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nuget102

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Finally a response that does not repeat the same thing over and over again under different examples.

 

I like your point a lot, although there are a couple of flaws I've encountered. You kept refering to piracy as "stealing a game" when in fact it wasn't. I've already replied not long ago that stealing is a term for taking something away, meaning the person looses it, or gets deprived of something. "Stealing a game" in ideal matter would mean there was something like a unique CD of a game that you've got, and someone goes in your house and steals it. When people pirate, owners don't loose their games. Therefore it is wrong to name it "stealing".

 

Intellectual property is a different thing. That is something worth arguing about.

 

I have one more thing to say in response to the 'nothing is lost' then I'll give people a chance to breathe.

 

How about games where online matches are hosted on the server? Sure, many have checksums etc. to verify the player, but some don't. You've literally cost them money in these cases.

 

Edit: And you're right, I shouldn't be referring to it as stealing unless there's a consensus that it is stealing. But that is a matter of semantics and only effects your perception of my points, and in reality has no impact on the truth behind them.

 

Edited because wrong usage of "costed."

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Finally a response that does not repeat the same thing over and over again under different examples.

 

I like your point a lot, although there are a couple of flaws I've encountered. You kept refering to piracy as "stealing a game" when in fact it wasn't. I've already replied not long ago that stealing is a term for taking something away, meaning the person looses it, or gets deprived of something. "Stealing a game" in ideal matter would mean there was something like a unique CD of a game that you've got, and someone goes in your house and steals it. When people pirate, owners don't loose their games. Therefore it is wrong to name it "stealing".

 

Intellectual property is a different thing. That is something worth arguing about.

 

I have one more thing to say in response to the 'nothing is lost' then I'll give people a chance to breathe.

 

How about games where online matches are hosted on the server? Sure, many have checksums etc. to verify the player, but some don't. You've literally costed them money in these cases.

 

 

As far as I know (and as far as I understood what you mean) cracking up the online games is extra hard, and most of the time those are required to have a special software (Like hamachi) to play with someone else. I've yet to see a pirated game that you can easily play with others on dedicated servers.

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Rathlord, you're fooling yourself if you don't think the digital market doesn't differ from physical goods and that it isn't totally unreasonable for a company to adapt. While I'm not arguing that I'm not stealing, because frankly I am, I'm saying that companies and your friendly neighborhood Moral Oral need to realize that they can't stop piracy and by reading this thread it's easy to see why people pirate i.e. lack of actually playing the game to see if they like it.

 

And no shit you're not going to steal a Ferrari. What kind of apples to oranges example is that? You are getting a COPY of the game, not a vehicle off the lot and it's a metric fuckton harder to steal a half-million dollar car than it is to click a few times with your mouse for a copy of the latest Cawa-Doody.

 

Can you please explain why it's so out of line to expect a company to release demos on a market that would actually benefit from them?

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Rathlord, you're fooling yourself if you don't think the digital market doesn't differ from physical goods and that it isn't totally unreasonable for a company to adapt. While I'm not arguing that I'm not stealing, because frankly I am, I'm saying that companies and your friendly neighborhood Moral Oral need to realize that they can't stop piracy and by reading this thread it's easy to see why people pirate i.e. lack of actually playing the game to see if they like it.

 

And no shit you're not going to steal a Ferrari. What kind of apples to oranges example is that? You are getting a COPY of the game, not a vehicle off the lot and it's a metric fuckton harder to steal a half-million dollar car than it is to click a few times with your mouse for a copy of the latest Cawa-Doody.

 

Can you please explain why it's so out of line to expect a company to release demos on a market that would actually benefit from them?

 

Please re-read through what I've said. I didn't say there's no difference between physical goods and digital goods. What I said was that that difference has no relevance to the subject.

 

A Ferrari Enzo is a copy of the original blueprint. The difficulty to steal has no impact on the right- or wrong-ness of the action. (Interesting sidenote here. The blueprint is an intellectual property, much like digital games. What's on paper [or the computer] is essentially just a description of a concept. Would you also propose stealing the concept of a car to be entirely legal because it's not a physical object?)

 

I'm not saying it's out of line to expect that. What I said was that it's not a justification for taking something that's not yours.

 

You took every point I used against you and made it into a straw man argument that replies instead to something different that what I'm saying.

 

Also, you seem a bit confused about my intent here. I'm in no way trying to convince people not to pirate. That's not my job and honestly not my business. But it is wrong, as you've admitted, and that's all I'm saying. If people are comfortable doing wrong then that's fine.

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As far as I know (and as far as I understood what you mean) cracking up the online games is extra hard, and most of the time those are required to have a special software (Like hamachi) to play with someone else. I've yet to see a pirated game that you can easily play with others on dedicated servers.

 

 

Hard but not impossible, especially for smaller games that don't have as advanced login systems. I can't think of an example off the top of my head, though I do know they exist. I don't expect you to take it on belief, though (nor should you), so let's move on.

 

How about people who call the company for customer service, or post on their forums for help? People could do that on the PZ forums all day? (And, in fact, do. I can show you at least one person who has openly, brashly done this here.) If I or one of the mods respond, that's all good and well. But if Lemmy responds (or in a big company, a customer service rep) then that person has not only cost the company money by wasting the labor of their employees, they've also cost legitimate customers faster service.

 

Edit: I think I'm going to go take a moment to breathe and eat. Be back later. Sorry for the barrage of posts, and also apologies if I came off a bit blunt. I edited a few posts for better word choices in some spots.

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Please re-read through what I've said. I didn't say there's no difference between physical goods and digital goods. What I said was that that difference has no relevance to the subject.

 

A Ferrari Enzo is a copy of the original blueprint. The difficulty to steal has no impact on the right- or wrong-ness of the action.

 

I'm not saying it's out of line to expect that. What I said was that it's not a justification for taking something that's not yours.

 

You took every point I used against you and made it into a straw man argument that replies instead to something different that what I'm saying.

 

Also, you seem a bit confused about my intent here. I'm in no way trying to convince people not to pirate. That's not my job and honestly not my business. But it is wrong, as you've admitted, and that's all I'm saying. If people are comfortable doing wrong then that's fine.

 

A Ferrari cost the company to produce it and the absence of it actively loses them money while a copy cost the other company nothing to produce and only hurts the company if the person who pirated it was even willing to pay money for their product.

 

And you said in the beginning of your response to me that you couldn't get behind anything I was saying and I thought that meant literally everything because I explained above why I thought people pirated and how companies could curve it.

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A Ferrari cost the company to produce it and the absence of it actively loses them money while a copy cost the other company nothing to produce and only hurts the company if the person who pirated it was even willing to pay money for their product.

And you said in the beginning of your response to me that you couldn't get behind anything I was saying and I thought that meant literally everything because I explained above why I thought people pirated and how companies could curve it.

 

 

Games cost to produce also. Not in physical goods, but they still cost. As I said before, proving that even one single individual, ever, has pirated a game when they would have bought it if they hadn't had access debunks this entire point. And personally I feel pretty safe assuming this. Just because you wouldn't have done it doesn't mean no one would have done it, and that means it's not a valid justification.

 

Maybe it's just a difference in thinking, but I do honestly think it's nonsense to claim that just because there's not direct financial loss in any given situation that makes the situation morally right. Somewhere that thought just gets lost in translation to me.

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A Ferrari cost the company to produce it and the absence of it actively loses them money while a copy cost the other company nothing to produce and only hurts the company if the person who pirated it was even willing to pay money for their product.

 

And you said in the beginning of your response to me that you couldn't get behind anything I was saying and I thought that meant literally everything because I explained above why I thought people pirated and how companies could curve it.

 

But the original from which that copy is produced does cost a company money. There are also incidental costs if the developer allowed automatic updates (It cost TIS quite a bit of money), as well as file hosting (it cost -- and costs -- TIS quite a bit of money).

If, under these conditions, a copy is made, and a company has to pay for that copy (even if it's at a much lower price than the sale of the copy would have gained), then there is a bit of a problem, isn't there? Then we're actually taking something away from a developer, rather than simply making a copy of a non-corporeal good. Not that all games or pirates are the same, nor are all mediums identical to games.

If this prevents the creator from being compensated for their work and making a profit (if the investment is successful), there's a problem.

 

 

 

Maybe it's just a difference in thinking, but I do honestly think it's nonsense to claim that just because there's not direct financial loss in any given situation that makes the situation morally right.

Yet, I can agree with this.

Personally, it is an immoral act; It's just not one the most important morals.

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Video gamse aren't physical, at least not pirating them. Nothing is being lost. It's like "a-a=a".

I'm p. sure my math is right.

Well, just because they are not physical, doesn't mean nothing is lost.

If we are going to consider data as something non-physical, or as an intangible concept, then potential profits and intellectual property can be grouped into the same basket. And I think we can all agree that someone is certainly losing something when data has an unauthorised replication.

 

I think it is a lot more like a + bi = c (yeah, you know what's going on there. And what does c equal?). I'm sure your math will be right...

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Oh, boy.

 

Let me rather ask you one thing - There is always a minority of people who pirate the game instead of buying it, there is no doubt to that. Let's say 4 out of 10 people pirate the game instead of buying it, so you get 4 people less to pay for your game. If piracy did not exist, do you think there would be 4 more people to pay for the game? No, there would still be 4 out of 10 people that wouldn't pay for it, they just won't play the game either.

 

The thing about piracy is that we don't know if those 4 out of 10 people will ACTUALLY buy the game in the future. More to add - people who pirate the game and like it may tell their friends about it, it means only more people's attention will be brough to the game, meaning more ruckus between people and potentially more people to buy your game. You can argue all you want about how unfair it is to pirate, but you won't change the fact that piracy indeed also does good for the developers who create the games for their customers to ENJOY, and not suck the money out of them.

 

I am talking about those developers who release games solely because they want to have their customer satisfied. Quality over Quantitiy. If we had a lot of people pirate those kind of games, then believe me a LOT of people from those who pirated it will have thoughts about buying it. If the game is just a copy of their old game with a couple of new features that is made for the purpose of sucking the money out of your wallet, I don't think piracy would really bring them any potential or future profit.

 

To end my point, I want to copy something I've found while browsing through the internet.

 

The problem with the anti-piracy group is that they sit on a moral high ground. Whenever someone tells them why they pirate, the anti-piracy group responds by saying its wrong no matter what. In the process, they defend the industry that causes people to commit piracy in the first place.

 

Most people that pirate, don’t want to. They would rather go the legal route but it is often at the own doing of the film industry that impedes that. Forbes had a good article on this issue.

 

Most people before committing piracy look at the following factors:

Availability: is content available to purchase legally?

Affordability: is content priced fairly?

Accessibility: are you allowed to download content to a variety of devices

Reliability: Are you given an unlimited amount x to redownload?

Convenience: Does it take as long as a torrent to download?

Integrity: Does the company deserve my money (based on answers to the previous factors).

 

 

Quite frankly, you accuse me of repeating a point over and over when it's quite obviously fault on your part for failing to demonstrate an understanding of the debate in progress, as shown multiple times in the thread.

 

The argument about "what if" in future only came into the discussion because a previous poster threw in an opinion that he would actually buy less if there was no piracy. I admit that a future prediction is not a terribly good argument under any terms, but I have at least given a justification for my extrapolation based on current behavioural trends, and not a "piracy is good just because I think it would be bad if there were no piracy" argument. I will drop any contentions about "what if" scenarios if you do...

 

Except that it's the pro - piracy argument that's the one which has been persistently touting "potential profits". Future predictions are only fallacious when they come from me, but not when they are forming the basis of your own arguments?

 

My original arguments were based off principles of fair play - Which the pro - piracy side has yet to address, forever repeating the "piracy causes no losses" mantra in all its forms like a broken record.

 

To answer the last point - Once again you beautifully illustrate the self - centredness of the arguments from your position. Why do you assume that you are automatically entitled to enjoying a digital product that's a luxury good? If do not like a particular luxury car company in real life, what justifies you causing harm to that car company just based on your dislike of their products/services? If it's not available, just don't buy it. If it's not affordable, you don't buy it. If it's not accessible, you don't buy it. If it's not reliable, you just don't buy it. If you don't like someone, you are free not to deal with them - You are still not justified in causing harm - Real or perceived - By taking what you want from them without their consent. You think that list is some sort of superior argument for piracy. It misses the point completely, so - It's not. The point is that not only you should feel the deal is fair. A fair deal necessitates both sides agreeing without being under duress. And if either side feels the offered deal is not fair, they can decline the deal. You may not, however, force them into another deal of your own making.

 

That's where that neatly compiled list falls to pieces. It only takes into account your perspective, and assumes that if the developer does not meet your requirements you are somehow justified in forcing the deal on your terms. It goes in with the underlying assumption that if you don't like the deal originally offered by the developers, you are still entitled to get your hands on goods rightfully owned by them anyway. You have the choice of walking away from the deal you don't like, but you are depriving developers of the same freedom of choice. I have repeated this argument a few times, now.

 

Here's how the deals are playing out, with your reasoning:

Developers don't meet your requirements (All the points in that list) -> You are allowed to take for yourself what you want from them anyway (Their product), they are not allowed to just walk away and take their product with them.

You don't meet developer's requirements (Money, respecting their IP) ->  They are not allowed to take for themselves what they want from you (Your money), but you are allowed to walk away and take your money safely with you.

 

Why don't you just work to help people then, and hope that they will see fit to compensate you if they feel like it - instead of working just so you can get a previously agreed on amount of pay? So you're being as "selfish" as you claim developers are? That's a patently ridiculous argument, once again grounded in blind self - centredness.

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As an additional point, you are not just lowering potential profit - You are also causing potential losses to the developer. How's that? Every time you pirate, you have the potential to cause people who actually did pay for the game to feel like they got the wrong end of the deal. They worked for their money, paid for the game, and at the end of it they ended up with the same product that someone else pirated for free. It is entirely possible that will stop paying for it in future and pirate games themselves, thus causing the developer to reach a point where they are unable to pay for any more development, and have to cease operations. Your actions directly contributed to a potential stage in future where they actually suffer losses from a behavior that you were complicit in.

Classic logical fallacy - the slippery slope argument. If I do A, then A leads to B and B leads to C and C leads to D so A leads to D. Nobody can predict the future or what my actions will cause others to do. It's not debatable. The only thing my piracy directly leads to is the game developers not selling me a copy of the game. Whether or not thier feelings are hurt by my act of piracy they have not incurred any monetary loss because of it.

 

If you're not convinced it's a fallacy, there is this: "potential profit" and "potential loss" are essentially the same thing when it comes to the effects of piracy because neither of them can be measured.

As to piracy directly contributing to a lack of sales? Sure, I can see that. My individual tendency to pirate doesn't cause this alone but the burden of ten million pirates might. Then again, a game might have failed simply because it was bad. Unless a publisher straight up says a game didn't make money due to an insane amount of piracy then we're only speculating when we see that a game wasn't profitable and say it was because of pirates.

 

I'll leave it at here for now, some friends want to play video games - that I legally acquired with United States currency, no less! :P

 

 

In short....No.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

 

"The strength of such an argument depends on the warrant, i.e. whether or not one can demonstrate a process which leads to the significant effect."

"The process may involve causal relationships between intermediate events, but in any case the slippery slope schema depends for its soundness on the validity of some analogue for the physical principle of momentum"

" Validity of this analogy requires an argument showing that the initial changes actually make further change in the direction of abrogating A easier."

 

So whether or not an argument can actually be defined as a slippery slope depends on the validity of the chain of reasoning linking the events together. "A leads to B leads to C leads to D leads to E" does not by itself turn the argument into a slippery slope, no matter what the internet thinks. If you can justify how "Some people pirating" becomes "More people pirating" becomes "Eventually a loss for the developer" is an unsound premise, I'm willing to listen.

 

With regards to "there's no monetary loss" - As myself and a few others have repeated multiple times in the thread, that is not the point. The point is whether you have caused harm to the developers as they perceive it, which you have. Monetary losses are merely one of the many potential harmful things that can be inflicted on developers.

 

...And as mentioned in my above post, my original arguments against piracy were grounded in principles of fair play. I will drop the potentially erroneous assumptions of a future scenario if you do - But a large part of your premise is based on the grounds that there's no loss to the developer because it's all "potential profits". So?

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Well here's the thing- with stealing or piracy or anything else that's wrong there's two sides to it:

 

There's side "A" which involves and injured party. Leo and co. are arguing that there is no injured party. We'll (just for the sake of argument) cede this point to them and say they're right.

 

But then there's side "B" which is that you have done wrong because something you have done is intrinsically incorrect, something that goes against the moral standards of the world. I don't want to go into a deep morality discussion (unless you guys do) but I think it's safe to assume that taking something that isn't yours, that you didn't work for, that someone else did is wrong regardless of whether they're physically hurt by it. The wrongdoing here is something personal- you've broken a rule. It doesn't mean you've hurt someone.

 

If you apply your argument of "no one is hurt" to traffic laws, we would never enforce speeding violations unless you got into a crash. Because after all, no one gets hurt if you're going 120 mph and don't crash. Right? Right!?!

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And now we argue the utilitarian, or whatever it is that my one highschool credit, Introduction to Psychology, Sociology, and Something-ology, has prepared me for.

Do we only enforce speeding violations because they normally result in fatalities (for every 10 km over 50, the chance to die increases exponentially)?

Is that why piracy is acceptable?

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...And as mentioned in my above post, my original arguments against piracy were grounded in principles of fair play. I will drop the potentially erroneous assumptions of a future scenario if you do - But a large part of your premise is based on the grounds that there's no loss to the developer because it's all "potential profits". So?

I'm not saying there's no loss. I'm saying it doesn't cost them money.  I'm just trying to be clear about potential profit versus loss because it seems like people were having confusion.  People casually refer to pirated games as "lost" sales but that's not technically correct since the act of pirating a game doesn't cost money or undo a completed transaction, it just represents one that never took place.  I figured if we're going to have a discussion it's important to make sure we're all using the right terms to mean the same thing. :P 

 

 

A Ferrari cost the company to produce it and the absence of it actively loses them money while a copy cost the other company nothing to produce and only hurts the company if the person who pirated it was even willing to pay money for their product.

 

And you said in the beginning of your response to me that you couldn't get behind anything I was saying and I thought that meant literally everything because I explained above why I thought people pirated and how companies could curve it.

But the original from which that copy is produced does cost a company money. There are also incidental costs if the developer allowed automatic updates (It cost TIS quite a bit of money), as well as file hosting (it cost -- and costs -- TIS quite a bit of money).

If, under these conditions, a copy is made, and a company has to pay for that copy (even if it's at a much lower price than the sale of the copy would have gained), then there is a bit of a problem, isn't there? Then we're actually taking something away from a developer, rather than simply making a copy of a non-corporeal good. Not that all games or pirates are the same, nor are all mediums identical to games.

If this prevents the creator from being compensated for their work and making a profit (if the investment is successful), there's a problem.

 

The original copy from which a pirated version is produced does cost a company money to develop, yes. And you're right about piracy directly causing loss in the case of TIS and Project Zomboid.  But ordinarily the cost of reproducing, distributing or updating a pirated copy of a game isn't paid by the developers. I talked about it a bit.

Also - and correct me if I'm wrong - but it seems the file hosting costs of TIS are also unusual for a game developer.  They continually release test builds on the forums which are several hundred megabytes each (the latest build was 232 MB zipped).  Ordinarilly you'd buy one copy of a completed game - covering the costs of transferring the game to your computer - and then maybe download a tiny patch in a few months.  Every time TIS releases a forum build a ton of people download the entire game again.  Since they're not buying the game a second (or fourth) time, this can result in significant loss on the part of the developer.  I'm just not sure what it has to do with piracy.

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I'm not saying there's no loss. I'm saying it doesn't cost them money.  I'm just trying to be clear about potential profit versus loss because it seems like people were having confusion.  People casually refer to pirated games as "lost" sales but that's not technically correct since the act of pirating a game doesn't cost money or undo a completed transaction, it just represents one that never took place.  I figured if we're going to have a discussion it's important to make sure we're all using the right terms to mean the same thing. :P

The original copy from which a pirated version is produced does cost a company money to develop, yes. And you're right about piracy directly causing loss in the case of TIS and Project Zomboid.  But ordinarily the cost of reproducing, distributing or updating a pirated copy of a game isn't paid by the developers. I talked about it a bit.

Also - and correct me if I'm wrong - but it seems the file hosting costs of TIS are also unusual for a game developer.  They continually release test builds on the forums which are several hundred megabytes each (the latest build was 232 MB zipped).  Ordinarilly you'd buy one copy of a completed game - covering the costs of transferring the game to your computer - and then maybe download a tiny patch in a few months.  Every time TIS releases a forum build a ton of people download the entire game again.  Since they're not buying the game a second (or fourth) time, this can result in significant loss on the part of the developer.  I'm just not sure what it has to do with piracy.

 

 

You're just rationalizing now. Just because TIS isn't paying a 'standard' amount in your mind in no way validates your point. Each company's case may be different, but it's safe to assume that in some percentage of cases it's costing the devs money which directly voids the entire point.

 

Edit: Unless your point is "sometimes pirating games doesn't directly cause developers to lose money," in which case congratulations, you could be right. Whether that's relevant to this discussion... as I already pointed out, probably not.

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I'm not saying there's no loss. I'm saying it doesn't cost them money.  I'm just trying to be clear about potential profit versus loss because it seems like people were having confusion.  People casually refer to pirated games as "lost" sales but that's not technically correct since the act of pirating a game doesn't cost money or undo a completed transaction, it just represents one that never took place.  I figured if we're going to have a discussion it's important to make sure we're all using the right terms to mean the same thing. :P 

 

 

 

As far as I recall, no one against piracy has ever made such an assertion as justification for their stance in this thread. The first person to bring out the point about potential profit/loss was using it as grounds to justify piracy. The same as numerous other pro - piracy posters since.

 

Just speaking personally, I don't recall any other piracy discussion I've been in where "lost sales" was used as grounds for being against piracy either. It's always been about the perspective that piracy is basically theft in digital form - Taking something without permission. "There's no real lost sales/money cost", on the other hand, has always been a hallmark argument by those who think piracy's okay. So the idea that the majority of anti - piracy opinion is arguing on the grounds of lost sales seems to me to just be a convenient straw man, really.

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Well I've said there's no way to justify acting outside the law.  I'm not arguing for piracy on the grounds that there is no monetary loss, I'm just pointing out that there often isn't.

 

It's true that all companies are different - especially indie developers, who are most likely to suffer from a lack of sales.  This means they may have less or no money to put back into the development of the game.  This is the main reason I don't like to pirate from indie developers.  Obviously I acknowledge that there are plenty of people with no qualms about this.

 

I admit, I tend to think of piracy more in terms of happening to completed games that have been published by larger companies.  That's probably what my earlier model of pirating a game is biased towards.  In this case the game simply lacks additional sales when pirates play the game for free.  The only way this would cause a monetary loss is if piracy were so rampant that it actually caused the game to be unprofitable - the actual cause of which can be tricky to pin down.

 

Just in case anybody thinks I'm still arguing for piracy, here's a way piracy harms game developers while not causing any monetary loss.

 

If a game is profitable, publishers want to invest more in that game.  If it is less profitable they may choose a safer investment for their money.  A team of developers might come up with a fun, original game and sucessfully develop and release it.  Because the product is new and unknown, people are going to be more hesitant to lay down their money.  Lots of people will pirate it: because they can, because they can't afford it, because they want to try it first, whatever the reason.  All that piracy is causing the game to be (or appear to be) less profiatble, all because the pirates had the option to play the game for free instead of taking a chance with their money.

 

When a game publisher looks at that lack of profit they'll know they could be getting more value for their money with something else.  After all, why fund an indie game that might fail when you could just pour money into another Call of Duty?  You don't have to waste money developing a new game engine.  It has an existing fanbase which is both massive and dedicated.  Much of its profit comes from console sales, which are much harder to pirate.  Best of all?  The game's selling point is the multiplayer, which flat out will not work with a pirated copy.  Even if pirates do steal the game they can't get the full enjoyment out of it unless they pay.

 

When a publisher sees a game being pirated they see a risk of loss.  This causes them to take less chances on games that don't have some sort of guarenteed profit involved.  Creative and original ideas get scrapped in favor of making the same game as last year.  That's how piracy hurts game developers without ever costing them a cent.

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But... even released games from AAA titles now often include updates, and those updates cost money. Further, they cost money in network charges which in turn raises internet prices for every day people. In that way, pirating not only costs developers money, it costs ME money.

 

Also... It seemed like almost everything you've posted up to now has been about potential lost sales so you can see where people might have been a bit confused?

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I was only trying to distinguish the difference between potential profit and loss in terms of what I considered an accurate model of pirating from a large publisher.  I also figured I'd give my personal thoughts on piracy while I was writing a massive wall of text anyway.  They weren't really meant to be related.  I even gave them seperate sections.

 

Reading back, people appear to have taken my personal feelings and experiences as an argument in defense of piracy, even though I never said it was right or justified, and somehow thought that by arguing that potential profit wasn't the same as loss I was saying that game developers aren't hurt by piracy.

 

In my next post I tried to clarify that I was only talking about monetary loss since that was not subjective and something that could be debated with facts.  I stated that I didn't think piracy was morally right.

 

You quoted me trying to explain that a developer's feelings on piracy are subjective and not something that most of us have the experience to discuss and made a comparison to rape.

 

I'm a little confused as to how it all went wrong myself.

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But... even released games from AAA titles now often include updates, and those updates cost money. Further, they cost money in network charges which in turn raises internet prices for every day people. In that way, pirating not only costs developers money, it costs ME money.

 

Also... It seemed like almost everything you've posted up to now has been about potential lost sales so you can see where people might have been a bit confused?

 

In my honest and probably very flawed opinion the raise in costs of games (and it's DLC's) are a fault of consoles >_>

 

Have you heard the new price for 1 game on PS4?!

 

Edit: I know that games on consoles cost more than on PC's. Firstly - the right to develop for the console, or license, it costs a ton. So if you develop a game multi-platform, I'll be damned for how much you have to pay to get your game working on all 3.

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You quoted me trying to explain that a developer's feelings on piracy are subjective and not something that most of us have the experience to discuss and made a comparison to rape.

 

I'm a little confused as to how it all went wrong myself.

 

This statement is a rather disingenuous now, when you deliberately take it out of context like that - The rape analogy was meant to illustrate how hurt feelings are no less real to physical/monetary harm, to the victim involved. There was never an attempt to make a direct comparison for piracy with rape.

 

As mentioned earlier, I believe where you were misunderstood is when you made an argument for losses needing to be material to be considered real. I believe we've already discussed separately how potential future scenarios are almost always speculation, so it's not really a strong argument for either side of the fence - Whether you're talking about the potential profits or losses.

 

The "Current non - material harm" perspective is where both I and Rathlord are coming from, since that's more readily justified. Since we're using that as the cornerstone of our arguments - Indeed, it's one of the only arguments to be had if you remove any discussion of future potentialities - it would be easy to misunderstand your arguing against that point, taken in conjunction with your earlier statements emphasizing the non - monetary nature of the loss, as arguing for piracy overall. That's my take on the debate thus far.

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This statement is a rather disingenuous now, when you deliberately take it out of context like that - The rape analogy was meant to illustrate how hurt feelings are no less real to physical/monetary harm, to the victim involved. There was never an attempt to make a direct comparison for piracy with rape.

disingenuous

Not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does.

 

I know what he meant. He could have explained himself without making a comparison to the devestating emotional trauma of rape, much less in a condescending tone.  We're all better than that, I hope.

 

As mentioned earlier, I believe where you were misunderstood is when you made an argument for losses needing to be material to be considered real.

I never made an argument like that and I really can't explain myself more simply than I already have. Go back and quote where I say "losses need to be material to be considered real."

 

I think you'll find that all I say is "potential profit is not the same as loss" and "I don't want to argue about things like hurt feelings when we could be debating with facts."

 

I don't understand how everyone continues to think i'm arguing anything other than the words I've written in my posts.

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