You have consumed the game, whether you can justify it 'having a purpose' or not.

Consuming means using a product and in the process degrading or destroying it. Using a digital copy doesn't cost anything to anyone (except the people you download it from, but those are donating their processing power, electricity and bandwidth on their own free will).

You pay to watch a movie at the cinema. If you didn't like it, does that mean you shouldn't pay?

You should pay because you cost the cinema money.

As for the 'struggling student' bullshit: gaming is not a necessity in life.

Nor have I claimed it is.

If you can't scrap together enough money a month for one game purchase

I can. I buy a couple of games every month.

If you can afford the console or the high end computer to play these pirated games, are you telling me that you couldn't reduce your gaming intake a bit to one or two games a month?

I could, but it would not improve anything. The same amount of money would go to game developers and distributors and I would still not be able to get and keep a job even with the extra motivation from lack of video games.

Do you walk out of a restaurant without paying because you didn't like the food?

Absolutely. if i go out to eat and the food is shit, it gets sent back. I either order something else or get my money back.

You pay to watch a movie at the cinema. If you didn't like it, does that mean you shouldn't pay?

Again, absolutely. I've walked out of a couple movies because they were absolute shit. I've never been turned down for a refund at a movie, not even questioned about it; they just politely give you a refund.

As far as pirating, i'll do as was said earlier: i'll preview a game by pirating it. If i really like it, i'll buy it. Case and point: Starcraft II.

I played it in beta and later downloaded a utility to play it in offline mode. After playing it extensively in SP, (and MP in beta), i decided it's not worth $60... not by a long shot.

If i like a game, i will always pay for it, not to mention it is the only way to play MP.

If a dev company can't release something worth paying for, it shouldn't be paid for imo. If a game is shit it's shit, no matter how much blood/sweat/jizz/money they put into it. =)

sidenote: It used to be at Electronics Boutique, you could buy PC games, and had a 5-day period to return them, though that was a long time ago.

Just because someone's opinion is different from yours doesn't make them wrong... Also, everyone here has done it at one time or another, so NOBODY has the moral high ground to look down on others who admit to it.. I think some people in this thread should take it easy...

Consuming means using a product and in the process degrading or destroying it. Using a digital copy doesn't cost anything to anyone (except the people you download it from, but those are donating their processing power, electricity and bandwidth on their own free will).

This doesn't apply to digital media. You don't "degrade or destroy" digital media by consuming it, you merely experience it.
Someone who owns the copyright to something... owns the right to copy it. That's why it's called a copyright. It's not stealing, as PB said, but it is akin to counterfeiting.

Edit: Removed long, unnecessary rant.

Pirating games is like going bowling and not paying the lane fee because you bowl a crappy score.

You're paying for the right to use a digital product. Just because it's not a perishable is a silly comparison. So if you're using that digital product without paying for it, what exactly is that?

Its ok, I work at a company, lets call it Seek Gquad.

I see all these software pirates' parents on a daily basis and recover $200 to remove the virus's their kids get from downloading this stuff.

I normally see the same people a few times a year too.

The thing that pisses me off the most is; I have to pay an inflated price of $60 for a new game, because 20 other people will steal it.

So... you're welcome!

More so than that, legitimate customers get slapped with draconian DRM. So yeah, thanks.

Blaming the high cost of video games on pirates is just bullshit.

$60 dollars is too much money for a game. If they charged a more reasonable price, more people would buy it. If you're looking to assign blame for inflated game prices, look to the devs not the pirates.... Blizzard charges high prices for their games to keep their large swimming pools of money filled, with well, more money..

)

Hang on, since when is $60 a lot? We pay, on average, $20-25 for a DVD/Blu-ray, which'll generally have a couple of hours worth of content on it. A game will have, on average, at least 8 hours worth.

hey, if you're willing to pay $60 for a game, or $25 for a blu-ray, that's your business. i would NEVER waste $60 on a video game, not ever, and i don't even own a blu-ray player. (a lie i guess, cuz i have one on my laptop, but still, i've never bought a blu-ray dvd)

i would spend maybe $45 max on a game, so usually i have to wait until they come down in price, and even then, i'll only buy i game i know i'm going to like and play over and over again...

Did you honestly just make that comparison?

I was shocked when SC2 was $63. I was expecting $50

I've been paying $100 for brand new retail games for as long as I can remember. It's always been that way over here, so Steam prices are like a gift from the gods.

That being said I still chuckle whenever I look at Activisions prices.

Here in Canada [At least, where I live] 'fresh games' start at 80$, so we're not that far behind you guys.

wow strider that's insane... if you buy a digital copy of the game is it closer to US prices, or are they still inflated like that?!

AFIAK they're pretty much identical to USD amount.

Activision and EA artificially inflate their Steam prices in Australia to US$70 or even US$90 for a lot of games. Most other publishers don't do it.

US prices are still cheaper for us, even on Steam. Our dollar is at parity with the US dollar, sometimes even eclipsing it, but we're still being gouged.

This doesn't apply to digital media. You don't "degrade or destroy" digital media by consuming it, you merely experience it.

Try telling that to a hooker!

Thats what the gaming industry needs; PIMPS!

Digital hookers.
Man's greatest achievement.

Not even 5 posts in and it's now a pro-piracy - Anti-piracy thread.
Great going guys! Maybe we can use this topic a couple more thousand times down the line, obviously no side is going to win, but we just keep fucking at it for the hell of it! It's fun!

To respond to the original topic: I think Silent Hill Origins was the only game I've ever pre-ordered. I enjoyed it enough to say it was worth it.
The line between "pre-order worthy" and "purchase-without-pirating worthy" is very fuzzy. Either way, you're sort of taking a chance.

Edit: Yes we do. And it's fun.

I pre-ordered the original Left 4 Dead.

Pre-ordered both Left 4 Deads to get the 5 bucks off. Pre-ordered Red Dead Redemption. Will be pre-ordering Red Orchestra 2 whenever they put it up.

Try telling that to a hooker!

Thats what the gaming industry needs; PIMPS!

Who knows.. I may get hired into the video-game industry, someday.

Not like there still isn't hope.

Since mostly piracy was the topic in this thread, I come back and link to you an objective study about piracy.

I've read there that anti-piracy organizations want to introduce home-based monitoring software in ISP contracts in the future. I hope we won't end there.

We need to do a few things;
1) Make games literally uncrackable.
2) Force publishers to stop inflating prices.
3) Force publishers to give at least 90% of the cost of a game to the developers. (I mean, come on. The developers do all the work, half the time with 100% their own money, and the publishers walk away with most of the profit for putting it in a box? That's completely unfair!)

I disagree with the order and the exclusion of an element.
Here's the good list:

1)Force publishers to stop inflating prices
2)Lower the prices by at least 30%
3)Force publishers to give at least 90% of the cost of a game to the developers
4)Make games literally uncrackable(but that is anyway impossible, as there will always be a way to trick the game and make it think it operates in a safe environment)

5) Make some way for people to order older games through a retail outlet and through content-delivery systems.

Some games just aren't available/are very hard to find these days. For example, I'd love to buy the full version of Doom, but I'm stuck with the shareware because it's not available retail, I don't want to pirate it, and I don't have a credit card. (Would ID even still sell it?)

Have you never heard about abandonware sites?

Jeffmod, who gives a damn about pirating a 20 year old game, when they are already making money with new, expensive titles?

Well obviously I care. It's a landmark in gaming, and it still plays (if not looks) really well, even today. It deserves to be bought.
But I just read it's available on steam now, so I'll have to put that on my to-buy list for when I get a steam-compatible payment option.

3) Force publishers to give at least 90% of the cost of a game to the developers. (I mean, come on. The developers do all the work, half the time with 100% their own money, and the publishers walk away with most of the profit for putting it in a box? That's completely unfair!)

Welcome to capitalism. Honestly though, you're being very much developer mindset orientated here. In the economics world, shipping, printing, advertising, producing and all the processes that come under publishing all count just as much as "hard work" as developing a game does. This is obviously why steam is very friendly to low budget developers with their economic online distribution platform.

Steam is the only hope for your perfect developers world.

1) Make games uncrackable by applying an even more draconian DRM measures. Everybody knows that what them damn' pirateers need is demotivation.
2) Inflate prices enough to compensate for all those copies of the game that were pirated instead of legally paid for - twice.
3) Force players to log in to our service every time they play, to ensure only legitimate customers get to use the product.

Oh you were talking about reducing piracy? Then I guess it's been all said. I could only disagree with striker in the following:

There's no way you can obfuscate a game so hard it's impossible to crack. At least two decades of such attempts have proven it completely ineffective - everything gets cracked eventually, and the only one who suffers from that is the "legitimate gamer" who paid for an official copy of the game. The solution to this is to just leave software as it was originally programmed, without copy restrictions. Piraters will still pirate anyway, but at least you're saving legitimate customers off a big hassle. Plus, it's less work if you don't code all that. Everyone wins.

If only the industry were able to realise that...

How about:

1) Pirates stop being amoral douchebags and buy the games that they play
2) DRM will be dropped because nobody is pirating
3) Publishers are able stop inflating game prices

Yep, it's just as easy to blame YOU than it is to blame the publishers. Don't try to justify your piracy by blaming somebody else.

Oh, don't be so naive. They'll keep it "just in case", if not for the sake of not throwing all that hard work away.

DRM will be dropped because nobody is pirating

Nope.

Its a mute point, there will always be theives.

It's just a mini-rant Don Punch, we all know there will always be piracy,