Personally, I wouldn’t need to pirate if all old games were available for budget prices, would work on my system, and are ‘as new’ ie I’d pay a fiver for System Shock II or Planetscape, but I’m not getting some tatty copy off ebay.

Pretty much exactly what I’d say, too (although if any reviewers were capable of using percentage scales remotely sensibly, a 70/80 game would be a good one, not a slightly rubbish one, but hey ho). I’ve bought one or two games from ebay that were in good nick though. Of course, were I able to buy them in a shop for a similar price (just under a fiver for a game that was several years old), the industry would have got my money instead of some ebay bloke or other.

Personally, I wouldn’t need to pirate if all old games were available for budget prices, would work on my system, and are ‘as new’ ie I’d pay a fiver for System Shock II or Planetscape, but I’m not getting some tatty copy off ebay. Steam-’em-up and you’d have a deal, especially if I’d then be able to access them on multiple systems, ie when I’m overseas.

Or simply on principle, because doing so is no different to demanding that you phone up a bookshop every time you want to read a book just to prove to them that you didn’t steal it. Its’ demeaning, insulting and pointless – a pirated copy would have circumvented the copy protection anyway.

Obviously none of these people play MMOs, where you pay the box cost plus the sub fee and the servers can be full / down for maintenace (or even shut down forever) at any time.

I don’t speak for everyone, but nope, I don’t play MMOs. Partly because I’ve yet to come across one that wasn’t more boring than counting my eyelashes, and partly because of the costs.

I agree with the concept of video game DRM, if not the execution to date. BioShock had a limited number of activations and it appears to have held the pirates off for 3 weeks on the PC. So that appears to have worked for 2K in stopping Day 0 piracy.

A lot of people are also against even basic online activation for their games in case the servers are down during times they want to play. Obviously none of these people play MMOs, where you pay the box cost plus the sub fee and the servers can be full / down for maintenace (or even shut down forever) at any time.

Hopefully Cliff Harris will keep everyone updated about how well his new policies work. As an indie who develops for a niche, I’m sure it will work a lot better for him than a large studio who is developing a AAA title… and even then it might not work out so well.

http://game.giveawayoftheday.com/rock-legend/

To me it’s morally wrong and cheap. And mostly just excuses to ease their minds.

If you don’t have the money, save it. If you don’t think the game’s worth it, don’t buy it (but why pirate it then, eh? If you -do- pirate it you find the game worthwhile enough to do that..). These people worked to make their product. If you appreciate it enough then buy it. It’s not that hard to comprehend.

And that includes DRM nonsense. Sure I may not agree with all DRM practices, but if you really don’t want a game with DRM for that alone.. you shouldn’t pirate it either.

It’s normal to pay for goods/products you wish to use. Or am I crazy?

Eh, what? So that the average pirate can just claim he’s legal and does nothing wrong after a few months, even though he’ll probably have pirated the game on day one anyway?

I’m sorry but I don’t like the sound of my money being used to the advantage of pirates, it’s bad enough it’s so often to the advantage of crappy publishers and retailers instead of hard working developers, let’s not add more bullshit on that… Heck, it’s already to the advantage of pirates since if people didn’t buy games period, then the pirates would have nothing to pirate, but still, helping make them legal with my own work and sweat would just suck…

And what about developers who manage to produce something really special, it’s not like they can know its potential appeal prior to the release (if it’s not something marketable they plan to push hard, like say Wii Fit), so why should they limit their success by abstractly stating how much they’d like to make prior to seeing the actual public’s response? Personally, the more any good title sells (especially if it’s indie or if I know the actual developer gets a lot of the benefit), the happier I am. Measuring it in free downloads just wouldn’t be the same for anyone involved.

Likewise. I didn’t really have time earlier to stress this enough. I’ve disagreed quite strongly with Cliffski on this very site in the past, but it takes real courage and humility to invite a load of people to potentially prove oneself totally wrong (or indeed, to prove yourself right by calling their bluff). The fact that he’s gone so far as to change some of his business practices in response to some of the criticism is commendable, even if you think it’s just a clever PR trick.

It’s nice to see such an advocate of the “devil” change his mind or at least his practices, but I’d hate to see him come full circle after a potential bad experience with his next games. I hope all those people who e-mailed were being honest.

This also. I would like to address people who regularly pirate games for any reason other than outright refusal to ever pay for anything, ever, if I may:

Buy a load of Cliffski’s games now. Seriously. Whether you like them or not, think they’re any good or not, or even if you have a personal vendetta against him. Even if you cynically think that all this is just a PR move – buy a load of them anyway.

This move of his is arguably unprecedented (yes, some musicians and programmers have made games free, but who’s outright asked pirates to give reasons and responded to them in turn?), and a surge in his sales after this move will prove that your reasons are not in fact just bullshit rationalisation and that a lot of piracy genuinely is the fault of poor practices by the industry.

Sending a fairly clear message to that industry and possibly setting a precedent that will make at least some developers produce better games at a lower price and without all the shite is well worth a tenner – and you’ll get a quite unique game or two into the bargain as well.

“Although valve have constantly said it’s 0 day piracy free (Which is true) and isn’t really designed to fully prevent piracy.”

I don’t pirate anything(anymore) but there’s a lot of stuff I still won’t buy on PC today because of DRM, I just don’t want to deal with it.