Pc Gamers, Do You pirate Your games?

TheDoc

Will buy the odd big game that warrants a purchase.

But i pirate most games because A) i refuse to pay what in ireland is rip off prices

and

I'm sick of being let down by crap,

pretty much the same reason i dont go cinema anymore, too much disappointment and waste of money.

thebman

This is becoming worryingly true for Pc gaming:
http://xkcd.com/488/

Sephiroth_dude

Never have and I never will,I think its wrong,if you want to play a game,then you should buy it and support the industry.

eVeNtInE

This post has been deleted.

MOH

Bought loads of games over the years, never even thought about pirating a game until last year, and the whole Bioshock limited activation thing.

Disk checks are fine, having to go online as part of the install process is something that bugs the hell out of me - was on dial-up when I got HL2 and took ages. But limited installs is a whole other story. I'll never buy another game that implements any kind of online check with limited installs. And I'll be unlikely to buy games using any form of Securom, even if it's disk check only, since at the end of the day you're then supporting Securom and their DRM crap.

Aside from Securom installing itself silently on your machine, being difficult to get rid of, and dictating to you what you can and can't have running, limited install games are more expensive, because there's no way you'll be able to sell them on second hand for anything near as much as you'd normally get.

I'd never bought the whole "I'm pirating it as a demo" excuse. If you go to see a film in the cinema and it's rubbish, tough. If you buy a game and don't like it, you can generally sell it on in the first week or two and recover a fair bit of what you spent on it. But not any more, since publishers are using DRM to kill the second hand gaming market, whjich is what this is really about.

Games that I would have bought in the last year if they hadn't Securom:
Bioshock, Mass Effect, Crysis, Crysis Warhead, Farcry 2.

I bought Spore without realising it had Securom. I could have handled the fact that it was rubbish, could probably have sold it for €20 in the first week, but no chance with all the Securom controversy.

And I'm fairly peeved at Bethesda at the moment. I was dithering but deciding against Fallout 3, but when I heard the whole non-invasive DRM spiel, I thought fair dues to at least one company for not including this rubbish, I'll support that. By the time I heard it had Securom, my pre-order had shipped. At least it's not limited installs, and I don't know how many people have had issues with genuine copies of the games, but it's still Securom.

So it looks like I won't be paying for any more EA games. Or anything else in the Farcry/Crysis series.

On the other hand, I'm more likely to buy games I wouldn't have before if they're confirmed after release not to have any kind of invasive DRM, so they'll be getting my money, and I'll be broadening my horizons a bit. The only losers are publishers who treat their customers like criminals.

GothPunk

Seems there are quite a few people who pirated because they were poor students. I'd usually just wait a few months for the game to drop in price rather than pirate it. Myself and the girlfriend usually go halfs on a game, install it on both our systems and use no-cd cracks. I guess that is piracy, but I think any reasonable person wouldn't have a problem with us sharing our games. Kind of like L31mr0d's mix tape example from the Spore DRM thread.

I think it's a bit of a null point to say that you pirate because of Irelands rip off prices when there are plenty of online retailers happy to sell you games cheaply. With free postage even. I don't actually care whether someone pirates or not, but the weird justifications are always amusing.

magick

like someone said before ill do it to see how it runs on my pc and if its really an enjoyable game ill go back to ill buy it.

Sadly this didnt work out for Undying, best halloween game ever!

ShadowHearth

Well when i was still living in lithuania, i was moustly pirating games. But I had bought licensed starcarft, warcrat3,diabl2+ lod. I bought them becouse i whanted play online.

Now i live here and i make enought money to buy games, so i had newer pirated since i came here. And honestly i cba downloading, and dont whant to risk get some worms on pc with cracks and key generators.

Now you can judge me as much as you whant, that i am/(was) pirate. But when you earn 100eu per month and game costs 50 eu... Well i pirated...

Now to all those who will say: "thats not an excuse!". Well... i dont look for one, i liked playing games, and i do love now. And that was only way to play it.

If you defending developers so hard, i have to say this: i still whant to find way how to get mine money back for crapy games i have bought: juiced,SPORE,age of conan( thats just the ones i remembered on the spot) . So i think we even now...

P.s. i newer pirated from blizzard, and i newer will.

Krieg

I used to never pirate until last week when Far cry 2 was released. At the moment, far cry 2 is the only game Ive pirated. When I started playing it I was really impressed and planned to buy it, but after the third hour, the mediocrity hit

I remember I used to get a good few hours out of each game (40+ hours)
But the majority of the games I have purchased in the last 18 months got about 5-10hrs play and then placed on the shelf.

So I think Im going to go down the road of cowardly theft.

Holsten

Yes, sometimes.

thebman

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Wow, Interesting, less than 20% of people in this poll never pirate :eek: I expected much higher (maybe its too early in the poll tho)

No, I think you'll find in the gamer section of a single website that you will inevitabley find a biased poll.

Its like going to a heroin enthusiast forum and asking have they ever stolen to purchase a fix.

People here are addicted to games and no matter how many they buy they'll always want more they can't afford espeically given how over priced games actually are.

Overheal

I'll gladly buy a game thats good value. But when a company goes around and becomes an asshat about it sure, I will kick them in the ass. EA in particular. Theyve pissed me off in recent years for worthless tech support after I spent $50 on the C&C Decade pack. Basically became a plastic cheese cutter :mad:

MooseJam

I download the new releases, over the last week or so I downloaded FC2 , Fallout3, brothers in arms HH, X3, Dead space and a few others, if I was to buy them they would have cost me 300 plus, madness absolute madness, I don't think any game is worth 50 notes, don't care how good it is, I do buy lots of games though, as soon as they have reached the 14.99 section I'll pick up a copy if it's good.

Cuddlesworth

PogMoThoin wrote: »

:rolleyes: Thats a stupid comparrison, can a mod please delete it, it adds nothing to this thread

L31mr0d wrote: »

I'm pointing out that no matter what way you decide to try justify it to yourself, its still wrong. The same excuses are used throughout every unlawful act in society but because this is seen as a white collar crime people seem to think its something that doesn't matter.

When you pirate a game you put people out of jobs, you are taking something for free that groups of people spent years of their time dedicated too. When I was immature I pirated games, now I don't. I rate a game a much better investment then a night out which costs me more.

Sorry if anybody took it the wrong way.

steviec

MooseJam wrote: »

I download the new releases, over the last week or so I downloaded FC2 , Fallout3, brothers in arms HH, X3, Dead space and a few others, if I was to buy them they would have cost me 300 plus, madness absolute madness, I don't think any game is worth 50 notes, don't care how good it is, I do buy lots of games though, as soon as they have reached the 14.99 section I'll pick up a copy if it's good.

If paying for them is "madness", don't play them.

Apart from anything else you can't possibly have enough time to actually enjoy all those games at once, so if you were actually paying you'd pick out the best ones and make the most of them.

I hate the whole "it's too expensive" argument. I find lots of things too expensive, so I do without. I don't steal. If people do without what they can't afford, it gives manufacturers incentive to bring price down and find new markets. If people who can't (won't) afford it just steal instead, then there's no point bringing the price down because most of them will continue deluding themselves that stealing is morally ok regardless.

PC games tend to be typically 10 or 20 quid cheaper than console games. That doesn't stop them selling far less and being pirated far more. It's nothing to do with price - it's to do with paying for something versus not paying for something.

MooseJam

steviec wrote: »

It's nothing to do with price - it's to do with paying for something versus not paying for something.

I don't know about that, if the new releases were priced 9.99 I'd definately buy them, probably not all at once but over time

deceit

I never pirate games but i can understand people pirating games to get around the likes of the securom or steam crap. I only found out about securom from this thread but hate having to go online to set up some of my games, my games machine is an offline only machine as with work commitments dont get time to play online. I never bought the pc version of bio shock because of the limited activation but bought a 360 and a copy of it to play it.

dreamers75

PogMoThoin wrote: »

This poll is for Pc gamers only.

I admit I pirate most games to try them out, if I enjoy them I buy them to support the developer. Please answer truthfully.

Edit: please tell me if You any of the options above should be edited in any way and could someone else start a similar poll for consoles (I'm not a console owner, it doesn't interest me)

What complete bollox, you buy them only if you need to play them online, like everyone else does.

tman

Price is never really a factor for me. I have no problem handing over 40+ notes for a 360 or PS3 game, and PC games are no different (only cheaper).
Copy protection/DRM is never really an issue either. While most people here make a big song and dance about it, for the majority of users it will just go unnoticed.

With a 20Mb uncapped connection, it's getting increasingly harder to wait for a new release. FarCry 2 for example was downloaded and installed in less than an hour (before the street date), meanwhile I'm still waiting for my "preorder" copy to arrive in the post...
I guess I could use services like Steam, but I'd rather have something physical to show for my money

There are some games that I have absolutely no qualms about pirating however. The most recent NFS for example (which I never even got around to playing anyway)

mayordenis

I don't pirate games as a rule but I'm one of the people who has really been let down by retarded DRM

I payed for Spore and Far Cry 2 - Special Editions of both might I add - and was not able to play either them day 1 as the cd-key were not registerable - and my EA account was cock-blocking spore.
I still have no wish to pirate games but if they don't stop ****ing me around I'll just abandon PC gaming and pray daily that the publishers suffer painful death.

Age of Conan: Hybornian Adventures had Securom on the disc . . . . . . .

PogMoThoin

dreamers75 wrote: »

What complete bollox, you buy them only if you need to play them online, like everyone else does.

Eh, Why then am I looking at cases with original disks for STALKER, Crysis, COD4, Call of Juarez, Oblivion to name a few? There's 25-30 games on a shelf beside me, all paid for. I sometimes wait for them to drop in price, but if i enjoy them i buy them eventually.

L31mr0d

I'm the same, if I truly think a game deserves my money I'll buy it. Check out my collection of games for my PC

Pyr0

I download most of my games I play bar the multiplayer games. I downloaded Fallout 3 the other day cause I couldn't wait any longer, gonna buy it along with RA3 (which I also downloaded for a test) and Crysis Wars. I bought company of heroes box set to play online after I downloaded it, same with Supreme Commander and Forged Alliance.

the_syco

The ones I pirate are often no longer in shops (seriously, where can I buy Blues Brothers?).

I got RA3, which I'll be buying, as I buy all C&C games, and I'll be buying the new GTA when it comes out for the same reason. I'll be buying Crysis once my gaming machine is working again.

I plan to buy the Orange pack as well, as Portal is fun, as is TF2.

Saying that, when I have lots of money to squander, I usually use it to boost the PC's power.

Overheal

I prefer the philosophy adopted by Stardock Games, whom do not consider a pirated copy as a lost sale. You make the game for the people that pay for it, simply put, and stop worrying about the opinions of some stupid kids who went and got it off btmon. Which is why they dont use DRM in their titles.

Believe me, I don't think anyone is being put out of work here. Its absolutely insane the revenue generated by some of these titles. Look at the release of Halo, 2 and 3. And how much did 3 cost? 70 euro? The average game boy game costs 50?

The fact of the matter is more times than not I will buy a game second hand, and long after the developer would have received a penny for it anyway. So you can effectively strike the same weak argument about Developers losing their jobs to people that buy used games at the bin in Gamestop, too. Meanwhile, I'll be at the video game dungeon at the flea market.

Nevyn

So you want people to admit to a crime and expect them not to be banned for it ?

PogMoThoin

Thaedydal wrote: »

So you want people to admit to a crime and expect them not to be banned for it ?

Banned by who? Its not against the charter, the votes in the poll are private

1. Posting about Warez.
This means that if you post anything on how to obtain, copy, hax0r, backup, get a serial number for or otherwise copy or circumvent copy protection. We don't care if you want to back up your perfectly legal copy of The Sims. Copying protected cd's is off-topic anyway. There is a zero tolerance for this. If you break this rule, you will be permanently banned and your post will be edited and/or deleted.

The reason we are so strict on this is that if Games was a place were such things were discussed then boards.ie could be shut down by the Garda for hosting warez monkeys.

It's not against charter rules to admit that you've downloaded a pirated game but I'd prefer if people didn't admit to breaking the law on boards. By admitting to pirate, you're theoretically providing evidence for a highly unlikely but possible prosecution.

Max_Damage

1. Posting about Warez.
This means that if you post anything on how to obtain, copy, hax0r, backup, get a serial number for or otherwise copy or circumvent copy protection. We don't care if you want to back up your perfectly legal copy of The Sims. Copying protected cd's is off-topic anyway. There is a zero tolerance for this. If you break this rule, you will be permanently banned and your post will be edited and/or deleted.

The reason we are so strict on this is that if Games was a place were such things were discussed then boards.ie could be shut down by the Garda for hosting warez monkeys.

It's not against charter rules to admit that you've downloaded a pirated game but I'd prefer if people didn't admit to breaking the law on boards. By admitting to pirate, you're theoretically providing evidence for a highly unlikely but possible prosecution.

I'm sure the gardaí are really concerned about pirated computer games. :rolleyes:

Overheal

Thaedydal wrote: »

So you want people to admit to a crime and expect them not to be banned for it ?

Thaed, we love you, but please draw a line somewhere. The Television related moderators are equally unoblivious that users resort to piracy. The line is that you are not to discuss or provide instruction on how to do such things.

And for the record: I'm a pirate. Arr. But boards had nothing to do with it.

MooseJam

if boards started banning people for breaking laws there wouldn't be many people left what with software/music/tv piracy, speeders, drink drivers, litterers, drunks, drug users blah de blah blah