Ok, I admit that would be me, doing it here: http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=76 the thing is, I was inspired by this excellent penny arcade strip: in combination with some other stories regarding games costing more on PC than consoles (and the usage of this as justification for piracy) to think about the thought processes behind people pirating games. Obviously, as a game dev, I'm specifically worried most about my own (see sig). 99% of the time when people flame on an internet forum about piracy, they are either preaching to the converted, or ranting furiously at a company they know is ignoring them. So I'm trying to be different, and doing something that I suspect may be akin to ignoring the advice of not mentioning the war, or working with children and animals, and I'm actively asking people who specifically pirated my games, to tell me why, and how I could have persuaded them to have bought them instead. Is this mad? Should we never discuss this? Is it better to keep the devs in one corner, and the pirates in another, and pretend each other do not exist? I think not. I've seen these forums be more grown-up and reasonable than most, and thought it might be possible to have a sensible debate on the issue here. So forgetting photoshop, forgetting mp3s, forgetting movies, the RIAA, MPAA, BSA etc etc etc, and thinking purely about SMALL BUDGET and indie games..... If you pirate them, why do you? and what would change your mind?

I really think piracy is rather simple. Now keep in mind that I do not pirate myself, but I have a few friends that do. I think it falls into three categories. A) They would rather have the game for free, because free IS free and it's extremely easy to click a link and d/l the game. B) They hate the company that produces the game, but still want to play said game. So they pirate it to "Stick it to the man." C) They want to try out the game before they buy. If they don't like it, they obviously won't buy it, so they fall under the category of simple pirates. I really don't think you can change a pirates' mind with mere words. There simply just are people out there that don't want to pay for a game and will not pay for a game as long as it remains easy to pirate and escape litigation.

So forgetting photoshop, forgetting mp3s, forgetting movies, the RIAA, MPAA, BSA etc etc etc, and thinking purely about SMALL BUDGET and indie games..... If you pirate them, why do you? and what would change your mind? Whilst it's an interesting question, I'm not sure how much of a bite you're going to get here. Have you considered some other forums? I know at the gametrailers forums they talk a LOT about how much they pirate PC games. Possibly also gamespot and gamefaqs. Although there's also a correlation there with how immature the forums generally are there I'm afraid. BTW, am I guessing right in that this was partly prompted by that RPS post on Bionic Commando?

I don't think you'll find many pirates on the PA boards. Compared to a lot of forums I've poked around, the PA G&T crew seems to be (in general) the most mature, well-mannered bunch of posters I've found. This kinda' suggests to me that they either don't pirate, or if they do, they do it really well. I think the only games I've pirated in the last ten years was a copy of Link to the Past, which I have owned and lost (not sold or given away) at some point, so I was able to grey-area through the moral implications. The other was, poetically enough, Sid Meier's Pirates!. which my little brother had insisted I play and put on my PC. It's very good for a day or two, I suggest you give it a try (for money, going through all legal channels). I can't tell you why pirates steal your shit (though I can guess). I'm proud of my games library, and while I occasionally wish I had never spent that $20.00 on a case of beer or that $30.00 on a pizza, I almost never regret a games purchase.

This is mad. Every single response you get will be 'I dont want to pay for this' and there is nothing you can change about your game to rectify this other than give it away for free.

I guess that the closest thing I come to being a pirate is when I buy a game and promptly download the crack for the game since I don't want to have to deal with some shitty DRM or being forced to have the disc in the DVD drive, despite doing a full installation.

(USER WAS INFRACTED FOR THIS POST) Oh hay guys

Oh hay guys Man, that picture is going to haunt him forever on these boards.

Alright, I'll bite. The last game I tried to pirate was Prince of Persia: Two Thrones. I bought the triple pack, but Two Thrones came with Starforce, and as such, wouldn't install on Vista (which I'm actually quite thankful of). I tried to download a torrent of TT only to find that any torrents available for it still don't have Starforce removed, they just include a crack to use once you've already installed the game and Starforce on your PC. So yeah, that was a failure as pirating goes I guess.

Oh hay guys Man, that picture is going to haunt him forever on these boards. Explanation for those of us who weren't there at the time? As far as I can tell it looks like one of those fake Star-Trek Klingon knives right?

Oh hay guys Man, that picture is going to haunt him forever on these boards. Explanation for those of us who weren't there at the time? As far as I can tell it looks like one of those fake Star-Trek Klingon knives right? I am puzzled by your inquiry Surely you jest?

Oh hay guys Man, that picture is going to haunt him forever on these boards. Explanation for those of us who weren't there at the time? As far as I can tell it looks like one of those fake Star-Trek Klingon knives right? Its just a random picture on his blog. .

I'm sorry, but I have never heard of the games you made. I'll download them later tonight and take a look though. So,did you actually get any real answers yet?

Personally, I see piracy as a means to demo a product before purchasing. This of course doesn't apply to any games with demos (such as Democracy 2) and I'd never consider pirating such games. My rules are simple: If it's good, buy it; if it's not good (or rather, doesn't interest me), delete it immediately. Fortunately, games lacking demos seem to be few and far between and non-PC games can be rented easily enough. The main sticking point these days seems to be portable systems (no local place rents portable games), but at least with the DS demos are available at places like Gamestop and Target, mitigating that "problem" as well. I've purchased a handful of independent games, with most of them coming from Stardock. In Stardock's case, I bought Galactic Civilizations almost purely because of their stance on DRM (and likewise with GalCiv 2). I want to support developers who choose to trust their customers to be basically honest people who are happy to pay for a product if it's good enough and I've gone far enough to make purchases I probably wouldn't have otherwise. In Stardock's case this was mutually beneficial (they got money; I got awesome games), but even if I hated GalCiv or The Political Machine I'd still be glad on some level that I helped prop up a business model I agree with. Is price a factor for me? Sure. I'm far more likely to impulse buy a $20 (or less) game based solely on reviews than a $50 game. In fact, I almost never buy $50 games both because of the price and the large backlog of games I already own and still haven't even played through. Along those lines, I've probably spent more on apps & games for the iPod Touch since the App Store opened than I have on games this year. It's hard to say no to something that's only $1 or $5 or even $10, especially when they're just a click or two away. With that said, I did buy Portal (and the Orange Box) based almost exclusively a friend showing it off for about 5 minutes and that cost me like $60. It was worth every penny even considering I don't care for TF2 and haven't gotten around to Episode 2 yet. Based on personal observations, I think we can group pirates into three main groups. You have those who truly use piracy to sample games (or whatever the product may be) and buy what they like. Honestly, this is probably a small group compared to the others as it's kind of hard to justify spending money on something you already "have" other than the fact that it is the right thing to do. The second group pirates because they see no real value in what they're pirating. They'd pirate anything they can get away with. If something's cheap or good enough they may buy it if it's convenient, but I don't know if they could be counted on to do that consistently. Finally, you have compulsive pirates. They can't help but grab everything they can get their hands on regardless of what it is or how much it costs. The latter two groups are probably not worth worrying about/bothering with. You can't stop them--they'll find a way around any protection schemes you might come up with and even if you do perform a miracle and prevent their piracy of your product they probably won't buy it, anyway. If nothing else they'll turn to easier prey and then all you've done is annoy legitimate customers while doing very little to improve sales.

I'm sorry, but I have never heard of the games you made. I'll download them later tonight and take a look though. So,did you actually get any real answers yet? Democracy 2 is pretty rad.

Oh hay guys Man, that picture is going to haunt him forever on these boards. Explanation for those of us who weren't there at the time? As far as I can tell it looks like one of those fake Star-Trek Klingon knives right? Its just a random picture on his blog. . There was a heated argument about something unimportant on SE++ and he was pretty much the only one opposed to said argument. So, someone posted that picture and said: "This is the guy you're arguing with." then it turned into a thread about bashing him. Not to hijack, but that's what happened. This is a good topic, but I think the answer is simply this: People are cheap and would rather get something for nothing.

This is mad. Every single response you get will be 'I dont want to pay for this' and there is nothing you can change about your game to rectify this other than give it away for free. This really, some people just don't want to pay. No matter what else you do some people will, when given the option not to pay, just take it without a second (or indeed first) thought. Even if some form of unbreakable game came along (yeah yeah impossible I know, hypothetical and all that) some in this category might buy the game, but all that would likely happen is that they'd just not play the game as for them its a case of 'free or nothing'. Although I would say that if theres some intrusive and/or annoying copy protection/DRM etc attached to a game that pirating can get round relatively simply (especially if its seen as easier to pirate than jump through the hoops that the game makes you), then you might start getting some pirating who would otherwise buy.

Oh hay guys Man, that picture is going to haunt him forever on these boards. Explanation for those of us who weren't there at the time? As far as I can tell it looks like one of those fake Star-Trek Klingon knives right? Its just a random picture on his blog. . There was a heated argument about something unimportant on SE++ and he was pretty much the only one opposed to said argument. So, someone posted that picture and said: "This is the guy you're arguing with." then it turned into a thread about bashing him. Not to hijack, but that's what happened. This is a good topic, but I think the answer is simply this: People are cheap and would rather get something for nothing. Actually, it was in G&T, in the Canadian Copyright thread. Apparently, anyone opposed to overreaching DRM is a filthy pirate, etc etc, eThuggery abound, and then as posted above. Oh and he told a few mods to STFU, which was intelligent.

I pay for games because I can afford to, it just means I'm discerning about what I buy.

I think a lot of piracy works like this - this is from anecdotal experience. Tom wishes to play games. Sometimes he has money, more often than not he doesn't. If he really budgeted himself, he could purchase the games he really wanted, but not all of them and certainly not when it mattered, a week or two when it is first released. Tom also likes to be well versed/experience a lot of games. Sometimes this is the case for pirates, most of the time not, but I think it's interesting. Tom downloads games. The real blockbusters are played till the end, but most of the time he never finishes a game. He has a binder of 200 cds, but has played each one for 4-5 hours. That's what I tend to see around me. If they didn't have a a mod chip or some sort of device to do this, then they wouldn't buy the games at all and would probably wait till they dropped in price, aside from the blockbusters.

Also,I laugh at developers who go into their forums and when people write about really bad technical problems the developers write stuff like "Well,maybe you should BUY the retail version instead of playing a pirated version!". Yes,sure, it's not that you guys put out a crappy game or failed to do any real QA, no,of course everyone pirated your games. Edit: I thought we could be open here,my shrink told me to be open,why can't you let me open up, apotheos?

I only pirate games I've already paid full price for in the past, games that I've played on other platforms that ended up being ported. I just don't see why I should pay twice.

Actually, it was in G&T, in the Canadian Copyright thread. Apparently, anyone opposed to overreaching DRM is a filthy pirate, etc etc, eThuggery abound, and then as posted above. Oh and he told a few mods to STFU, which was intelligent. Please stop derailing this thread with this line of inquiry. Please don't consider this request as me disagreeing with you either (pretty please), but I'm here to maintain order and this is just a ad hominem slide into despair.

Reminders: no personal anecdotes about actually pirating No discussion on how to pirate, or places that help people pirate

I just don't see why I should pay twice. because it's a different product? when I wanted to play dark messiah and my pc wasn't working I went and bought the X Box version because it is a different product and there's no real basis for me not paying for it other than "well I don't want to". Moral justifications for piracy are almost always awful.