Free Games As a Solution To Game Piracy

christ, jesus H writes "PC gaming may not be dying, but it is in a state of flux. We're seeing developers and publishers blaming piracy for all the ills of PC gaming, but attempts to rein in pirates with the help of DRM only annoys and mobilizes the legitimate customers of your games. The solution? According to David Perry of Shiny Games, PC games are going to be free." (And if anyone has a favorite replacement term for "piracy," in the context of electronic copyright violation, please suggest it below.)

Comments

Re:Bootlegging

[samkass]

Nope. "Appropriate" doesn't imply any such thing. (Don't you even TRY to look your words up before telling someone they got a definition wrong?)

I know Slashdot hates to confront it, but illegal copying really is described by the verb "to steal".

Why I am a pirate

[Loki_666]

I am i pirate. I buy pirated games, copy them, download them, etc. Why? Reason 1: Because i cannot get the games in my language. I live in Russia (the land of the free) and my Russian is simply not good enough to buy games in this language. Very occasionally a publisher will release a multilingual version of the game over here but this is rare, and when i see such, and im interested in the game, i may buy it. Otherwise, i have no choice, i must buy the pirated version from some guys who sell on the street or get from other sources.... and they naturally sell these with English because they are converted from the English into Russian so contain both languages. Reason 2: I have children. Small ones. With sticky fingers. Who like to play with CD drawers and bite disks, and stand on disks, and throw disks into the toilet. Given this, i have to keep my disks in a safe place. When the disk is in the drive (because the game publisher demands i do this to play), and im happily playing, i may get distracted by the wife, or one of the kids needs something, and i leave the computer. You can guarantee within 1 second the other kid will have opened the CD drawer and started to play frisbee with the disk. Conclusion: I am a pirate because i have to be. On those rare occasions i can buy a game in english that i want, i still have to go and d/l a No-CD crack which criminalizes me again. Funnily enough, when i lived in the UK and didnt have kids, most of my games were originals. Sometimes i would buy the original after playing the pirated version, because i do believe in supporting those who create these games. PS: I know i can order over the internet games but not only would i incur quite large postage costs, but also to do this i would need a credit card, and i really dont like having these tools of Satan about my person.

Re:I despise willful ignorance

[spun]

Oh. My. GOD. You really are dumb. First, is stealing the only bad thing in the world? What a moron. I specifically said, it's not stealing but it is wrong. FAIL.

Next, NO ONE in this forum wants to do away with copyrights. We are not idiots. We know that the GPL depends on copyright. Ass.

Check it: rape isn't stealing, but it is wrong. Do we disagree on that? Murder also isn't stealing, but it is wrong. Copyright infringement isn't stealing, but it is wrong. See how that works? Is your view that every crime in the world is stealing?

How dense are you? I have a feeling you know that you are flat out wrong here, but you are too proud to back down. But it's juts making you look even stupider, give it a rest, just admit that you fucked up and drastically misinterpreted something.

No more, I'm done with you. It isn't worth it conversing with a fucking moron who is too proud to admit they are being an absolute idiot and alienating someone WHO AGREES WITH THEM. Copyright infringement is morally wrong, I said so before, but that's not good enough for you, it has to be exactly equivalent to stealing. Which is the most idiotic thing I've heard in a long time.

Fuck off.