Videogame Piracy - Is a Stricter Approach Necessary?

Thanks to GamerDad for its editorial focusing on recent attitudes to videogame piracy, in which a change in approach is argued for: "The [ESA] should be less focused on the ratings system... and more focused on educating consumers that downloading games is theft, plain and simple.... Consumers only understand one thing, the game is available freely on the Internet with a minimum of work and that means they don't have to pay for it." The writer continues: "I can't bring myself to download games, even the things at a place like The Underdogs which specializes in supposedly 'out of print' games to download. Out of print used to mean something was rare and worth something. In the digital media world it apparently now means 'Ok to steal.'" He concludes by suggesting ways to make games more attractive again: "One great way to do that is including good stuff in the box. Give me a color manual or include a poster. Maybe a CD with all the music from the game? How about liner notes with each game describing some part of development?"

Comments

theft

[Paradise Pete]

downloading games is theft, plain and simple

It may be wrong, it may be illegal, but It's not theft. Plain, simple, or otherwise. It's copyright infringement.

Re:theft

[bconway]

You are 100% correct. Copyright infringement != stealing. I'm amazed that people still can't figure this out, especially on a prominent site like GamerDad.

Re:theft

[Tickenest]

Yes, but does a message like that resonate with people? I mean, I know that a century begins when we hit '01, that bats aren't blind, and that Eagles fans threw snowballs at Santa Claus at Franklin Field and not Veterans Stadium, but so what? You're absolutely right, but so what? It's just more of an effort to call it copyright infringement and then explain the difference between that and theft than to call it theft and be done with it.

Re:theft

[Wylfing]

downloading games is theft, plain and simple

It may be wrong, it may be illegal, but It's not theft.

You are correct, because if downloading a game is theft then so is buying secondhand.

Re:theft

[ccady]

downloading games is theft, plain and simple

It may be wrong, it may be illegal, but It's not theft.

You are correct, because if downloading a game is theft then so is buying secondhand.

According to the RIAA, it should be.

Re:theft

[Spankophile]

Yes. That message resonates with people. Absolutely.

And the message it sends is "Copyright is an artificial method of promoting science and culture that people are beginning to question."

How many people pirated Tetris? And how many versions of Tetris and Tetris clones are there? Seems to be a lot of both - perhaps the current Copyright system isn't so broken? And perhaps the companies owning these IPs don't really need any more money - just for the sake of being granted a Copyright.

Re:theft

[arose]

The example IS walid, because in either case the company doesn't sell a copy.

Re:theft

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh lord, not this lame excuse again. Yes it is theft. Maybe not in a legal, technical sense, but just like plagiarism isn't "theft", it's still benefitting from something that doesn't belong to you, and is still ethically and morally wrong.

Re:theft

[yar]

There's a specific reason that buying something secondhand isn't theft. With physical objects, the doctrine of first sale applies.
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/scc/tutorial/bas ics2a.html

Theft is generall the taking of property with the intent of depriving the owner of that property. With Intellectual Property, the law changes a bit. The argument the IP holders make is that the distribution of this software is theft because the legal definition of theft can include the loss of "potential profit." Proving that is difficult, of course.

Re:theft

[Anonymous Coward]

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=theft&r=6 7

Main Entry: theft
Function: noun
Etymology: Old English thiefth
: LARCENY; broadly : a criminal taking of the property or services of another without consent

Re:theft

[moonbender]

GamerDad is a prominent site? I had never heard of it in my life. It doesn't look overly professional (or perhabs commercial), either - not that that is necessarily a bad thing. Or for a more "empirical" approach: According to Google 161 pages link to http://www.gamerdad.com/ - and most of those links seem to stem from the site itself. In contrast, www.gamespot.com is linked to more than 300,000 times.

Re:theft

[(54)T-Dub]

Or better still, the site has an Rating of 116,103. You aren't really "on the map" till you break under 10,000.

Re:theft

[(54)T-Dub]

More importantly the companies should re-evalute the economic climate that has created this black market. Much like the RIAA and CD's, the price of video games has been artifically fixed at a higher than market value price. When this happens a black market is created, plain and simple. Instead of focusing on enforcement the game publishers should instead look at why it is that people are unwilling to pay $50+ for a new game. Let the market decide the optimum price and the warez black market will all but disappear.

disclaimer: I do not pirate games. It's not worth the time it takes me and I like supporting the developers. If I could cut the publisher out of the loop I would.

Re:theft

[Impotent_Emperor]

It's kind of like that episode of South Park where Cartman used stem cells to clone a Shakey's Pizza.

Re:theft

[Anonymous Coward]

Let the market decide the optimum price and the warez black market will all but disappear.

What nonsense. The publishers of a game have a large fixed cost - the cost of development - that they need to cover, mostly from sales. The warez people have only the tiny marginal cost of copying and electronic distribution to repay, which in many cases they may be happy to pay themselves as they gain satisfaction/community kudos from offering the software.

If a game cost me $10,000,000 to develop, and I expect to sell around 500,000 copies, I have to put $20 on the sticker price that the warez people can leave out. How can I compete with that?

Re:theft

[hunterx11]

People are unwilling to pay $50 because they can pirate it for $0. I don't think the developers can sell games for less than $0.

Re:theft

[jlechem]

Yes but you hit a point where the time spent pirating isn't worth the smaller amount of money spent on the game. I have a friend who burns DVD's like made. He has told me if they cost less it wouldn't be worth his time to burn them and he would buy legit copies. The same goes for software. If the cost is sufficiently low enough people will simply buy it because it isn't worth their time to pirate it. Unless of course the pirated version is sitting on the store shelf ala Hong Kong but in the USA where I live I don't see that ;)

Re:theft

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, come off it. You're just using semantics to try to make pirating software sound less wrong than stealing.

Heaven forbid that piracy be considered the same as STEALING. You know, because stealing sounds really bad, not like some innocent "copyright infringement."

Re:theft

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, even that is too general. Downloading games is only copyright infringement in some cases. When I type "emerge tuxcart" and it downloads a game, I'm not infringing anyone's copyright.

Some games are free. Whenever someone says something as general as "downloading games is bad" they are wrong.

Re:theft

[ripsnorta]

jlechem wrote:

If the cost is sufficiently low enough people will simply buy it because it isn't worth their time to pirate it.

Sorry, but that really doesn't track with the evidence.

You can go to any number of warez sites and find games developed by indie game developers and sold for under $20 to under $10. Visit their forums and you'll see post after post asking for codes, links, and cracks for these games.

The excuse that pirates use, that games are too expensive, just simply doesn't hold water when they are pirating low priced games. The simple fact of the matter is that they don't want to pay for something that they want to use. They want something for nothing. Ironically, sometimes they spend a lot of time trying to get something for nothing. Lame.

Maybe your friend would start buying legit copies of games if they were cheaper. Then again, maybe he'd still claim they were too expensive or come up with some other excuse for not paying for legitimate copies.

Re:theft

[XenoBrain]

"Rare games used to be worth something" *Gag*. I could care less. If the creators of the property are not making any money off of it anymore, I have no qualms aquiring it for free. The only people making money off of rare games are asshats who want to sell the game for more money than it cost them to buy it in the first place. Abadonware allows people who would not otherwise experience a great game to have the opportunity to do so once again. I think it should be hugely encouraged for all out of print games, as well as all out-of-print books for that matter, unless the publisher has immediate plans to release it again. Even then, some people will pay for bound copies (or boxed copies of a game with manual) even if it is otherwise available for free. Especially of it comes at a reasonable price (which it better be if it's really old, or that's unfair to the customers)

Re:theft

[KDR_11k]

Stealing is even worse. Not only does it give you a copy you didn't pay for, the copy protection won't even detect it (well, at least if it worked right, we know what they do these days...) and, of course, the store owner has one copy less he could sell to a willing buyer. So they lose twce as much in a case of theft: One sale since a person got it without paying and another sale (or at least the value of the sale) because they lack one copy to sell.

Re:theft

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut the fuck up you captalist pig, no one gives a shit what you think. It's not theft, fucktard, it isn't even morally or ethically wrong.

Re:theft

[sqrt(2)]

And you're so confident with your opinion that you posted AC?

Re:theft

[sqrt(2)]

From your definition
<br>
<i>taking of the property or services of another</i>
<br>
Theft requires that someone lost something. And you can't claim that bullshit about loss of a "potential sale".
<br>
If theft and copyright infringment are the same thing, then why bother and have two seperate laws? Try brining someone to court who's been selling copyrighted CD's and accuse them of "theft" you'll be laughed out of the courtroom.

Re:theft

[sqrt(2)]

oh, fuckshit. I posted as Extrans. Fuck, that was supposed to be HTML formatted.

Re:theft

[(54)T-Dub]

The excuse that pirates use, that games are too expensive, just simply doesn't hold water when they are pirating low priced games.

Of course there are always going to be people pirating software. There are always going to be those consumers who are willing to pay less than the norm. My point is that the larger black market will dry up given proper market control. There are economic reasons for a black market that you have to factor in.

Re:theft

[(54)T-Dub]

I would be much more willing to risk 20-30 dollars on a game that I'm unsure of then I am $50. I know I'm not alone in this, many people will simply wait months or even a year for the price of a game to drop befor picking it up. In the meantime they may seek alternative methods. If publishers would stop artifically inflating the price of the software then they would sell more copies, reduce piracy and increase profit. The RIAA is a perfect example of price fixing gone wrong.

Re:theft

[Carnildo]

I don't see an Alexa rating of over 1000 as meaningful -- one site I visit boosted its ranking from >500,000 to around 5000 simply by encouraging visitors to use the toolbar for a few days. The ratings are just too easy to game outside the top.

Re:theft

[Anonymous Coward]

Steal - To take (the property of another) without right or permission. Now why can't that refer to intellectual property in your world? And before you start playing word games with take: take-To get into one's possession by force, skill, or artifice

Re:theft

[twalk]

Yup, there are much, MUCH, *MUCH* worse penalties for copyright infringement. It's a really good thing that it isn't theft...

Re:theft

[ripsnorta]

Yes, true, there are economic reasons for a black market to exist with games, but I still doubt if it would dry up with the lowering of prices. I definitely believe that if game prices were lowered by a substantial amount, then more sales would result. Some who would have pirated would now buy a copy, but there will still be a large number who would simply copy and not pay. There are a lot of people out there who, if they could get away without paying, would do so.

The problem, at least with the big publisher games (or even the small publisher games) is that the price that is being asked isn't just pulled out of someones hat. There is a formula used to determine the price to set goods at, that maximises the return to the company. Set the price too high and sales drop and the company loses money. Set the price too low, and while you pick up extra sales, they aren't enough and the company loses money. Most companies (not just games) aim for that sweet spot where they can maximise their profits.

Couple that with the fact that there are generally a lot of links in the supply chain. Developer to Publisher to Wholesaler to Retail Store. And that with boxed games there are a lot of fixed costs that apply in that chain. Well, that US$50, isn't really that much in the scheme of things.

Now, lets say that a break-through in production occurs and the cost of producing a game drops to a level where the box can be sold for US$25. Our would-be pirate can now afford Doom 3 quite easily. But wait! Half-Life 2 has been just been released. What a dilemma! He can't afford both, so he heads to the warez site to get HL2, but he hasn't bought D3 yet, so he downloads that too. The justification? They were too expensive.

I really, really doubt if dropping prices will make much of an effect on the warez scene. Short of ten dollars, or the cost of incovenience, people will pirate games. And with those sort of prices, there won't be any games released that have million dollar budgets (with all that entails.)

Really, in the end, games are luxury products. They aren't essential to quality of life or health. They are entertainment products, and the excuse of them being priced too high is simply that... just an excuse. If someone wants to play Doom 3 when it first comes out and can't afford it, well tough, not having it isn't going to ruin their life. Wait for a few months and buy it cheaper, or look on ebay... or find a decent indie game for half the price and play that! Just don't pirate it.

Re:theft

[Anonymous Coward]

The only people making money off of rare games are asshats who want to sell the game for more money than it cost them to buy it in the first place.

Yeah, I'm going to start calling my local grocer an asshat because he's charging me more for tomato sauce than he's paying.

The cheatin', no-good bastard!

Re:theft

[Anonymous Coward]

My posting as AC doesn't change the fact that developers are spending parts of their mortality writing computer games, and then some people decide they can rip them off by downloading the game for free and then sugar-coating their crime by calling it "copyright infringement."

By pirating a game, you're ripping the people who made the game off. These games don't write themselves. Remember that. If you don't want to pay, you shouldn't be able to play.

Re:theft

[Schemat1c]

People are unwilling to pay $50 because they can pirate it for $0. I don't think the developers can sell games for less than $0.

The problem is that people do pay $50 and end up with a steaming pile crap game that is worthless. You can only get burned so many times. I have d/l'd games simply to check them out because $50 is a steep price to simply find out if a game is playable or not. I'll always buy the game if it holds my interest for more than an hour, otherwise I delete it and move on. Not only do I want to support the developers but the benefits of getting the manual and being able to apply updates is worth the cost. But why should I support the developers of games that I won't even play?

Re:theft

[(54)T-Dub]

I see your point, and I'm sure the publishers have their reason for pricing games at ~$50.

Maybe instead of dropping the price of games they need to improve the quality. I think it's absolutely rediculous when developers are working on a patch before it's even hit the stores. Most publishers put so much pressure on developers to release that they often release a buggy product. It seems to me to be part of the reason why people are more willing to warez.

I guess I just don't believe that people are inherently malicious in their actions and are more driven by market forces.

Check out this article believed to be written by one Brad Wardell of Stardock and Galactic Civilizations fame. I posted the article (and ranted a little) here if you are interested.

Re:theft

[ripsnorta]

I definitely agree about the quality. I've bought way too many games that I've had to download a patch just to start. The worst case was Dungeon Keeper 2. After thoroughly enjoying DK1, I bought DK2 and installed it. Got to the fourth level and part way through it hung, reboot, restart... hang. Every PC I have owned, I've tried DK2 on. Every PC, DK2 hangs the game in the fourth level. That is not a problem with the system... it's a poor quality game. That's just one example.

I work in the SW industry, and the companies I've worked for have had clients that would not tolerate the sort of sloppy QA that gamers put up with. It's not impossible to produce a quality game, maybe game publishers need a few clients who are prepared to sue!

As for people not being inherently malicious... Well, you haven't played too many MMORPGS now have you? ;-) I figure a good way to find out what someone is really like is to put them in a situation where their actions have no real consequences and they can benefit from being malicious. Some of the things people say and do in a game just to piss off someone are incredible. Even people on slashdot wouldn't dream of saying some of the things that they say here to someones face!

Civilisation is a very thin veneer, and easily rubbed off!

As for the links. Thanks for those, I'll have a good look.

cheers

Re:theft

[Paradise Pete]

Steal - To take (the property of another) without right or permission. Now why can't that refer to intellectual property in your world?

I think your trouble is with the word "take." If I take something from you, then you no longer have it. Words matter.

Re:theft

[Paradise Pete]

Oh, come off it. You're just using semantics to try to make pirating software sound less wrong than stealing.

It's you, not I, who wishes to pervert the meaning of the word. Precision in language matters.

You know, because stealing sounds really bad, not like some innocent "copyright infringement."

See, there you go. You want it to sound bad, so you borrow the connotation of a different and inapplicable word. You're playing games. Seems to me it's you who should "come off it."

Re:theft

[booch]

Theft means taking something away from someone, so that the rightful owner no longer has posession of it. That doesn't quite apply to Intellectual Property, because the owner still has the original.

Piracy means taking property from others using violent force. This definitely doesn't apply to 99.999% of those who mis-appropriate Intellectual Property.

Re:theft

[LaBone]

How is downloding a game illegaly any different than walking in the store and stealing it. Either way your taking something that isn't yours. If your going to pirate a game you might as well grow a pair and steal it from Fred Meyer yourself instead of hardworking developers.

Re:theft

[Idealius]

..dont' forget the best part: it's taking more and more developers to make a "GOOD" game. More coding, art, sound, CONTENT.. This gradual increase of developers has assuredly thinned out their pay and enforces the prodcut to stay the same. It's amazing they're still basically the same price after all these years, one would expect them to be higher.

Still, bosses starve & slave their developers giving you reasons to hate them. :)

Re:theft

[(54)T-Dub]

You are correct, I don't play MMO's, though I am very tempted to pick up WoW when it comes out. As for horror stories my favorite is the infamous Tribes 2. They had to release a patch before the game was released for the freaking Sierra Updater. What a POS. I knew at that point that I was in for a bummpy ride. 2 years and 3 developers later the game still had QTS bugs (quit to screen). At that point I had to give up on it. I still love the gameplay and design of the user interface, but the rushed implementation makes me sad.

Re:theft

[(54)T-Dub]

I'm talking out of my ass, but I would think that it's the publishers who are fixing prices, not the developers. I have nothing but love for developers. In fact when a buggy game is released pre-maturely I blame the publishers.

Re:theft

[Paradise Pete]

How is downloding a game illegaly any different than walking in the store and stealing it.

When I physically take something from the store, then the store no longer has it. For your comparison to work I'd have to be able to walk into the store and make myself a perfect duplicate of something, then leave the original behind.

Let me ask you a question. Suppose you're sitting in a restaurant and the car of your dreams pulls into the parking lot. I hand you a magic wand and tell you that it can make a car of your own magically appear. Do you use the wand?

If your answer is yes, you're doing the same thing as downloading illegally.

Either way your taking something that isn't yours.

Assuming you mean copy, which is not exactly the same as take, I am not saying that it's ok to infringe on copyrights. I'm not stating a position at all. I am quarreling with the inappropriate use of the word theft. The reason people want to use that word is because it carries such a strong connotation of "wrong."

Re:theft

[LaBone]

OK. Theft may come on a bit strong, but fact is fact. Websters dictionary says that stealing means, amongst other things, "To take without right or permission," or "To move, carry, or place surreptitiously." Downloading games illegaly falls under boyh these qualifications. Piracy however I dont agree with as a discription. Surley there must be a difference between downloading a game and hijacking ships on the open sea.

Re:theft

[Goldberg's Pants]

So glad I decided to not write for them. (Seriously.) I could never associate with a site that posts such drivel.

Downloading software ain't theft. Never has been, never will be. Just like pirating cable isn't theft. Just like downloading music isn't theft.

What amazes me is this says about educating people... Like people are somehow stupid and couldn't possibly realise what they're doing is "wrong" (yeah, wrong, like when a software developer releases a piece of software to utterly fucked out of the box it can format your hard drive... Or a piece of software that is bugged so far as to be unplayable, and that the developer says will never be patched. Or developers who put complete fiction on the system specs and admit to it when you contact them. That, my friends, is obtaining money by deception.)

Anyway, back to the plot. The condescending writer pimps education, like people who download don't think it's wrong... That's the stupidest thing I've ever read in the whole argument.

The argument against Underdogs is crap. If I want to buy a classic album on vinyl, I can trawl stores and find it. If I want Cannon Fodder for the PC (just to pick a random example) I have no means of getting it outside of Abandonware sites. If the software industry provided a means to buy these classic titles, then fair play to that claim (and admittedly, some companies do, and Underdogs links to where you can buy the title rather than a download), but until such time as that's the norm rather than the exception, there is a place for Underdogs. They're not making money off the service, so I see no problem.

In short, the writer of that article is an idiot.

Re:theft

[Paradise Pete]

Websters dictionary says that stealing means, amongst other things, "To take without right or permission," or "To move, carry, or place surreptitiously." Downloading games illegaly falls under boyh these qualifications.

Except you're glossing over the word "take" in that definition. Downloading involves copying, not taking. If I take it from you, you no longer have it.

Re:theft

[stanmann]

The best Abandonware games IMO are the EA stuff, M1Abrams(the original) Centurion, and others. Civilization still holds up, but you can buy it anywhere for 5-10 so not abandonware. I've actually managed to pick up boxed and bound copies of SOME of the EA games I loved, and the gameplay holds up even today, YES, it's blocky, but its not too easy on easy and not too hard on hard. Just like pacman, some games will last forever.

Re:theft

[stanmann]

Other examples include the original gold and silver box AD&D Games, which were re-released On CD. BIG props to that game publisher And you can pick it up on ebay today for cheap.

If it's worth playing

[foidulus]

it's worth supporting. However, if you cannot support it, then should you not be able to play it? I don't think so. To the publisher of an out of print game, it is the same whether I download it or pay an inflated price for it to some dude on ebay.

Re:If it's worth playing

[Anonymous Coward]

But if it's not worth playing is it worth paying? Every game that I have played for more than 4 hours I have paid for. Every single one. I consider warez the "free demo" that game companies refuse to give me until the game has been out six months, or until everyone figures out it sucks, whichever comes last.

Re:If it's worth playing

[mausmalone]

If it's worth playing, it's worth supporting.

Unfortunately, with the relative absence of demos for obscure games, pirating is usually the easiest way to see if it's actually worth playing. Furthermore, it's sometimes (as mentioned in the article) the only way to get a game to play on your system. And, for me, I wanna know if the product I buy will run at all. 85% of the time, the answer is no.

Pirating isn't all evil and theft... a lot of it is test driving. Just not officially sanctioned test driving.

Re:If it's worth playing

[drinkypoo]

Speaking of driving, for some reason the need for speed underground web-enabled (-disabled is more like it) update system failed to update my system. I ended up having to download a "warez" patch in order to patch my legitimate copy of the game which I went down and bought at gamestop. How pathetic.

In any case, I resist the idea of calling it a "test drive" - after all, if you do a test drive without permission, that is stealing, and this is just copyright infringement.

Easy?

[Snowmit]

Games (especially 0-day warez) are only easy to download if you're in the know. You need to know what site to go to, or a friend with an FTP server or you need to have a very reliable USENET hook up or something along those lines. Otherwise, pirating games online is a nightmare minefield of porn pop ups, links to other sites with more porn pop ups, viruses and mislabelled 600 MB downloads.

The 'consumer' does not find this easy or fun. The 'consumer' probably doesn't even know that they could be trying to do this. People who are downloading complete games illegally are fairly sophisticated users. I would guess that they all know full well that they're doing something illegal. I just think that they don't care.

Re:Easy?

[Kuad]

It used to be somewhat more difficult to download things. BitTorrent has sort of killed that, though. All you need to be able to do is point your browser at Suprnova these days.

Re:Easy?

[CowsAnonymous]

Not to meantion there are the friends of the people who don't know where to go that can help them out.

Re:Easy?

[geekboy2k]

A +5 Informative post if I ever saw it! 8*)

Re:Easy?

[Snowmit]

Asking Slashdot users whether or not it's easy to download games is kind of like asking engineers whether or not it's easy to build a bridge. Sure they'll tell you it's easy and they'll even throw in a bunch of lingo to help you understand. Most people still don't know how to build a bridge.

Re:Easy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but most people do know someone knowledgeable enough to hook them up with some warez.

How about offering a game download?

[elrond1999]

What annoys me is that its often easier to get a download a pirated game than buying it in a shop.

Pirate game:
1. Game was released today!
2. Download for an hour
3. Play :)

Instant gratification.

Legit game:
1. Find online shop with game.
2. Wait for shop to have it in stock.
3. Agonize that other people are playing this cool game while ytou wait.
4. Wait for the package
5. Open package, rip CD, toss rest of crappy cardboard away.
6. Play!

Now what if the developer had a Steam like download avaliable? Preferably before the game was in the store? Then it would be as easyer to download a legit game than downloading a pirate game...

Re:How about offering a game download?

[doctormetal]

What annoys me is that its often easier to get a download a pirated game than buying it in a shop.

And what about easier to get it running? Crappy cd 'protection' like securom and starforce annoys a lot of user: they buy a game in the shop, but the copy protection doesn't function properly on their hardware. You buy a game and have to find a crack to get it to work.

Re:How about offering a game download?

[88NoSoup4U88]

I dont think there is anything wrong when you download a game when you got it pre-ordered somewhere. Do you ?

As you mentioned, Steam is quite a nice improvement on that, and the pre-loading of games (if you're about to buy it) is quite a cool thing, imo.
Then again, I will buy my copy of HL2 in a store , as i rather have something i can touch when i buy it (same goes for me buying CD's instead of using Itunes).

Re:How about offering a game download?

[Boronx]

An RTS came out came out a few years ago, it was a Star Craft ripoff, but it had multiple maps connected by warp points and you had to keep you units supplied.

I downloaded a bootleg and loved it. After a few days I decided to throw some cash their way, so I bought a CD. Never could get the legit copy to run.

Re:How about offering a game download?

[Oddly_Drac]

" What annoys me is that its often easier to get a download a pirated game than buying it in a shop."

I contacted Cenaga about having a dodgy CD2 for UFO:Enemy Unknown. They concluded that my CDROM drive was at fault, to which I asked the question, 'both of them and my DVD rom drive?'.

At that point the conversation stopped and I was never offered the chance to return the media, even after saying that I'd be happy to pay a small charge for new media. Bear in mind that I'd already bought it, it's just that I got consistent CRC errors.

So I made my own CD 2.

No real moral to the story, other than it's a damn sight easier to act illegally, even given the penalties, than go through the correct channels, especially for replacing damaged or otherwise unusable media. It wasn't even worth the hassle of trying to get replacement under warranty (which would have involved at least four legal entities and more trouble than 2 days downloading and $0.50 CD blank.)

Re:How about offering a game download?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since setting up such a system (which doesn't break on being fetured at slashdot) does cost much more than actually shipping it. The Steam system gives further evidence that such a service is more than unreliable and costy.

Re:How about offering a game download?

[microTodd]

Is what you did illegal? If you own the game, is it illegal to obtain the media that way?

Re:How about offering a game download?

[Fiz Ocelot]

What amazes me is that publishers don't have more games available for purchase & download online. They could price it lower, and since they cut out the retail stores and package they'd make the same amount. They could even provide a connection faster than most P2P networks.

Re:How about offering a game download?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is what you did illegal? If you own the game, is it illegal to obtain the media that way?

Yep. You're making another copy of the game, and only the publishers have the right to do that.

Admittedly, on the scale of crimes, it comes somewhere around the level of doing 71 in a 70 limit when rushing your pregnant wife to hospital (i.e. you'd be hard pressed to find a prosecutor, let alone a hostile jury), but it's still illegal.

Re:How about offering a game download?

[nine-times]

No real moral to the story, other than it's a damn sight easier to act illegally, even given the penalties, than go through the correct channels, especially for replacing damaged or otherwise unusable media. It wasn't even worth the hassle of trying to get replacement under warranty (which would have involved at least four legal entities and more trouble than 2 days downloading and $0.50 CD blank.)

Now, this is what annoys me about the whole idea of IP these days. It used to be that when you bought a book, lets say, it made sense what you were buying. The book. You could highlight it, tear out pages, pin the pages to your wall, lend it to others, or even leave it out in a public area for people to read. Whether this was technically correct, effectively, in most peoples minds, they were buying the book.

But now a days, I have no idea what I'm buying. Now I can download books, music, and software, with no media, so what am I buying? The answer I'm given is that I'm "buying a license," and by "license" they mean that I have bought the rights to use the IP in very limited ways. And software companies stick with that answer all the way up to the point when you break your CD. Then, somehow, what you bought was the CD. You broke your CD and you want what was on it? Buy a new one. But, oh, wait, we don't have that product anymore, so you're SOL.

It seems to me that, if what you've purchased is a license, then the producers of that product should be legally responsible for ensuring that you can continue to use that product for the life of that license. If the license never expires, well, then, they should need to have some level of support forever.

I don't necessarily mean 'support' as in "bug fixes" for software, but if a developer makes a product that requires "activation", and the license is perpetual, than the developer should be legally responsible to maintain an activation server FOREVER. If the media breaks...ever, the should send you a new one.

I don't even think it's beyond all reason to ask that the product be made continually available even as technology changes. If I've paid for a music tape, and what I bought was a license to the music, not that tape medium, then why shouldn't I be allowed to download the music from the internet, free of charge. In fact, I would say it should be the record company's legal responsibility to take reasonable steps to ensure it is available to me, so maybe they should put it on the internet themselves.

And if that's true, then perhaps even software developers should have some responsibility to ensure that their software can run on current systems. I have a license for Duke Nukem 3D somewhere, but I have no machine that can run it. I know expecting software companies to continually port their entire library could put undue burden on them, but it's IP holders who are choosing to claim that they're "licensing" the IP instead of "selling it".

Sound rediculous? Well, think about it this way: if I buy a car and it breaks down, that's on my shoulders to deal with. But if car companies said, "well, when you buy a car, you're buying the right to have a car from us," and then it breaks down- well, I no longer have a working car from them.

It isn't so clear to me then that they wouldn't be responsible for providing me a new car. Or, if they sold me a car that got 15 miles per gallon, knowing that, in two months, a law was going into effect that would require cars to get at least 20 miles per gallon, it's not clear to me, again, that they would have no responsibility to upgrade the car at their own cost.

Maybe there should just be a restriction that, if the IP holders are unwilling to provide media any longer to legal license holders, then they automatically lose the IP to public domain? If they won't port software to support new systems, they should be forced to open-source it?

So, I guess what I'm saying is, I'm not sure these are the right rules, but it seems to me that the courts should clear up

-1 Troll

[Dr. GeneMachine]

Out of print used to mean something was rare and worth something. In the digital media world it apparently now means 'Ok to steal.

There should be a way to mark a whole article "-1 Troll"...

Re:-1 Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't say "Troll" so much as "Wow, totally misguided". No offense to the article poster of course, but... geez, get a grip man!

Re:-1 Troll

[Scrameustache]

Out of print used to mean something was rare and worth something. In the digital media world it apparently now means 'Ok to steal.

Or in other words:
"Oh no, poor us! We can no longer artificially inflate our products value by purposefully underproducing it! Woe is our industry!"

So not just troll, but overrated too!

Invalid comparrison.

[Domini]

Those "out of print" games are not supposed to dwindle away into obscurity and only be owned by those elise few who had the money to buy them at the time.

This is copyright protection, after the authors don't exist anymore (companies died) the copyright is not protecting anyone anymore... kinda like artists' right to make money on their creations?

Perhaps read something Orson Scott Card wrote on this subject once and you would change your mind.

A collector will still strive to own the game... but I'm more interested in the art of it, than in it's physical manifestation.

I'm still interested in buying it if I can... but not on e-bay or in a way that will not benifit the original authors.

The author is just plain silly... :P

Then again... this is from someone who has 3 legal copies of NWN and Quake 3....
-grin-

Re:Invalid comparrison.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've once liked much 'Ticonderoga' - a spinoff of Harpoon. Unluckily I had no money them, and now the game looks unobtainable. I am not looking for the game itself, but for the soundtrack that was included on CD which was awesome...

Re:Invalid comparrison.

[Domini]

Orson Scott Card article.

Re:Invalid comparrison.

[Domini]

Same goes for me... I bought my Quake 1 years ago... and my home got broken in to and plundered by some local criminals. I can get the game freely, no problem, but I want the NIN soundrack that was on the original CD! Thus the pirate scene preserved this treasure... after all... it is covered by fair use, no? But now I'm a victim twice...

-smile-

Re:Invalid comparrison.

[Prior Restraint]

This is copyright protection, after the authors don't exist anymore (companies died) the copyright is not protecting anyone anymore...

Do keep in mind, though, that when a company goes under, it may auction off its assets to cover debts, including copyrights.

Re:Invalid comparrison.

[vjmurphy]

"Perhaps read something Orson Scott Card wrote on this subject once and you would change your mind."

You mean he wrote something that doesn't have "Ender" in the title? Surely you jest.

Re:Invalid comparrison.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the Tales of Alvin Maker.

Re:Invalid comparrison.

[theNeophile]

On that note, refrain from reading any other non-fiction from him, if you want to hold on to any respect for the man. He has some hateful anti-homosexual views. It's a good example of how religion can short-circuit an otherwise intelligent persons thought process.

Re:Invalid comparrison.

[Domini]

Yup, I agree with you there.

Apart from this one article about copyrights, his other view I have a real problem with. I just thought I could invoke the 'Orson Scott' card one last time... ;)

Not in a useful format

[loadquo]

I would love to buy second hand arcade machines, old consoles and old games, however I don't have much space and they would just clutter up my house and make moving a pain. Now if publishers allowed me to download the games for cheap and only have them taking up space in my hard drive, I would seriously consider it.

Re:Not in a useful format

[Anonymous Coward]

If it would only be that... try to find Madou Monogatari or any of the less well known games anywhere.

Shipping games with stuff in the box

[dave-tx]

The coolest thing about Infocom games (other than the games themselves, which were not only fun but taught me how to type) was the trinkets that they shipped with.

Anyone remember the "evidence" that came with Deadline, including two "pills" that were actually Smarties candy (yeah, I ate 'em)? Maps, booklets, and other details like that really helped set the stage for those text adventures.

I personally won't download games from "warez" sites, but I'd bet that if more care went in to the final product, people might value them more.

Re:Shipping games with stuff in the box

[88NoSoup4U88]

I agree with this : Most of the times, as soon as the game is going gold, they seem to be rushing manuals/boxarts etc : instead of focusing on those allready a long time before.

Re:Shipping games with stuff in the box

[Oddly_Drac]

"I personally won't download games from "warez" sites, but I'd bet that if more care went in to the final product, people might value them more."

The rot goes a bit further and was thrown into sharp relief by the recent 'Driv3r' astro-turfing debacle...there used to be a day when you could by a gaming magazine (Remember Zzap!64?) and get a fairly honest review by someone who had a slight shred of integrity. Now you get six months hype, a bit of viral marketing and review that frequently and suspiciously appears to promote the hell out of a game that on later inspection appears to be absolute sh*t. Yes, C&C Generals, I am looking at you.

On the flipside, you occasionally get blindsided by releases like 'Mashed' that aren't getting the promotion they deserve in the press because they lack the ability to command the magazines.

In other words, we're looking at the thin end of the wedge of marketing that tends to stipulate that enough positive press can shift units rather than the product actually being good.

Re:Shipping games with stuff in the box

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen to that! Nothing is worse than paying $69.00 (CAD) for a game to open it and fine one lousy CD and an ad for some crappy product made by the same company.

In addition to Infocom games, Origin was also fantastic with adding in extra's that if you didn't pay for the game you just didn't get, which sucked (IMHO). Mind you this is only going to attact ~1/2 of the gamers, the others generally don't give a rat's ass for the extra stuff, the box and what not. They want the game chop-chop. Offer a downloadable version ala product like steam, and sell it for a resonable price (no taking $10.00 off is not reasonable) and I bet you'll find alot less piracy. It won't be completely gone mind you, as the remaining people out there just don't want to pay for software in general (screw them).

Re:Shipping games with stuff in the box

[booch]

Don't forget the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (also by Infocom). It came with a "Don't Panic!" button, some pocket fluff, Peril-sensitive glasses (solid black cardboard glasses), and a "microscopic space fleet" (empty plastic bag).

Re:Shipping games with stuff in the box

[dave-tx]

I had forgotten about Infocom's HHGttG... Classic! They should have included no tea.

I also liked the Suspended package, which came with a nice map and tokens that you could use to keep track of your 5 or 6 robots. I miss Poet.

Re:Shipping games with stuff in the box

[nine-times]

I had forgotten about Infocom's HHGttG... Classic! They should have included no tea.

erm... it did include no tea. Now, if it had included tea and no tea, that would have been impressive.

Re:Shipping games with stuff in the box

[booch]

No tea! ;)

I don't know if it was included in the list of contents, but I'm pretty sure that they did in fact include no tea in the box.

New Ideas, Same old problem.

[NashCarey]

This is a problem that has been and always will be. I remember being thirteen and playing Leisure Suit Larry. Did my parents but it for me? No. I had it copied from a friends computer. At the time the game came on 2 3.5 floppys.
Here is the problem, it is the way the games and programs are marketed for the most part. Who do most of the games market to in the PC world? Males age 14-28. This group is heavily marketed since they are about to turn the corner to being males 29-36 and are known as the most economically secure in America.
Meaning, we need a way to just make games cheaper or free and put more marketing in them to lead the soon to be older audience. You can't stop them, so market them.
I know what the thought to that is... Then game quality sucks. Or ends up looking like a NasCar add.
Whole movie production have been paid for with product placements. We even got to see Hallie Berry's chacha's for seeing a product for 25 seconds in movie.
Now I wouldn't product place to sell the product to the people playing the game today, but product place for the people who will be stronger consumers tomorrow.
Mc Donalds did this in the early years and still does it today. They lose money on the playground, happy meals, and birthday parties, but make customers for life.
For these reasons we need to see a paradigm shift and let the entertainment be free, and the quality can be the same.

Re:New Ideas, Same old problem.

[be951]

3.5" floppys? In my day we had nothin' but 5.25" and no hard disk!

Okay, enough of that I guess. The difference today is the number of dollars at stake and the scale of the illegal market.

Making games cheaper may help to an extent, but there is an element that will never pay for games. Product placement might be a good way to offset some development costs, but it could backfire if it hurts the enjoyability of the game (e.g. some games overdo cutscenes already, so adding more for product placement could unreasonably degrade the gaming experience).

Re:New Ideas, Same old problem.

[ripsnorta]

3.5" floppys? In my day we had nothin' but 5.25" and no hard disk!

Hah! That's nuthin'! When I was a lad just starting out in the computer game... we had eight inche floppies. We'd have to get up in the mornin' walk 800 miles to work in a blizzard and carry these monsters another 200 miles to the backup centre.

5.25"... 3.5"... The computer industry needs a good does of Viagra!!!

Out of Print Games

[fuzzybunny]

Fine and good, but I wouldn't make such a black & white blanket statement regarding "out of print" games. There are games around which will be covered by copyright until hell freezes over, but which are not for sale, no longer available in arcades, which have no support or patches, and which make the owning company no money at all.

I know that the real answer here is to convince the copyright holders to release their old games into the public domain--it's good for the gamers, and good PR for the producer, or at least to address the underlying legal structure (release things into the public domain on which maintenance/profit have lapsed, or some similar solution.) But until that occurs, I don't mind downloading, say, a MAME ROM for such a game.

The other aspect which makes, say, games a bit unique is that of "what if it sucks"? I don't really feel the need to justify my behavior here, but I like grabbing a game and trying it out a bit before I buy. A lot of good games do decent CD key checking online, so you almost have to go out and buy it--plus, if I really like it, I want the booklet, the case, whatnot.
I really do not have an issue with downloading a cracked version and giving it a spin before buying, whether there is a demo version available or not.

For me, this goes in the same direction as being able to get your money back in a lot of movie theaters (at least in the US) if a film is so crappy that you have to walk out of it. I recently downloaded Ubi Soft's IL-2, Call of Duty, and Vietcong; I love CoD, and am going to buy a copy. Jury's still out on the other two.

The argument's been made for people like me that if I don't buy a game, the creators will go out of business. Fine. I don't pay for games that suck; it's called "survival of the fittest". I realize that not everyone can be relied on to adhere to this sort of principle, and that if stricter copy protection becomes standard, we'll have no choice but to buy a game before playing it. But when that occurs, I'll probably go back to Angband or having a life.

Re:Out of Print Games

[Reapy]

Games are expensive. I pay for a review site (gamespot) to help me weed out what games are going to suck. Usually i read the reviews with a grain of salt, then look at the movies and screenshots to get the final verdict. I've played enough games that reading the features and watching a video of it in action will tell me if I want to play the game or not.

That said, I can't afford to play everything that I want. I have to pick and choose which games I want to buy. This means waiting for the best of the best, or a genera that I have a particular liking too. I would in on way buy all those "decent, but nothing special", games. Never, not even when they have been out for 2 years. These are the games I'll download. If for some, very, very, very strange reason I truely enjoy the game after downloading it, I'll buy it. But this has yet to happen.

So I buy the good stuff, and if I can't afford all the good stuff, I wait until the price drops. For all the average stuff, I download it and play it, but otherwise I could be perfectly happy never having spent 50 dollars to spend one night playing them.

Re:Out of Print Games

[Ahnteis]

Recently, I've noticed several publishers doing just that. I don't remember all the games I've noted, but at least Tribes, and System Shock were among the well-known games release as free downloads.

Fact is

[fozzmeister]

Most games are utter crap. I'll buy Doom3, I've bought all id's games. I bought Rainbow Six and I would have bought Riddick for the XBox if I didn't complete it so quick and it had replay value. Oh and Yes I am a dirty immoral pirate, because most of the time you can't judge a game in less than 3-5 hours of play.

If I had bought Driv3r i would be seriously pissed off, and I probably would have too because for the first 2 hours it seems like it will be a really amazing game, but to be honest, It's not even worth the space on my hard disk.

Re:Fact is

[Anonymous Coward]

"Oh and Yes I am a dirty immoral pirate, because most of the time you can't judge a game in less than 3-5 hours of play."

And most of the time you can't judge a movie in less than 30-60 minutes of viewing. But theaters aren't about to let anyone have a "test drive" of a movie, then pay if they like it. That's just the way things work. Tough titties if you don't like it.

Re:Fact is

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, maybe someone could get into the business of allowing people to barrow console games so that they can spend a day or more to evaluate the games. Heck, people could even finish the games if they wanted.

This amazing rental pace could also offer movie DVDs, and charge you for less then the cost of going to a movie!

Wait, I just thought something else up. Once could also set up a magazine or site with an area where someone who had played the game can tell you how good or bad the game is. You could also find lots of them online and in various sources to get a feel of who is telling the truth and if you will like the game.

Naaaa, what was I thinking, those ideas wouldn't work at all!

If I had bought Driv3r i would be seriously pissed off, and I probably would have too because for the first 2 hours it seems like it will be a really amazing game, but to be honest, It's not even worth the space on my hard disk.

I always find this funny, pirates keep complaining about not having enough time to evaluate the game. It seems to be that the pirate standard of an acceptable time and conditions is being able to have the full game and being able to finish the game. Besides, just like the other pirates play all the way through said game, claimed it sucked or it isn't worth the money, and then never buy it. Or claim that one day you will buy it, and never do so.

Did you really needed to download and play Driver 3 for 2 hours to come to the conclusion that it was crap? Biased fanboys and bribes aside, like listed examples above you could have gotten independent un-bribed reviews online, and/or rented the console version to evaluate it. Usually if the console version is crap, so is the PC version.

Re:Fact is

[fozzmeister]

Yes I did actually, some reviews says its excellent, some say poor, and it does play superb for a while, but its all the same, and the bugs are terrible. imagine a Word Processor you highlight text press underline and it crashes or italics all the text on the page, if you hadn't tried that you may say it was a superb word processor, but after that you'd have to re-consider.

Driv3r was like this, I was liking it, until i got to a point were i was in a bar, had to shoot person behind the bar, im 2 feet away, plain view but can't shoot him, sure im firing off loads of round but bullets cannot pass over the bar! if i go round the bar i can, its just absolutely unbelievable, there are other parts like this too, its absolutely totally destroyed the game. And to do this you need to have played it for a reasonable amount of time.

Re:Fact is

[fozzmeister]

Actually I've bought about 30 DVD's and maybe 40 PC/Console games, I don't see why i should feel guilty. Despite the common myth Piracy per-se does not hurt games developers / movie studios, its lost sales that do. If i had not been "Try b4 I Buy" I would probably have bought maybe 50% poor games and 25% poor films and honestly If I had done that I don't think I would have bought so many.

Piracy Is Here To Stay

[blueZhift]

Sadly, piracy is here to stay. When people want something, little issues like morals have a way of going away. So any smart business in such an environment has to factor this into the cost of things and how they do business. This I think in one reason that new CDs in Japan can cost $30 or $40 USD. But at the same time, they seem to be taking the added value approach with boxed limited editions, videos, and other extras included (plus some not too difficult to defeat copy protection). So at least you get more for the money and the publishers can stay in business. I hate paying that much for CDs or DVDs, but since I prefer to have a mostly legit collection, I try to get the extras at least.

That said, I think in the long run we'll see piracy leveraged as a marketing tool more than anything else. Yeah, efforts will be made to fight it and it will never be legal or recommended. But locking up or suing people left and right (like RIAA) isn't going to work. So if the ocean is full of sharks, you gotta learn to swim really fast!

Re:Piracy Is Here To Stay

[slumpy]

New cds don't cost that much in japan.

Online Gaming

[BigNumber]

With the shift towards online gaming, this becomes less and less of an issue. With registration servers checking up on each person playing the game, using a downloaded game with a fake serial becomes more difficult. With the popularity of MMORPGs, the entire gaming model might change. We may see games that are free to download but pay-to-play.

No matter what, game companies are going to have to come to the realization that people will always pirate games, copy protection doesn't work, and pissing off the customers with poorly devised protection schemes only loses them customers.

Re:Online Gaming

[blacklily8]

I think you're exactly right about the online games. In the future, smart companies will likely release the game for free (downloadable or AOL CD in a tin giveaway style), then just charge people monthly access fees. It ends up working like inkjet printer or razor companies (cheap printer/razor, jack you on the ink carts/blades). You know, I checked out a PBS special from the library the other day and noticed a big fat FBI warning (copy this DVD and you will be executed by a firing squad). I may be thicker than a whale omelette, but isn't PBS stuff paid for by the public anyway??

Re:Online Gaming

[88NoSoup4U88]

" With the shift towards online gaming, this becomes less and less of an issue."

Yet I have seen a new development in this stage going : UT2k4 that has cracked exe's, so they can play on servers with those same patches applied.

When more games will be going towards online only, or focused on online play : The more of these patches, besides cd-cracks, are going to be created.

Simple steps to reducing piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

In my opinion, there's no great secret or mystery to reducing piracy. Rather, it could be achieved quite simply through a few steps (and no, these don't include "make games cheaper").

1) Get rid of region encoding. This also applies, to an even greater extent, to DVDs. Restricting products to certain markets alienates customers who can't buy them and encourages a "if they don't want to sell it to me, just take it" mentality. I'm not sympathetic to piracy in the slightest, but if there was perhaps one argument which would convince me to soften my attitude towards it, it would be this one.

2) If your game is online, use CD-keys. They work. Seriously. Admittedly, this doesn't help much with offline games.

3) Get rid of this cheapo DVD-style packaging for games. In the old days, when you bought a game, you'd usually get a hefty and well-produced manual, which would frequently do a lot more than just tell you how to navigate the menus and play the game. Anybody remember the manuals that came with Lucasarts classics like Their Finest Hour and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe?

Re:Simple steps to reducing piracy

[BTWR]

I'm no tree-hugging hippie, but I have to admit that those big boxes were a huge waste. When CDs first came out, they came in jewel cases these huge boxes about 2.5x the size of a cd. What did you do with the box? It was useless. You threw it out.

Same with PC games. They came in these huge boxes that usually had 4 discs (or 1 floppy), a manual and that's it. If you shook a box, you could hear all the empty space inside. Did we need that? No. I applaud the shift to the smaller boxes. Those can easily fit a double-cd/dvd case and a paperback-novella sized manual (which most players admittedly, "proudly," don't look at).

Re:Simple steps to reducing piracy

[Allison Geode]

dvd style cases for pc games? i only have three of those (both max payne games and the dvd edition of unreal tournament 2k4) and frankly, i think its a LOT more classy than a game coming in a cardboard box and paper disc envelopes that i seem to end up with so often these days. now THAT just screams shoddy.. and the dvd cases even give a spot to keep the manual! thats another advantage consoles have in this current generation: smaller storage for the games, and less crap to keep track of.
as for "hefty manuals," have you played ANY games in the last 10 years at all? games are getting simpler, or more self-explanatory. in the DOS days, yeah, you'd need a big manual just to get the game running (and know what keys did what) but games these days have tutorials that walk you through how to play, and customizable controls, so you won't need a huge book to know what the 'h' key does: you can bind that function to any other button you feel like!

Re:Simple steps to reducing piracy

[KDR_11k]

As proven by things like the Settlers 3 debacle: Games don't get less complex or more self explainatory, manuals just get reduced. Settlers 3 had a little note included that read "The manual is on the CD". SpellForce didn't have complete instructions, either (many functions were only listed in the hotkey reference but nowhere in the rest of the manual). Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head, I'm sure there are lots of other games doing this.

my thoughts

[Datasage]

This is a complex issue thats not going to change over night.

I go to lan parties and find that most of the people there expect games to be pirated. Sure some people buy a legit copy, but its ussualy one person, and by the end of the party everyone has a copy. Most games come from downloaded cd images.

As far as im concerned, CD protection means nothing, All types of protection can be cracked in some way or another, its just a matter of time. But would removing copy protection spur more people to purchase the game? Nope. The issue is more complex than that.

I think most people would be willing to purchase a game for the right price. $50 for a game you might only end up play for just a few hours is ALOT. It better be a damn good few hours. Saddly most games can only offer a mediocre few hours.

I would be willing to purchase much more games myslef if the publishers stop taking me as stupid. I would love to be purchase and download games. But not for the same price as a retail box, Im not stupid, its alot cheaper for a publisher to distribute a download version. Why dont they pass on some of the savings. Instead of expecting us to pay the full price. Stuff like Condition Zero can be purchased via steam for $40, but you can probably find it in the bargin bin or for less than $20.

There will still be some people who will absolutly refuse to pay for any game, but still be wanting to play them. Those people should burn in hell.

Re:my thoughts

[88NoSoup4U88]

"Why dont they pass on some of the savings. Instead of expecting us to pay the full price. Stuff like Condition Zero can be purchased via steam for $40, but you can probably find it in the bargin bin or for less than $20."

[sarcastic comment about marketing ploy of VALVe]
but.. but... If you buy CS:CZ , you can play the beta of CS:Source!
[/sarcastic comment about marketing ploy of VALVe]

Re:my thoughts

[nukem1999]

I think most people would be willing to purchase a game for the right price. $50 for a game you might only end up play for just a few hours is ALOT. It better be a damn good few hours. Saddly most games can only offer a mediocre few hours.
In the same price vein, I'm not going to be buying Doom 3 any time soon. I pre-ordered UT2k4 that came with a collector's edition tin with a special features DVD and a Logitech headset/microphone for $40. This game has, what, 7 multiplayer modes out of the box? I couldn't even begin to count how many hours I've spent online playing it. Id wants me to spend $55 for an almost purely single player experience (and any single player experience is guaranteed to be limited). "But I want co-op, id!" "Well, I'm sure the mod community will help you out in a couple of months." I have a strong suspicion that the actual single-player content of Doom 3 will be equally dissapointing, but they can get away with it by riding the name and the pretty screenshots.

Re:my thoughts

[Reapy]

Seriously. When you have a lan party with 7 people, that's 7x50 dollars it will cost you to play together. I don't understand why they don't make spawn installs like warcraft 2 had. This way, everyone can play at a lan party without much hastle. Most consol games allow 4 people to play at the same time with only one game, why is it pc games only allow one player?

Abandonware -- Sell it or Lose It Copyright

[Jepler]

I honestly don't know exactly how it would work, but I believe that all or nearly all copyrighted material (books, music, software) should be "sell it or lose it": if the copyright owner doesn't care to sell copies of it, for instance because it is not deemed profitable, the copyright lapses.

Clearly, if it's not worth selling, the copyright holder doesn't lose much if the copyright lapses early, 5Nth anniversary precious metal editions notwithstanding. Of course, companies who are in the business of selling the same pile of tripe every few years with a different name would suffer. (Quicken 2005? No thanks, I like Quicken 2000 just fine and don't want to learn anything new. What, you mean I can't buy Quicken 2000? I think some music labels and book publishers would find themselves in the same bind)

This belief is what makes me feel not at all bad when downloading abandonware games to play on my Commodore 64 emulator, for instance.

Failing "Sell It or Lose It Copyright", I'd love to see a non-profit corporation in the business of buying the copyright to abandoned software, particularly games, and releasing it to the public domain. In my mind this would involve finding out what copyrighted items people were most interested in, reaching a deal with the owner, and then raising the money online. I have no idea whether it would work, but I'd love to see it tried. I'd put up a few bucks to see EA's 8-bit software collection enter the public domain, and surely a lot of geeks would do the same. Would it add up to the piles of cash Electronic Arts would demand? Well, I don't know.

Re:Abandonware -- Sell it or Lose It Copyright

[Dave2 Wickham]

I see one major flaw with your "sell it or lose it" plan: that would end up putting a lot of Free software which isn't commercially exploited into the public domain, removing the need to agree to a distribution licence agreement (whether it's the GPL, BSD, or whatever licence). Perhaps a "use it or lose it" method would work better.

"Out of print used to mean something was..."

[Laxitive]

With video games, "out of print" doesn't mean the game data is rare and valuable. It means just what it says. "Out of print".

Umm, article poster needs a clue. He sounds like quite the conscientious idiot to me.

Original game "paraphanelia" for out of print would be quite valuable yes. Even if there are newer versions of the game out. An unopened retail box of an original "tetris" for the NES would, I'm guessing, be worth a lot to some people.

The game DATA is not that valuable. It's a string of bits. Anyone can make perfect infinite duplicates of it. That tends to decrease the "rareness" aspect of it.

Look, original article poster guy, good for you that you don't download games. I don't download games either - for another reason entirely - I tend not to play them. And your suggestions for what game publishers can do are nice.

But your apparent doe-eyed naivety about copyright infringement, and the attitude... makes me wonder.

-Laxitive

He brings no solutions there.

[88NoSoup4U88]

The last years we only seen a decline in good box-art/manuals.

With most fps's they don't even bother anymore to print a manual ; yet, with those printing costs gone, i don't see a lower price for me as consumer.

"One great way to do that is including good stuff in the box. Give me a color manual or include a poster. Maybe a CD with all the music from the game? How about liner notes with each game describing some part of development?""

Seriously, they throw the game on the Net within 15 minutes of release (ifnot -before- release) ; but they would not be able to include the music part you get as an 'extra' ?

As a buyer of games myself, i -do- appreciate getting Behind the scene footage on my gamedisc, and all the extras he's talking about : I don't think it's the way to pull over the people currently downloading games : hell, they don't even mind to play Rips of games, so do you guys seriously think that they would be bothered by missing some 'music cd' included with the game ?

Re:He brings no solutions there.

[Anonymous Coward]

"With most fps's they don't even bother anymore to print a manual ; yet, with those printing costs gone, i don't see a lower price for me as consumer."

That's because the price to make the actual *game* has gone up steadily. 10 years ago it was considered exhorbitant when Wing Commander 4 cost $12 million dollars to make. But that figure isn't exactly uncommon for most AAA titles these days. And the prices have stayed virtually the same. Hell, I regularly paid $60-70 for top-notch titles in the early 90s (Strike Commander, The 7th Guest, etc.), and due to inflation that was closer to $80-90 in today's dollars.

Re:He brings no solutions there.

[88NoSoup4U88]

All of our prizes have gone up since they introduced the Euro here.
While you first payed around 80/90 guilders for a game, nowadays those games cost about 50 euros, the equivalent of 110 guilders ; Quite a rise :(

Yes, it's easy.

[Echo5ive]

Direct Connect is incredibly large here in Sweden. People don't bother with Kazaa; it's all about DC here.

All you need to do is download DC++ or oDC, update the hublist (takes all of one click), find some hub and start downloading. It takes all of 20-30 minutes to grab a 700MB game.

Re:Yes, it's easy.

[Old Uncle Bill]

It takes all of 20-30 minutes to grab a 700MB game. Yeah, maybe for you Swedes with your fat net connections, but for most of us poor bastards in the states it takes over an hour ;) That being said, DC++ rocks...

Re:Yes, it's easy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wow yes 0.0005% of the population of the western world have access to games in 20-30 minutes. Who the fuck gives a shit.

Balooney

[Sklivvz]

When will people start thinking before they write?
Some food for thought:
- Downloading a cracked copy of a game is not theft. It's not even copyright violation in itself (you may own a legit copy and be needing a backup).
- I believe I have the right to evaluate a game for a few hours before I buy it. If I like it and I'm going to use it, I'll buy it (as I have always done). If I don't, then I'll delete it (or keep a copy if someone wants to try it). I do not buy games without trying them first, and by trying it's only the full version, not the crap demos you are offered legit. You may disagree, but I think I have every right to buy a game knowing that there will be no "surprises".
- It's the number of people actually playing that makes or breaks a game, not how many copies you sell initally. For example Microsoft initially used this tactic to get Windows on 95% of the home computers (friend to friend copy is the cheapest form of distribution).

Just my 0.02EUR

Re:Balooney

[Anonymous Coward]

You may believe you have the right to evaluate a game before you buy it, but unless the game is marketed as shareware or a free demo, you are not legally entitled to an evaluation prior to your purchase. If you are really so concerned about the quality of a game, why not take the time to read some reviews and consumer reports?

Occasionally, supermarkets provide free food samples to their customers, in hopes of encouraging them to purchase those products. However, they have no obligation to let you try before you buy. Next time you visit your local grocery store, why don't you try opening products off the shelf and tasting them in the aisle. Then you will experience the law first-hand when the police escort you out of the building in handcuffs.

Re:Balooney

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you're donating Euros I'm not sure if this is the case for you as well, but in the US you do NOT, most emphatically do NOT have the right to download something off the internet as a "backup". You are allowed to create a backup from your copy of the material. If you have a copy that you do not have the rights to the original for, you're infringing.

You may believe you have that right, but you don't. Well, you do, but not by downloading it. Finding someone who can legally allow you to play or loan you the disc, sure, but not download, as you're creating an unlicensed copy.

You may think that piracy helps, but that's not your decision. It is the exclusive right of the copyright holder to make that decision.
Or would you not mind if I painted your car green because it's a better colour?

Re:Balooney

[Sklivvz]

You may believe you have the right to evaluate a game before you buy it, but unless the game is marketed as shareware or a free demo, you are not legally entitled to an evaluation prior to your purchase. If you are really so concerned about the quality of a game, why not take the time to read some reviews and consumer reports?

I never said I was legally entitled to do so, I just said I think I have the right (as in "morally") to do so. I used to read reviews before I buy, but, as everyone knows, they are very unreliable. Furthermore, think about this: if a game reviewer needs a full copy to evaluate the game, then I need it too.

Occasionally, supermarkets provide free food samples to their customers, in hopes of encouraging them to purchase those products. However, they have no obligation to let you try before you buy. Next time you visit your local grocery store, why don't you try opening products off the shelf and tasting them in the aisle. Then you will experience the law first-hand when the police escort you out of the building in handcuffs.

This is a false analogy. First of all, if I get a copy of a game to try it, I do not damage the product. If I taste a grocery product, I spoil it and therefore I have to buy it (unless it's rotten or something). Secondly, if half the products of a grocery store where adulterated or bad (like in the case of videogames) it would be the shop owners that would be taken away in handcuffs! :-) Thirdly, I think the police has better things to do than escorting people out of supermarkets because they opened a product, at least here in the EU!
A better analogy would be buying a car: would you buy a car that you cannot test drive? Would you buy a car that you can test drive only without using gears, lights, optionals, etc?

Re:Balooney

[Sklivvz]

Since you're donating Euros I'm not sure if this is the case for you as well, but in the US you do NOT, most emphatically do NOT have the right to download something off the internet as a "backup". You are allowed to create a backup from your copy of the material. If you have a copy that you do not have the rights to the original for, you're infringing.

When I buy a game I buy both the physical medium and the right to play it. It doesn't say anywhere that I can play only by using a particular copy of the CD or another. Think about it, what could a judge say? That you have to buy two copies before you can play only one? Once you paid for the license to use a particular software, there is little that can done: you have already paid for the copyright. Forcing you to pay twice is just plain unfair. Furthermore (this is in Italy), you have the right to modify (crack) the program (or mod the playstation) if this is needed to make your backup copies functional.

You may believe you have that right, but you don't. Well, you do, but not by downloading it. Finding someone who can legally allow you to play or loan you the disc, sure, but not download, as you're creating an unlicensed copy.

I have the moral right, but not the legal right. This is clear. But laws are made by people and can be wrong, can't they? If I choose to break an unfair law, which I have no means to change, I believe I am in the right. See Gandhi for example.

You may think that piracy helps, but that's not your decision. It is the exclusive right of the copyright holder to make that decision.

What have pirates got to do with copyright? I do not know what you mean by "piracy" - do you mean copyright infringment or selling of fake copies? Is there money involved or not? This is a big difference. P2p is just a cheap way of distributing data, not an easy way to make dirty money... ;-P
Of course it's the copyright holder decision, but I just said that spreading the copies helps real sales a lot. This is a fact and it does not depend on what the copyright holder wants.

Or would you not mind if I painted your car green because it's a better colour?

I would be very pissed off, but I would not sue you for copyright violation! Lol, you would have to pay for the damage, not the copyright!

Boxes

[Scorchio]

I'm not so sure when it comes to the packaging.

Large boxes are good when they're used properly. I remember games like the old infocom adventures and others that used to stuff their boxes with all kinds of booklets, help sheets, maps, posters, cards - things that would actually add to the game, not just fill space, and would encourage you to buy the game. Trouble is, many publishers just ended up in a race to see who had the biggest box, and therefore the biggest presence on the store shelf, even though the huge box may only contain a single CD jewel case. Games in small boxes got lost amongst them.

I, for one, was glad when they settled on the DVD style case, because at least I could get a dozen games on my shelf and still have room for something else. I do miss all the additional box contents, but seeing as very few publishers were going to that extent anymore, there's little real loss.

Re:Boxes

[KDR_11k]

The advantage of the old style boxes, though, is that once you have the game and want to store the CD somewhere the original case is a lot larger than it previously was. A DVD box takes up about three times the space of a jewel case so you either have to supply cases yourself or put up with much larger stacks wherever you store your CDs. I mean, you don't stuff the jewel cases back into the original packaging, do you?

Re:Boxes

[Scorchio]

I mean, you don't stuff the jewel cases back into the original packaging, do you?

Well... hrmm... (shuffles uncomfortably)... you know... yes!

How strange am I?

Who are the biggest thieves?

[TheLink]

Yep. Theft removes or restricts access to property/objects/works from the rightful owner/user, without the rightful owner/user's permission.

Laws that retroactively cause works previously in the public domain to become copyrighted are theft.

Anticopying measures that prevent rightful use of legal copies are close to theft.

Laws that extend copyright duration are close to theft too - works that would otherwise become public domain are kept under private monopoly. Same goes for laws that extend copyright coverage.

Laws that remove fair use or other previously legal actions of copying are close to theft.

While copying does not in itself remove an owner's access from the original, copyright infringement illegally removes/restricts the legal monopoly on copying from the copyright owners. So copyright infringement could be a form of theft too.

So who are the thieves? And who has been doing the most stealing?

You be the judge for yourself. I'm probably too biased.

no doubt on piracy of games for computers

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

There is no doubt that piracy of games for computers is at an all-time high.

Given the huge decline in PC sales, PC development, and rise in console usage (and piracy), then, yeah, I would be EXTREMELY surprised to find out more PC games were being pirated now than before. (This is very different from more bandwidth being used by PC games--the games are bigger now than they used to be.)

Oh that line about out of print is completely insane--whether or not you agree that information should be free, I think you'd have to be crazy not to agree that information should never be rare. I mean, you might as well complain that Gutenburg press books aren't as valuable as the illuminated manuscripts they used to make. If there was some sort of compulsory licensing for older computer programs, I might oppose underdogs--but there isn't, so I applaud underdogs for making sure that our gaming history isn't lost to the sands of time. I, like the post office, always oppose artificial rarity.

Suprise, the excerpt is misleading

[Dragoon412]

There is no doubt that piracy of games for computers is at an all-time high. It's simply too easy for someone to find and download entire CD images of computer games.

The mindset that's so pervasive with the RIAA is the same one that's causing PC game publishers to treat their buyers like they're criminals first, and customers second. Piracy probably is at an all-time high, but so are the number of PC users.

I remember back in the days of Hero Quest and Leisure Suit Larry, no one had legitmate software. Everything was on a floppy that was copied from the friend of a friend of a friend who downloaded it off the BBS of this guy who knew from 2 states away, because the only place to buy the game was from some specialty store a two hour drive away, staffed by irritating, condescending Alpha Nerds, full of overpriced hardware, and reeking of french fries.

Now, PC games have become infinitely more accessible. Even Target carries current titles. Best Buy, Future Shop, Fry's, CompUSA, Circuit City and their ilk have large portions of their stores devoted to hawking practically any big-name software made in the last 5 years.

So, is there more priacy now? Undoubtedly. But PC games (and PC software as a whole) has matured from a tiny, largely enthusiast-driven niche market to a full-blown industry. Relative to the number of users, I'd bet 'piracy' is down from years ago.

But, the idiots publishing the games aren't gamers any more than the idiots at the RIAA are musicians. They're old, out-of-touch, and disinterested. They're not technically savvy, and think they can prevent piracy; it's like a 5 year-old thinking he can prevent all crime in the world by becoming a policeman.

They can't stop piracy. The developers know it. The consumers know it. Yet, the publishers refuse to learn. Either that, or they're genuinely stupid enough to believe it's worth pissing off thousands of legitimate, paying customers in the name of futily attempting someone from getting the game off some 0-day warez site and playing it relatively unhindered.

Atari's an instance of such a company... I had to get cracks for Neverwinter Nights, UT2k3, and Temple of Elemental Evil to get them working, despite having bouhgt retail copies of the 3 games. They'll never be seeing another penny of my money.

Re:Suprise, the excerpt is misleading

[slashjames]

Atari's an instance of such a company... I had to get cracks for Neverwinter Nights, UT2k3, and Temple of Elemental Evil to get them working, despite having bouhgt retail copies of the 3 games. They'll never be seeing another penny of my money.

I'll completely second you on that. When I purchase a new game, the first thing I'll do is rip it to an ISO image so I can store the original CDs somewhere safe. The problem I run into is the various "copy protection" mechanisms put on the disc by the publisher to (attempt) circumventing ripping to ISO images. Granted, it's possible to work around this, but it's a PITA. As a result of this, it's very unlikely that I will buy a crippled game and am more likely to download an ISO from somewhere else. If they'd stop treating customers as pirates, they'd get some sympathy (**AA pay attention).

Re:Suprise, the excerpt is misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would they want sympathy when they can have money instead?

Re:Suprise, the excerpt is misleading

[ivan256]

When I purchase a new game, the first thing I'll do is rip it to an ISO image so I can store the original CDs somewhere safe.

Which is why you probably haven't noticed that the copy protection probably wouldn't let you play the game just for having software that gives you that capability on your computer. What you're doing isn't normal, but normal users are getting fucked too.

Re:Suprise, the excerpt is misleading

[sqrt(2)]

It doesn't matter. When you buy a game, you can use it in whatever way you want, regardless of how unorthodox it is. Their "just-strong-enough-to-be-annoying" copy protection is infringing on our fair use rights.

Re:Suprise, the excerpt is misleading

[DarkVein]

Do me and the gaming world a favor and write them a dirty letter. Forward it to all the relevant "departments" on their "Contact Us" pages, including the Corporate Communication person, Susan whatever.

I wrote them a very critical letter, explaining that I was no longer purchasing games from them, and it was a very difficult decision because they have a contract with one of my favorite developers: Bioware. I spelled out the idiocy, referenced articles, and explained in clear language why they are utterly wrong and causing every problem they think they're trying to solve.

I suggest you do similar. One letter is supposedly representative of 40,000. They might just shrug mine off. They might not shrug two off. They won't shrug a dozen off.

Oh, I recommend, if you agree, mentioning that they're being scammed by "copy protection" software companies.

Re:Suprise, the excerpt is misleading

[ivan256]

I agree with you. I'm just saying that it's worse than you imply. It may be your right to play from a disc image instead of the CD, but that has nothing to do with you not being able to play the game; You probably wouldn't be able to play it anyway simply because you have the capability to use images...

"just-strong-enough-to-be-annoying" copy protection

More like "Too strong to even allow you to play the game as they intended".

I have a feeling thse problems come from publishers slapping the protections on after the developer is done with the game. I find it hard to believe that game developers would rape their own content like that.

Out of Print

[superultra]

Dave writes "in the digital media world it apparently now means 'Ok to steal.' Sorry, I can't agree with that." Yet, he inadvertantly highlights a major problem with the ownership of intellectual property that has yet to be solved.

If we're concerned about morality here, than ultimately we want the appropriate people who worked on the game to be compensated. But that doesn't happen with "out of print" games. The person getting the money when Dave buys that still in shrink wrap copy of Starflight for the Amiga isn't Greg Johnson, Binary Systems, or even EA. 100% of however much Dave spends on the game goes to the collector. No one is getting compensated with out of print games that really deserves it. So how does Dave justify this? If Dave really wants to be do the "right thing", he ought to download the game from Underdogs and then send the game creators a check. Buying the physical product off of ebay does nothing at all.

And secondly, he's tying games to books with the out of print comment. There's a big difference between out of print books and out of print games. Books are so cheap, and so easily distributed that rare books are specific editions, and not the actual book itself, what we would consider, say, one intellectual property unit. What is rare is a first edition (I assume) of Catcher in the Rye. But just because it's rare doesn't mean I will never be able to read Catcher in the Rye. With games, there are no editions. A game that is out of print really is unfindable, save perhaps paying a collector who had nothing to do with the game's creation. What's more is that the public - in the form of libraries - has maintained books for public use. So who's doing this for games? Perhaps because games are still viewed at as pure entertainment and not as a vehicle of communication we have yet to see gaming's Carnegie. That will change, but it will take some time.

The creator of Underdogs is, in my opinion, a far more moral person than Dave. Underdogs is more concerned about the money reaching the actual source rather than a collector. If I were Dave, I would be doing some serious reevaluation of a morality system that allows the rewarding of collectors for scouring garage sales and reselling them at a vastly inflated price, instead of compensating game creators for making a game worth finding 10 years later.

Re:Out of Print

[Anonymous Coward]

If we're concerned about morality here, than ultimately we want the appropriate people who worked on the game to be compensated. But that doesn't happen with "out of print" games. The person getting the money when Dave buys that still in shrink wrap copy of Starflight for the Amiga isn't Greg Johnson, Binary Systems, or even EA. 100% of however much Dave spends on the game goes to the collector. No one is getting compensated with out of print games that really deserves it. So how does Dave justify this? If Dave really wants to be do the "right thing", he ought to download the game from Underdogs and then send the game creators a check. Buying the physical product off of ebay does nothing at all.

The theory is that the person you bought the second-hand copy from may well then spend the money you gave them on new games. In other words, buying second-hand games keeps money circulating in the game economy.

That's possibly more true of newer second-hand games (kids who buy a game, play it, sell it, buy another, etc.) than of old collectors' items (the old collectors might not be interested in new games), but that's how it's meant to work.

Just shorten the durations.

[TheLink]

Nah, just shorten copyright periods to below 20 years. 7-10 years seems about fine to me.

If you can't make money from a work within 7 years, then that work sucks or you suck.

If a software maker cannot make a new program sufficiently better than 7 year old programs, so that they will make enough money out of it, then perhaps we'd see real innovation rather than stupid bloat or lock-in.

There's lots of wasted resources going to "slightly better" or "no longer supported by vendor - but vendor owns copyright so we have to upgrade to next version".

If 7 years is too short for some cases you could have different durations for different sort of works or different classes of copyright owners.

A Catch 22

[Slyght]

The whole piracy issue is sort of a Catch 22: People say that they pirate games to try them out before they buy them as not to waste their money on a bad game/cd/movie that they can't return, and most stores won't let users return opened games/cds/movies because of piracy.
Somebody brought up a point that many movie theatres will offer refunds to people that walk out of a movie early because they don't like it. Of course, they won't refund you if you sit through the whole movie, I believe they only will refund if you walk out in the beginning. Perhaps a similar system could be set up for games?
Here's an example: When users install a game, they can register their copy of the game online. Up to a certain point in the game decided by the developer (whether the point be measured by how far they have progressed, or how much time they have spent playing, how many rounds they have played, etc), they will have an option to request a refund. If they chose this option, they could print out some sort of form that they can bring back to the store they bought it from and return it, and at the same time the software would be uninstalled from the machine. The store would honor the return, refund the customer his money, and mail back the game/form to the company and get their money back.
I know my example's not perfect, but it's an idea. There will still be people that will want to get the entire game for free without paying, but if you at least give customers the option to return games they don't like, then there will probably be a large amount of customers that will do that instead of illegally downloading the game to try it out.

Re:A Catch 22

[hsoft]

That's what demos are for. What games publishers should do is to distribute a "free demo CD" next to their 50$ game. The customer grabs a couple of these CDs to the store, try them, and come back to buy games he/she liked.

Re:A Catch 22

[Slyght]

That is true, demos do let a person try out a game before they buy it, but not enough companies offer them, or they offer them a while after the product has been out. If developers and publishers wanted to use free demos as a way to curb piracy, they need to be more proactive about making them.
Another problem with current demos is that often they show you one of the better parts of the game to get you to buy it, which customers could find misleading, sorta like buying a CD cause the single is good, but the rest of the CD is bad. A lot of the time, the demo level is a modified version of a level in a game, which is also misleading. And since the demo may take place in the middle of the game, it may also give away part of the plot which could be a spoiler.
I'm not saying demos are bad, but I think allowing a player to buy a game and return it after playing up to a certain amount has its advantages. Of course, this could lead to developers just making the first part of the game good and not focusing as much on the second half, but at least part of the game being fun would be better than none of the game being good...

Re:A Catch 22

[hsoft]

Good point, I agree.

Personally, my technique to choose to buy a game or not is based on my past experience.

Ubisoft = bad
Bioware = Technically good games, but quite mediocre storylines
squaresoft = Most of their products are outstanding.
origin = used to be one of the bests. (nostalgic *sigh*)

I wish there was a way (something like a central database) to track good game developers. Thus, if I really liked a game, I will seek for games from the same lead designer. It would be a better way to know which game I will like, because squaresoft *did* make some games I didn't like.

Goddammit, that's a good idea I got there. I wish I had some experience in crawler programming, I could do it relatively easily.

Re:A Catch 22

[hiei]

Mobygames already does something like this. Check it out!

Re:A Catch 22

[hsoft]

That is, indeed, a very interesting website.

Downloading never theft

[Anonymous Coward]

Their "downloading is theft" premise is entirely false. Theft requires taking. When something is duplicated, it is never taken. The only way downloading could be theft is if the system deletes the file being copied upon completion of download, and I've not heard of this.

The law is the law but...

[Austerity Empowers]

I can't bring myself to actually buy a video game these days since the last 6-7 offline games I've played have sucked horribly. Either yet another FPS copy, a bad perversion on a previous game that was good (i.e. MOO3), or a game that was not at all what it pretended to be on the box.

The best I can come to is trying them out first and buying if it's worth teh money. But most games aren't even worth the download time lately...

out of print?

[Hard_Code]

Considering that electronic copies are esentially free, there is no such thing as rarity, and the idea of a "rare" digital copy being "scarce" is farcical. THAT YOU ARE NOT SELLING IT IS AN ADMISSION THAT IT IS NOT WORTH MUCH TO YOU. If it was really worth something throw up a quick site and charge a cheap price so people can download the old game. I really have little sympathy for the argument "well, we're not actually doing anything with this but sitting on it and preventing others from having it but WAIT IT'S OURS ALL OURS MY PRECIOUS!"

Something to think about: why (philosophically) is destroying money (property that YOU OWN) a crime?

Title 18 United States Code, Section 333

Mutilation of national bank obligations

Whoever mutilates, cuts, defaces, disfigures, or perforates, or unites
or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft,
note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking
association, or Federal Reserve bank, or the Federal Reserve System,
with intent to render such bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence
of debt unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or
imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

Let us play LAN

[moon-monster]

I buy all my games. I work as a software developer for a small company, and I know how much piracy hurts us. However, I do crack games on occasion when I want to play them on a LAN with my friends.

Generally, I'll install the game on their machine, crack it, play some multiplayer and remove it when we're finished.

There used to be several games back in the day, that came with 2 cds in the box, and one of the cds would allow you to start a LAN game only. (I'm thinking Total Annhialation, but there were more.) As most games come on more than one CD these days, it would be great if we were allowed to do this.

A Simple Recipe

[Thedalek]

Take one part Usenetserver account ($3.00 a day for a 3 day trial, or $15.00 a month), and mix liberally with one part NewzBin usenet archiving service. Add your favorite y-enc enabled newsreader to flavor to taste. Serves an entire campus, until your OIT decides to block port 119.

Re:A Simple Recipe

[Anonymous Coward]

I really, really hope you get modded down for ratting on me :(

Here's the thing:

[Moryath]

Money, while you possess it, is still technically the property of the Government - just like while you may "own" the plot of land your house is built on, it still is technically the territory of the country you live in, and if you die leaving no heirs, and the house is fully paid off, then the government will reclaim its right on that land.

Now, the government has an interest in keeping printing costs down. And they have an interest in seeing that a proper supply of money is available at all times, so as to keep the economy moving.

They even have a program where inadvertently-destroyed money - for example, if someone buries a bag of cash, and digs it up 10 years later to find it all moldy and ruined - can be turned in, and it will be examined by specialists, and the government will mail you a check for the total value that they can forensically determine was present.

See, the dollar bill is not just a piece of paper. It's currency, backed by the full faith and credit of the US government. When you destroy it, you're screwing not just with a piece of paper, but with a government-issued promise on the worth of that paper. THAT's why that law is on the books.

Re:Here's the thing:

[Hard_Code]

Yes I know. More concisely it can be said that there is no private property except for the grace of government who protects you from maurauding bandits and pillagers. So it is not purely a god-given right, but a contract with the rest of society. As such, there are reasons why society would not allow you to 1) destroy property that might otherwise be useful to society (e.g. currency) 2) allow you to "horde" property which you yourself are making no legitimate use of. The same thing could be said about Bill Gates buying gigantic amounts of land and destroying them for fun. Technically it's "his property" right?

OOP

[Lu Xun]

His comments regarding the concept of 'out of print' being expensive and exclusive are just not applicable for games that can be copied any number of times for very little money. If anything, making these games availible on websites like underdogs.org is re-printing them, thereby adding value to it. If he wants to have the exclusivity of out of print, he should collect old game systems or something more physical. I suppose he objects to the Gutenburg project too?!?

How about... No

[wan-fu]

I can't bring myself to download games, even the things at a place like The Underdogs which specializes in supposedly 'out of print' games to download. Out of print used to mean something was rare and worth something.

Out of print also means a variety of other things. In this case, it's just as likely that no one cares about the game except for the few thousand who will download it from The Underdogs.

One great way to do that is including good stuff in the box. Give me a color manual or include a poster. Maybe a CD with all the music from the game? How about liner notes with each game describing some part of development?

Or how about just lowering the damn price tag on these games?! $50 is just too much for a game, even Doom3 (though I'll probably still buy it at this price). Sure, putting some "good stuff" into the box might entice me more to buy it, but generally, one man's good stuff is most people's trash. Do I really want a color poster that will no doubt clash with the rest of my room? The CD with music will be pirated just like the game, so that's not anything. Color manuals get scanned, etc. You need to include physical things that are not easily digitized, e.g. action figures, 3D glasses (whatever, kids games), etc. But ultimately, I don't think many people care so much about these games. It's all about the bottom line. If the price is right, people will buy these games instead of pirating them.

Prime example: this past weekend, I saw an ad on TV for ESPN NFL2k5 (coincidence that it just got a /. story) and saw that it was advertised for only $19.99. I checked the IGN review, and a couple hours later, I came home from the mall with a new copy of NFL2k5. I barely even gave a thought to looking for a torrent or checking FTPs or whatever. Why waste my time when it's only twenty bucks.

If publishers and developers drop the prices of their games, they will capture all of the people that would have bought it anyways, but pirated it instead because the price was too high and it was more convenient to pirate it. Once the prices drop lower, then it's not that much more convenient to pirate the game and the only people pirating the game are those who wouldn't have bought it in the first place.

Re:How about... No

[Anonymous Coward]

Since $50 is common for games, $20 seems like a deal. If all new releases started costing $20, in a few years people would be saying "I'll buy the games that cost $8 but I'll pirate the $20 games because they're so pricy." And how low can they go before games cease to make a profit?

Re:How about... No

[wan-fu]

I don't really think that this is the case. Think about it, it's not so much the comparative cost of the game, but the advantage of the price of the game over pirating the game!

Say in a few years, all the games do start costing $20. A worker makes say $20/hr. It's pretty much worth it to spend that hour of labor for the game as opposed to risking lots of legal fees, jail time, hassle, etc. and just the plain old effort to pirate the game itself. If it takes an hour of effort to pirate the game (finding it, downloading it, getting a good crack, etc.), he might as well just go buy it and avoid all the risks associated with it. Even if it takes fifteen minutes or even less, the price will be low enough such that the cost of his labor to pirate + possible penalties, etc. will simply be MORE than the cost of the game.

EB has this to a degree...

[FirstNoel]

Atleast for Rise of Nations, but the Demos aren't free. $1.99

Re:EB has this to a degree...

[dswartze]

Atleast for Rise of Nations, but the Demos aren't free. $1.99

They aren't free if you pick up a demo disc from a retailer. Go to the appropriate website (for Rise of Nations I believe its part of the big mess that MS has as a website, although the "Big Huge Games" website may have it too, and it's a free download.

The solution is wrong.

[GrnArmadillo]

An example I can think of is the special edition Lunar games Working Designs put out for the PS1. All kinds of great, fun, nifty extras.... and a whopping $70 price tag new. I like cloth maps, sountracks, etc, as well as the next guy, but the bottom line is that companies charge more when they include these things and/or include these things to cover over the fact that they're charging more anyways. Offer OPTIONAL extras by all means. But if you make the game ONLY available at $30 over the going rate to cover the random stuff some of your customers don't WANT, you're shooting your sales in the foot cause I'm just going to wait until the price drops or buy it used (with $0 of that sale going to the publisher).

Hypocrisy?

[cluke]

Funny this article coming up now, just an hour ago I was reading this article by UK games journalist Stuart Campbell, saying that the whole industry's holier-than-thou approach to piracy doesn't stand close scrutiny since historically such a large part of it is basically based on ripping off other people's ideas.
Stuart Campbell writes a lot of thought-provoking stuff on piracy... his main gist is that if games were cheaper and the industry didn't treat us with such contempt then they might sell more copies.

Oh my god, he's talking about added value!

[gmezero]

Stop him quick... ...but seriously, it works. Just look at Infocom.

God forbid someone actually give the customer some value for what their buying.

Re:Oh my god, he's talking about added value!

[Ahnteis]

Call me uninformed, but what part of Infocom are we looking at?

Re:Oh my god, he's talking about added value!

[Teddy Beartuzzi]

Call me uninformed, but what part of Infocom are we looking at?

Call me crazy, but since the title is "he's talking about added value", I'd say the added value.

Infocom dominated the sales charts, with *zero* copy protection (unlike the rest of the competition), purely on the quality of their work, and the added value they threw in the box along with quality manuals.

When you opened an Infocom box, you really felt like you got your moneys worth. Maps, postcards, letters, Don't Panic buttons, bags of No Tea.

Alas, floor wax/desert topping syndrome struck, and they went out of business with the Cornerstone boondoggle.

more in the box

[Wozbacca]

I agree about the "make the box worth having" view.
its the same as cd's > mp3s etc.
i think that if you make the cd worth buying, by either having music videos, making ofs, documentaries, alternate mixes, acoustic sessions, live tracks on a bonus disc would make me more willing to shell out £10 for an album.
same applies here. halo2 limited edition has a bonus dvd with making of stuff and loads of extra stuff. I will be buying that.

Pirated to get it to work.

[wickedj]

It's funny about the piracy thing. I'll buy a game from the store, take it home and load it onto my pc. Only to find that it runs slow, has to verify the cd 10 times before the actual playable portion begins to load and then craps out because it somehow got the idea it wasn't a legit game.

Then after about an hour of fiddling with it with no results, I'll go to some warez site with all the latest hacks and whatnot. I'll download the hacked version of my game with all the piracy checking removed. Load it up. Low and behold, I have a game that works.

I'm not saying piracy is right. But when I need to use a pirated game to make my legit game to work, it sure does make piracy tempting.

Out of print

[ronfar]

I think I'm something of an idealist when it comes to piracy. I can't bring myself to download games, even the things at a place like The Underdogs which specializes in supposedly "out of print" games to download. Out of print used to mean something was rare and worth something. In the digital media world it apparently now means "Ok to steal." -- Dave Long

Um, actually, what out of print is supposed to mean is that the whatever it is is no longer of enough interest to be published, or is tied up in some nasty, ugly, copyright dispute that will never be settled and therefore it can't be published again. ( Miracleman anyone?)

Superman: You destroyed those planets, didn't you? And every living soul on them!

Brainiac: Only their knowledge was important. It was what I was programmed to collect and protect.

Superman: But why kill?

Brainiac: The fewer beings who have the knowledge, the more precious it becomes.

Superman: You're insane! -- Superman - Stolen Memories

Am I the only one ...

[arhar]

... mildly annoyed by this article? For those that didn't RTFA, here's the summary:

Look at me, I'm so great, I don't download games, I (and "gamers like me") am the greatest because of that!

When the whole article is written in this tone, it automatically makes me want to run to IRC and download all the latest games, just to spite the author.

Re:Am I the only one ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pot, this is the kettle. You're black.

But the game was already paid for

[Webapprentice]

The game was already sold when it was first published. The publisher and creators were already compensated. Isn't that the doctrine of first sale? They can't control the aftermarket. Some enterprising person decided to keep the game shrinkwrapped and wait for an eager buyer.

You can complain about copyrights or "sell it or lose it" economic priniciples, but I don't agree with stopping the aftermarket.

What that article is doing here?

[danila]

It's not like many people on /. would agree with a moralising pro-ESA, pro-Christian, right-wing parent gaming website. And it's not like they have anything interesting to say (if I am mistaken, give a link to at least one article there that is not retarded in some way).

Re:What that article is doing here?

[sqrt(2)]

It's almost as fucked up, pro-Christian, pro-Nazi as this website
I keep telling myself, that CAN'T be real. It has to be a joke.

Re:What that article is doing here?

[Anonymous Coward]

MAVAV _is_ a joke. Google it, or browse through some of the old penny arcade stuff that was done about it; some guy set it up as a class "hoax" project. I admit that I was taken in the first time I saw it, but after checking the site out and googling it, the truth sorta became obvious.

RsG

Re:What that article is doing here?

[sqrt(2)]

Yeah, I had always thought that it was a joke, but was never sure.

Pff...

[Cyno01]

I agree with this guy for the most part, but not downloading abandonware? If i'm sudently reminded of some game i played on my old 486, like castle of the winds, and i wanna play it, i would gladly pay $5 for it. But i cant. Where else am i going to get that game besides a place like the underdogs. Sim Ant, Paperboy 2, Castle of the Winds, all kickass games that i'd be willing to shell out around $5 for, but thats not an option, i'm not going to complain that they're free.

Re:Pff...

[be951]

If i'm sudently reminded of some game i played on my old 486, like castle of the winds, and i wanna play it, i would gladly pay $5 for it. But i cant.

Seems like whoever is providing out of print games (e.g. The Underdogs) could come to an agreement with the copyright holder. Buy the rights, pay small royalty, or just plain ask for the rights to distribute the game at no charge. The provider would not need to absorb the added cost on their own, since users could contribute to the provider on a voluntary or subscription basis or some other setup. And/Or if the copyright owner of some old games is still producing new games, how about a little advertising for their current releases in exchange for the right to distribute the abandoned titles? There are lots of ways this could be done without infringing copyrights.

Re:Pff...

[sindarin2001]

Actually, the first disk of Castle of the Winds was a shareware game (and boy did I love it ^_^). The second disk (which was INCREDIBLY difficult to find) was purchasable. I'd kill to be able to re-obtain that second disk. Perhaps I actually still have the original disk floating around my house somewhere. I'll have to look for it.

Re:Pff...

[Cyno01]

You can get both on the underdogs. There was an article on here a while ago about a website that would identify old games for you, i'd lost the game to a reformat, but i put in a description and they told me castle of the winds. I was able to find it, and the sequil i'd never played on the underdogs,

Re:Pff...

[stanmann]

Underdogs, and several other abandonware groups HAVE tried to arrange for distribution rights for some series of games, the full story is on one of the forums or Usenet alt.abandonware(google groups). Basically anyone contacted flatly refused.

Re:Online Gaming - KEYGEN PROBLEM!

[Anonymous Coward]

Online CD-Key verification seems to be the only copy protection method that "works".

Except it doesn't, not completely. Not when someone has written a key-generator and the CD-Key on the box THAT YOU PAID FOR doesn't work because some monkey has stolen the code, and no amount of cracking can get you into the game THAT YOU PAID FOR.

(Until someone makes a new server, of course.)

Yeah...

[Cyno01]

Had a Lan Party a while ago with 3 of my friends, i feel zero guilt for each of us chiping in $12 and getting the half life platinum collection. I can pay $5 and rent a game at blockbuster for my xbox and 4 people can play, but to have four people play CS and TFC like we did it woulda cost $200? Insanity.

If more anti-piracy...

[ivan256]

...means more games that I have to uninstall my CD-R software to play, I have some choice words for them as to where they can stick it.

The most recent game purchase I made was Thief 3. One of my friends can play his pirated version just fine, but with my legit copy I have to uninstall the two CD-R utilities I have, and manually delete any reference of them from the registry before the game will load. Otherwise it pops up a dialog that says "Conflict with emulation software detected".

I can't return the game because it's open, and the tech support responce was to reinstall windows if I continued to have problems.

Gah! Is this really the way they encourage more people to be paying customers?

My two cents on this subject:

[cmdrwhitewolf]

"He concludes by suggesting ways to make games more attractive again" Some things that would make games "more attractive again" to me are - 1) REASONABLE prices at release, not two or three years later in the bargain bins. (Where the game might not even be, and thus forcing us to go hunting in the OOP sites...) 2) Games that actually WORK as advestised on installation, not waiting 6 or 7 months later for multiple patchs & Bug fixes to do so. (If you can't hire somebody to fix your cr*p, don't complain when we have to resort someone who can...) 3) REASONABLE Recommended system requirements, and not having to dump practically half a grand to supe up pc before the game becomes decently playable each time. (If you can't hire somebody to program your cr*p tightly, don't be bitchin when we find someone who can...) 4) GOOD playability, and replayability, Not just play it once and discard like another milk carton. (We're trying to keep them from heading into the landfills, but you ain't us helping any by making non quality stuff that isn't fit for a freebie box at a garage sale.) 5) Either STANDARDIZE player interfaces or make them more configurable, so I don't have keep re-learning strange Keyboard/mouse/joystick setups as I move across titles while playing them. Carpal tunnel be damned! Getting Gamer's hand cramps sucks worse! (You wanna pay our Medical bills? I thought not.) . . . 6) Oh yeah, I almost forgot - STOP making silly arse Yet Another Year/famed one, and instead sell modules in which players can add in their own choosen "flavoring". (Hey, you know something? I've been so sick of the 'Yet Another Sports Title' game syndrome, that I won't even bother looking at those titles anymore... Can't live without marketing them ? Go ahead and make them, I'll just keep ignoring them, But don't be complaining that the game industry is 'tapped out' or whatever when you keep on making those stupid decisions.)

To those who keeps whining "Not theft!!!11"

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me what you call taking advantage of a company by unlawfully obtaining and using their product or service, without paying for that product or service?

It maybe copy right infringement, but it is also theft. These companies make their money by providing a service or product, and you when you pirate you are benefiting from said product. No matter what your justification for your theft, you have taken something that doesn't belong to you and shouldn't have access to. Adding the guilt free friendly term "copy right infringement" isn't going to change this fact, despite how much you want to justify your immoral actions and ignore the fact that piracy is theft.

Would you be quick to call it just "copy right infringement" if I took some GPL code, ignored the GPL license, claimed it as their own, made a great deal of improvements, used it in a commercial product, and gave nothing back? From what I can tell most slashdoters would be crying foul and be up in arms complaining about this theft and my not giving anything back.

Re:To those who keeps whining "Not theft!!!11"

[KDR_11k]

I could say things like "rape is theft of virginity" but that still doesn't make rape theft. Murder isn't theft of life, kidnapping isn't theft of people. Not every crime is theft. That doesn't mean it isn't a crime or that it isn't as bad as stealing (technically, copyright infringement is worse than theft, but theft sounds more sensational), but it's a different kind of crime. Dolphins aren't fish but that doesn't mean they could survive on land.

Theft is if you run into a store and take a copy with you, taking something the store owner bought and the manufacturer manufactured. Copyright infringement is the replication of the good (i.e. not actually taking it and the raw materials used for it butr provisding the raw materials and assembly yourself). Someone drawing batman on a piece of paper isn't stealing but still infringing copyright.

Your crash course guide to Sweden

[Thedalek]

Jealous?

What really amazes me is that you seem to think there are only 20,000 people in Sweden. Sweden is home to more than 8 million people. That's closer to .2% of the population of the Western world (ignoring China and India, you've knocked the world population back to 4 billion people).

Why do I suddenly feel I'm about to be booted out of the village as a small butterfly flits by?

Wrong wrong wrong

[Mike Hawk]

...is that the whatever it is is no longer of enough interest to be published...

FALSE. It only indicates that the risk/reward of paying money up front to create a batch run of the whatever it is does not cause whatever it is to be published currently. If something is being downloaded 1000's of times, it indicates a significant interest. HOWEVER, because it is being downloaded for free thousands of times, the risk/reward is shifted away from the republication of the whatever it is. So, actually, it appears, copyright infringement is its own creater. I downloaded it because it is not available, but its not available because everyone just downloads it for free all the time. There is no justification. See: Nintendo's and Atlus' republication of many of the NES titles on GBA. In fact, outside of pokemon, these are probably the most successful GBA titles. The market would exist in the absence of the downloads. You arguement holds not even a drop of water.

PS If you quote comic books as examples of your thought process, you might be an idiot. Im just saying.

Interesting

[Lord_Dweomer]

I, like most Slashdot readers got very upset when reading the blurb. However, when I clicked the link to go to the website to hunt for an email address to respond to the writer with concerning his blatant lack of knowledge of what stealing really is, I actually read the article.

Guess what, the whole beginning of it goes into detail about how tighter copy protection on video games is a BAD idea because it only hurts those who follow the law. He then goes on to make the argument that the companies need to instead increase the value of their product in terms of packaging, and things inside the packaging, such as maps, booklets, etc.

So, yes, he is completely wrong about what theft is, and has no concept of the term copyright infringement, and you should email him at Letters@gamerdad.com to tell him so, but he is spot on with the rest of the article.

Ah, so if I can't support a car I can steal yours?

[SmallFurryCreature]

I have bought stack and stacks of games over the years, still got a huge stack of CD's but the floppy stack is sadly gone (note to self do not hang wet wash over box of floppies.)

So I figure I got a moral right to download x-wing as I once paid for it. If you never bought it then you have no right to it. Buy a compilation CD and if that is not available then that doesn't give you any moral let alone legal right to download it.

Then again it would be trivial for game companies to make available their old games via pay-per-download or licensse their games to a company specializing in it.

The game industry is incredibily bad at doing business. It seems to totally have lost touch wich its audience. Selling ever more expensive games with less and less in them. I remember the original Lucasarts WWII games, battle of britain and Secret weapons of the luftwaffe. They came with THICK ringbound manuals that had excellent instructions on how to play the game as well as an historic overview of the war period covered and a analasys of the effect of the airwar. Compare this with the X-wing "leaflet" and you get the feeling the old game gave you a lot more bang for your buck.

GBA games are insanely priced especially those that are just old games repackaged. When you got an industry treathing its customers as consumers you get consumers acting as "thiefs".

Put something inside the box again, for that matter GET THE BOX BACK, and make a game worth buying. Less bugs on release, just because everyone got the internet doesn't mean the first action of installing a new game should be to patch it. If a game like say "Max payne" can be completed in a weekend price it accordingly. Learn about economy of scales, better to sell a lot of games at a low price then a few games at a high price.

BUT most important, if I buy a game I should get a license to use it for the rest of my life. Don't ask me to register just to send spam. When I register you should make it possible for me to always get the game again should I loose the CD's or floppy.

In short if you don't want people to "steal" don't be a thief youreselve.

Customer is always right...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhh the copywrite wars continue...

First off, as a customer, should'nt I be allowed to examine what it is I am to purchase? If I buy a game and don't like, I'm screwed. How come that isn't considered stealing from me?

This goes right into my next point...the only thing "warez" does is promote the game (good or bad). Most people who like the game will buy it, to support the developer. Those that don't buy the product more than make up for it by contributing to the best kind of advertising coup...word-of-mouth.

And finally...most people have good morals and realize that stealing is wrong. If they didn't, the movie industry, the gaming industry, and the music industry would not be setting box office records.

Easy solution: Instead of arresting/fining people, make your content downloadable, and charge less for it. It worked for Itunes. ...

Config files

[Thinkit4]

Entirely possible the bootleg spread some config files or registry updates that disabled the legit copy. Try a clean pc?

Re:Config files

[mink]

Unlikely.
So far in my experiance many copy protections are so badly broken that if you only have a DVD-R or CD-r drive it instis you are a bad evil pirate stealing babies brains to eat and to go buy a cd-rom if you want to play the game you just shelled out $50 for.

I'm just paraphrasing what the support rep told me in E-mail about my purchase.

This lost them my money on the 2nd game in that series (I did not pirate it either).

Re:Ah, so if I can't support a car I can steal you

[Haeleth]

So I figure I got a moral right to download x-wing as I once paid for it. If you never bought it then you have no right to it. Buy a compilation CD and if that is not available then that doesn't give you any moral let alone legal right to download it.

Nobody's denying that going and downloading a copy, if there's no way on earth to buy one, is illegal, but you're going to have trouble convincing people that it's morally wrong. It's like taking stuff from a skip - technically that's theft, but who's going to believe it's wrong to steal junk that someone just threw away? Who's going to stick up for the other guy and say "he wanted that junk to go to the landfill, what right do you think you have to turn it into something useful instead?"

As it is, we have companies saying "there is no economical way for us to sell these games, therefore we won't sell you a copy even if you beg us to. But don't download them or we'll sue." That's fine in the law, but I doubt you'll find many people who agree it's just.

For an interesting counter-argument, look at Nintendo's rereleases of old Famicom games on GBA. These are some of the same games which the emulation scene had been saying should be in the public domain because they'd never be sold again. Nintendo have proven that old games aren't necessarily economically non-viable. At that point, the skip of my analogy becomes a freezer - the companies aren't sitting on games because they're mean, they're sitting on them because they're not sure whether they'll become profitable again or not.

But if they want us to believe that, it would be nice if they occasionally did release something when it became obvious that it wouldn't ever be profitable again. Bethesda made a nice gesture when they released Arena recently; more concessions like that would go some way towards convincing me that copyright on old games is worth respecting.

Re:Ah, so if I can't support a car I can steal you

[Chmcginn]

It's like taking stuff from a skip - technically that's theft, but who's going to believe it's wrong to steal junk that someone just threw away? Who's going to stick up for the other guy and say "he wanted that junk to go to the landfill, what right do you think you have to turn it into something useful instead?"

There's some places (my old home state of NC, IIRC) where that's perfectly legal - providing you don't have to trespass to get to the dumpster. (In other words, if it's placed on the edge of the property, and gets picked up by the city, it's okay - if it's placed behind the building, and a commercial firm picks it up, it's not. Why the difference? Near as I can figure, the city figures it would save money if enough people do some dumpster-diving.)

are games WORTH it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I openly admit that the majority of games I play are pirated, but the majority of the games I play are shit! I have over 30 games I've bought lining a shelf in my study, but I've downloaded probably twice that. The games I've paid for are good, solid games, that I still enjoy playing today (Deus Ex, Gothic 1/2, Thief1/2/3...), but most of the games that come out, and you think "hmm, I'd like to play that for a couple hours", are pretty poor once you've bought them. at least if you download a game, if its garbage then you've not lost anything. flame at will :)

rm -rf publisher

[illumina us]

When it comes to video games all one has to do anymore to distribute is have an network enabled system. Most gamers now have a fat enough pipe to download content on the fly. Publishers spend a lot of money making pretty triple gloss and beveled cardboard boxes and contact stores to distribute the software. However, all that needs to be done now is to advertise online and distribute the game for a lower price over protocols such as Bittorrent. The more developers that do this the less it will cost for games. If you download a copy of a game it should cost LESS money than if you buy all of it in the store because now you are not getting:
-A pretty box
-A printed manual
-CD-ROM case
-CD-ROM (with licensed technology such as SecureROM, etc.)
Why should you as a consumer pay for the aforementioned objects if you do not recieve them when you download a game? The developer can cut the cost of the game down to $20 or even less if they allow purchasing the game directly from them and distributing via the internet. When they sign the contract with the publisher make it so the publisher gets revenue from the products they sell but not that of what the developer distributes directly. Then see how much less that software is pirated.