Internet Piracy Thread

[The Radiated Banana]

So yeah, piracy is a big problem around the world, no denying that.

 

In my country, Indonesia, piracy is normal, people don't care if you pirate, even some situations people promoted piracy to me. This is because getting legal physical copies here is really difficult, and there are so many fake copies of music, videos and games.

 

So whats piracy like for you in your country?

 

(the poll is just for interest, would be interesting to know)

also, im using the raw data for school so pls dont mess up

[Cedarium]

Never done it, probably never will.

[w0lk]

Used to pirte alot. Now I just grab games off steam to support the devs. But mostly I pirate stupid programs that I will never buy, e.g. Office shit, winrar, etc.

[The Radiated Banana]

Used to pirte alot. Now I just grab games off steam to support the devs. But mostly I pirate stupid programs that I will never buy, e.g. Office shit, winrar, etc.

Yeah, i use to pirate a lot of movies and tv shows, mostly cuz in china u didnt have shit like netflix or hulu or whatever, and finding the actual physical copy was really difficult. Now i actually buy everything lol. (yeah i paid for office n shit)

[@@@@@@]

I pirate because I'm getting the same thing except not paying for it

[The Radiated Banana]

I pirate because I'm getting the same thing except not paying for it

But don't you find it unethical? I do. :/

Also, what about the risk of viruses

[Heated Bread]

To paraphrase Gabe Newell: Piracy is a service problem.  Pirates provide better service.

 

Steam is a huge success because as a service, steam provides access to games in a way that is at least as good or better in some cases than what piracy offers.

 

Nevermind that their customer support is total shit.  That's another story.

 

The way to minimize piracy is to provide cheap instant access to digital goods and to find some way of rewarding customers.  In other words, don't stick to outdated business models.  Retailers have learned this, but the change has been slow and painful in most cases.

[Spotty™]

I pirated Red Alert 2/Yuri's Revenge just to play the game again... Hell those game shops doesn't have those kind of games anymore

[puddingkip]

The punishments are just right, they don't exist. Technically pirating is illegal here since a few months, but individuals won't get prosecuted so who cares.

 

And I rarely ever pirate games, I only ever pirated age of empires 1 because I lost the CD and its not for sale anymore.

 

And I pirate a lot of music and movies/series just because netflix doesn't have enough series and is too expensive. And music streaming is nonsense, it costs way too much MB to stream whilst on the go.

 

Oh and I pirated a few books because they are not for sale here or only in Dutch, whilst I believe the English version to be superior

[TurboNEET]

NICE TRY, NSA

[@@@@@@]

But don't you find it unethical? I do. :/

Also, what about the risk of viruses

 

never got a virus, if you get things from legit sources you wont get a virus 

[♛ AlphaOmega ♛]

Hmmm i personally just do clipconverter on music. Thats all i really care about.

[Spicy Ham]

I have no income so I compensate.

[gigat3x]

I used to pirate games, now I buy them though. The only thing I'm pirating now is music,1.50 euro's for one song is simply too much.

I however tend to donate to artists I really like though.

[Ragdoll]

Oi, first post here. Glad to be on board at last.

 

In Lebanon the only way to get legit copies of games is by going to the big sellers and buying them at almost double the price. (e.g.: a copy of FIFA 15 costs about $100-110, BF4 was more than that when it first came out.) And other ways to get games (or movies) is to actually pay for already-pirated copies. So downloading them is a better option for me. Lately been getting some of the games I originally pirated as copies on Steam, just to at least do my part even if I won't play them again. Lebanon isn't exactly "big" on the whole gaming/internet scene. We don't even have PayPal. If we did I'd find it much easier to pay for the games.

[♠Derpeh♤]

Live in Aussie and they mark up the prices so much and we still receive the content much later than everyone else also comes with all this other crap I dont want. I told someone overseas how much foxtel costs over here, she laughed.

 

I would be happy to pay but if you're going to be a bitch about it ill just pirate it.

[SilverSpeed]

I pirate very often,.usually AAA titles that I can't afford. However, I only pirate until I can pay and at that point I am likely to purchase the game.

[Gent♥]

Between Netflix and generally thinking that the majority of AAA titles on a console not prefixed with 'Nintendo' are crap, I haven't pirated in years.

 

I haven't got anything in particular against it, apart from maybe those people who get unbearably pretentious about it.

 

'Oh, I'm pirating FIFA 15 because I don't agree with EA's approach to their consumer base'

No, you're pirating because you're a cheapskate, get off your high horse.

[Prince Lowell]

thinking that the majority of AAA titles on a console not prefixed with 'Nintendo' are crap

LOL

I only do like emulators for old games or games that haven't been translated into english (Heroes of light and shadow, investigations 2)

[Pistolvania]

I pirate stuff all the time. It's just more convenient and free, compared to other solutions. 

 

Unethical? Keeping information and culture reserved to those who can pay for it is unethical.

[Karam]

Used to pirate games .. but since steam is here .. i only like pirate old games that i can no longer find in the market .. music is all pirated as they dont sell them here and i can't buy stuff online. 

 

Try thinking about it .. you are a game producer and you produced this game .. won't it hurt you to just see people pirating that game and not really buying it ? I would be pissed

[Zerr]

I really do it only because i'm a kid. Lets just say under 14. And i don't have PayPal, card or anything else, only the way of paysafecard, but then again, we are quite poor family (for a finnish family) so i don't get any money from my parents. Only reason i pirate. I would not want to, but i really have to!

[Vaccinated Autist]

Before i know tf2,what i do is pirate games,i have no steam that day,also no gaming console

[Gent♥]

Unethical? Keeping information and culture reserved to those who can pay for it is unethical.

 

It sets off alarm bells in my head that people can think this way while at the same time living in a capitalist society.

Hell, Norway is one of the best capitalist societies in the world, they own 25% of all European industry, which they bought with their oil money.

 

Doesn't this apply to public transport? And Healthcare? And, access to the internet at all?

You can't reap some of the benefits of our system and then cry havoc when you don't get the rest. That's the entire point of the system.

 

So either go set up your socialist utopia or get used to it.

 

Moreover, it's not just a pay-gate and you know it, your very argument is flawed.

That money, some of it is profit, yes. But a significantly larger proportion of it pays the wages of the people who made the game.

Piracy is theft, and that can't be denied.

[Explosion-chan]

I'll pirate a game if I want to test the quality of it. If I end up liking it, I buy it. If not, no loss.

I also pirate music because it's actually a gray area in the law as long as I don't reproduce copies for sales.