Hello i am from Mexico and after reading all your opinions i think you are very naive about piracy, for example portal, in my country many of mi friends have the money, like the game, and still get a pirate version of it, then portal 2 is out and still get a pirate version of the game , because in my country the people sell pirate games for about 10% of the price in big markets, and many people in my country think that if they buy this “economic” version is the same as the “real” version.
i have a steam account, a xbox 360 and all my games are legal, but if you enter in many other people houses you see a 50 inch led TV and 50-60 pirate games of xbox 360 and many more pc games, here the piracy is so big that the people don’t care if they can or can’t buy the game they only want the cheap version, you really see the problem to me when you say that piracy is not good or bad, for me is totally bad for the game industry, a one more thing this is in all Latin America not only in Mexico, think globally not only in USA(sorry for my English)
1: make a GOOD product: GreenHeart Games did excactly that with GameDev Tycoon.
2: Make it AFFORDABLE: Again, $8 for a game that keeps you occuied for ages? that’s a "steal"
3: Make it AVAILABLE: Game Dev Tycoon can be bought in most any country, for the same price everwhere.
4: TALK to your customers/product holders: Whether those using your product has a legal or a pirated version, doesn’t matter. TALK with them. UNDERSTAND their point of view. Argue your point of view objectively, and do NOT go gung-ho on them. RIAA et.al. has done this for the past decade, and people like them less and less.
5: the more intrusive copy-protection, the more people will pirate your product. That’s a simple fact. Because I (for one) know I’m more likely to continue to play with a cracked version of a game(even after I’ve bought a legal copy), rather than being interupted every 2 minutes by some copyprotection scheme. Nothing makes people lose interest in your game/app/whatever like intrusive copyright-protection systems.
All in all, though: Around where I come from, people “pirate” as a way of Try-before-you-buy, if I don’t like the “pirated” game, I’ve not lost any money. If I DO like it, I’ll buy it first chance I get (although, I still would play the cracked version if it turns out the copyright-protection keeps me from playing uninterupted.
And also, a good demo of a game, is woth its’ weight gold. A good demo may persuade more people to buy the full version over pirating it.
Completly agree with you on this.
So many games i will not play because the developer makes the game unplayable and for sure extremely annoying to play, with all sorts of methods to ruin the game experience.
The one i hate most is always online ( for a single player game )
I have a decent laptop and spent a lot of times travelling and internet is not available, meaning my game is unplayable…
Unless i get a pirated version of the game, which has all the annoying features removed.
I am the kind the person that does buy the games I like, and sadly lately with all the new stuff to ‘prevent’ piracy, I tend to stick playing my old games a lot more then buying a new one.
I just want to say that i initially saw this game on Steam, pirated the game, played it for 4 hours straight, then went on Steam and bought it. Had it NOT been for piracy there would have been no sale for me.
Those who complain are the ones who make the bad games (i’m looking at you EA and others). The ones who want to cash in on day 0 expansion packs that sell bigger maps than what the actual game have and other stuff.
You know, the companies who make games that people don’t even want to pirate because they are so bad.
I pirate alot, but i also buy alot.
Paradox Interactive get my money even before i tried the game i’m buying.
Blizzard doesn’t anymore.
EA don’t get my money even if i like their game.
Actually the rampant piracy just shows that demo’s are almost never trustworthy in any way, shape or form.
No. I never consider downloading a demo. I used to though.
In my experience demo’s are no good since it’s usually just a tutorial or some such you get to try for 5 mins.
That’s 5 minutes that can be tailored to give you a false view of what the game is or no view at all (not saying this is what was done here). Over time i have just learned to completely overlook demo’s due to the availability and superiority of piracy.
Not sure if i need to say this, but here it is:
No pun intended.
It’s okay to post in old threads as long as you are on topic but please don’t triple post.
Edit: stop liking this post
Edit 2: my most liked post tells other people to not like it.