't copy games as a form of civil disobedience. I was just giving a possible good reason in response to the claim that there isn't one. :)

Books are a different issue since they are a tangible product (unless you're referring to e-books).

From Kinsella's Against Intellectual Property
if you copy a book I have written, I still have the original (tangible) book, and I also still “have” the pattern of words that constitute the book. Thus, authored works are not scarce in the same sense that a piece of land or a car are scarce. If you take my car, I no longer have it. But if you “take” a book-pattern and use it to make your own physical book, I still have my own copy.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
Kinsella is a fucking moron. Yes, if you take my car, I no longer have it, and if you copy my work, I still have my copy, but the roles of car and intellectual properties are very different. By taking intellectual property without paying, you are taking away someone's MONEY and if you do that, he/she would no longer have them, would he now? You are taking away the job, which is way, way more important than a car.
 

Teb

Novice
Joined
Mar 11, 2006
Messages
22
Vault Dweller said:
Kinsella is a fucking moron. Yes, if you take my car, I no longer have it, and if you copy my work, I still have my copy, but the roles of car and intellectual properties are very different. By taking intellectual property without paying, you are taking away someone's MONEY and if you do that, he/she would no longer have them, would he now? You are taking away the job, which is way, way more important than a car.
How is copying a game equivalent to stealing money?

It all hinges on the origin of property. Some claim (e.g., Marx and Rand) it comes from discovery or creation while Kinsella claims that it comes from occupancy and scarcity.

I, personally, side with Benjamin Tucker when he says:
If it were possible and if it has always been possible for an unlimited number of individuals to use to an unlimited extent and in an unlimited number of places the same concrete thing at the same time, there would never have been any such thing as the institution of property.
With no scarcity, there would be no property. For IP, there is no scarcity, so there is no property.

Other good Tucker quotes:
You want your invention to yourself? Then keep it to yourself.
If a man scatters money in the street, he does not therefore formally relinquish title to it ... but those who pick it up are thereafter considered the rightful owners ... Similarly a man who reproduces his writings by thousands and spreads them everywhere voluntarily abandons his right of privacy and those who read them ... no more put themselves by the act under any obligations in regard to the author than those who pick up scattered money put themselves under obligations to the scatterer.
 

GhanBuriGhan

Erudite
Joined
Aug 8, 2005
Messages
1,170
I feel tempted to make a "best thread evar" post over at TES forums. This one sure brings out the rats.
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2002
Messages
2,443
Location
The Lone Star State
Teb said:
Civil disobedience. If an individual does not believe in intellectual property rights, they may break the law in order to bring light to the issue. :)

Sorry, but trolling for torrents under a fake IP doesn't bring light to shit. If you got a ton of volunteers to deliberately pirate, then called the police to arrest you or bait the RIAA to sue you all to clog up the courts and challenge the law it would be. My guess is most folks would just whine like babies and then gladly pay whatever penalty the copyright holder demanded to just make it go away quietly. That certainly seems to be the trend.
 

Teb

Novice
Joined
Mar 11, 2006
Messages
22
Walks with the Snails said:
Sorry, but trolling for torrents under a fake IP doesn't bring light to shit. If you got a ton of volunteers to deliberately pirate, then called the police to arrest you or bait the RIAA to sue you all to clog up the courts and challenge the law it would be.
Good point. Without being caught, the disobedience does not have much of an impact except for making the law meaningless.

EDIT: By the way, an example of this would be the sodomy laws in many states in the US. Most people broke these laws so that the laws were meaningless but it did nothing to change the outdated laws.

In 2003, the laws were finally invalidated.
 

Volourn

Pretty Princess
Pretty Princess Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Mar 10, 2003
Messages
24,924
"You said in another post that you do not care about people pirating your game."

Eh. I'd go further. if VD oays someone downloaidng, and playing his game for free it is no able to be considered piracy or theft. Piracy/theft is the taking of goods/services without permission. By VD stating that he has 'no problem' with it then it is no longer piracy.

That said, piracy is theft and is wrong. Someone can make exuses to high heaven. I don't care if you live in the richest of countries (NA or Europe) or the poorest (Africa or the ME) there is no exuse. If youa re so poor... spend your friggin' money on neccessities and concentrate on fixing that instea dof watsing time STEALING silly little video games.

Punks.
 

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