Lol. They should have asked me why I pirate games. My answer would have always been, “Because I’m cheap and lazy.” And I’m glad you put in the part about people buying the games they respect. Even though I’ve basically pirated every game in the C&C series, I still go out and buy the games because this series is legit. Also, I really like the ‘band’ Roadrunner United, so even though I already pirated all their songs, I’m still gonna buy the album when I have more money.

its doesnt matter if i agree or disagree coz no matter what they will continue

[…] I said it before, and I’ll say it again – Piracy is a social phenomenon. Websites such as Pirate Bay will keep spurting up, because there is insanely huge demand for them. People want to be able to download (not stream – fuck streaming) copyrighted content that is un-encumbered by DRM and not have to pay for it. […]

I totally agree with what you say. I admit that I pirate over 95% of the media I consume. I don’t do this for any idealogical reasons, it’s merely that it’s easy. I could say it’s because I don’t have the money (which is actually true in my case) but when I get a job (I’m still a student) I suspect I won’t change my pirating ways. Although I do feel guilty about it sometimes. When it’s an indie artist or developer I feel like I really should be supporting them. I guess I do what I can to tell my friends about artists that I like but that’s just making excuses.

On the other hand I did switch to free software for idealogical reasons for some of the reasons you listed. I’m also a big supporter of Creative Commons for the same reasons. Me getting into piracy may have been one of the reasons that I got into free software.

Excellent post :-) You have pointed out all the standard excuses.
Its too easy to pirate and so we have lost the will to save up money and fulfill our desires… its the ease which lowers all boundaries.. I should confess that all my mp3s & games are pirated too but I do plan to buy most of them once I start earning, at least the reasonably priced ones :-)
Keep up the excellent posts, I got you on my Firefox bookmarks toolbar :-)
In my next interview, I’m going to cite reading your blog daily as a technical activity ^___^

Just wanted to put up an excerpt from an article by Chris Crawford in the 1981 issue of Computer Gaming World. The article was titled ‘The Future of Computer Wargaming.’ He predicted the problems of computer piracy quite accurately –

“The effect is not black and white. One pirate will not bring the industry crashing down. Even widespread piracy will not kill the industry. Widespread piracy will have four effects:
First, software will be more expensive because software sellers will try to recover their costs on fewer sales with higher prices.
Second, software will be more expensive because software sellers will burden it with a variety of anti-piracy devices. You the consumer will pay for these protection schemes.
Third, software will be less usable and enjoyable because the protection schemes used will probably interfere with the operation and use of the game.
Fourth, fewer games will be available because fewer authors will be motivated to write programs when they cannot earn a good return for their
efforts.”

Note- The 1st 100 issues of the magazines are archived at “http://pdf.textfiles.com/zines/CGW/”
Worth checking out if u really love gaming :-)

Oh and one more thing – the 90% figure is an overstatement, but it is close.

After factoring both of these in [players with more than one IP and people installing on more than one computer], the piracy rate would still be 82%, and we should keep in mind that this number doesn’t include those who never opted to submit scores to the leaderboard (it’s an option that’s off by default). so while it’s possible that the actual piracy rate is lower than 90%, it’s unlikely that it’s significantly lower.

.

One might suspect pirates would be less willing to contact a game-maker’s central server. On the other hand, pirates may play more games (due to the zero cost) and may be better at games thus would have more incentive to get on the leader board. Who knows, but these numbers are about as good as we’re likely to get I suppose.

Just as a postscript, world of goo outsold Spore, Fallout 3, and Left 4 Dead for a while on Amazon.

http://2dboy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/amazonnumber2.gif

Discussion.

Heh, ironically the same guy who showed me left4dead in it’s pirated state told me to go online to Impulse (Stardock’s ‘steam’) and buy a space game on sale for $4, which was a crazy little game and worth the $4 just to check out. While there I bought a full-price game (well… US$20, but not on sale) plus expansion and spent the weekend playing that (Children of the Nile, an alright game if you like city-builders). While there I saw the listing for World of Goo which reminded me of this post.

There is DRM in the game – it being a ‘digital download’ thing – but it was convenient, cheapish, and it was right there…

@vacri: Very good point. People pirated the World of Goo because they saw favorable reviews online. They didn’t really care that the game was an indie production and that it was cheap. They got it the way they get most of their games. Which just reinforces the point about pirates rarely being legitimate customers.

@Kenny: I never tried it but wasn’t there a way to gift your purchased game to someone on Steam these days? I know there is a way to purchase a game for someone else (it gets associated with their Steam account). I’m not sure if you can bind it to your account and then re-gift it. I’ll have to look into this.

@Ajzimm3rman: Good question. The way I see it, people buy because:

1. They love the product and want to support it
2. They miss out on some of the features if they pirate (album cover, online play etc..)
3. They are buying the game as a gift
4. They can’t find a crack, or can’t patch their cracked game
5. They refuse to pirate on moral ground
6. Because they want to

For example, I often buy games I like because I actually want to own a legal copy. Piracy is like a rental – you install the game, play until you are bored and then toss it out to make space for something else. When you own it, you always have the original media so you can install it back at any time with no hassle.

Of course DRM and the limited activation thing is quickly changing that, making the pirated copies more lasting and permanent instead.

@Mikko: Heh, good point! Same here. I usually prefer the open source alternatives to a lot of commercial applications. Games are a different story though.