My rationalistic of game piracy - right, or misguided?

[Icarus47]

Right off the bat, let me point a few things out:

 

1: this is a theoretical discussion, all the games I own are fully paid for, or gifted from a friend.

2: I do not endorse the pirating of games software, rather I believe in supporting the developers.

3: As a student and prospective employee of the videogames industry, I fully understand the impacts of games piracy.

4: with all the above in mind, for the love of God, don't ban me :-)

 

Okay, having said that, let me explain a thought that has come to me, and settled for some time.

 

I love games. I do.

 

And nothing gives me more satisfaction than walking home from the local Gamestation with a box of wonders in my coat pocket, or even downloading from Steam, that's equally as awesome.

 

But the thing is, there's no try-before-you-buy with some games. No playable demos, only a short trailer and a vid of some dude playing the game and sucking at it. Then an acquaintance of mine quite happily admitted to pirating games and cracking them (or downlaoding a crack) purely to combat this reason.

 

This got me to thinking, since we live in a society where we all want a guarantee we'll enjoy that for which we part with our hard earned cash, and so long as the action is used for that reason and that reason alone, can pirating games be used in place of a non-existent playable demo?

 

Now obviously there is little to gain from pirating games purely for financial saving, as most of the time the pirated versions are bugged, the cracked exe often negates the use of many mods and script extenders, you have no technical support, and people on the forum fill burn you forever for it.

 

But to torrent a game and play it for a few hours to make an INFORMED decision on weather to buy the game or not, I feel is an acceptable practice. Worst case scenario (ignoring the "screw buying it" outcome) is the individual doesn't like the game and deletes it. Best case, they love the game, want to mod it, find they cant and go right ahead and buy it full and propper.

 

Seems like a practical practice to me, what are your thoughts?

 

PS: For those of you who might think "Oh, he's trying to justify games HE'S pirated", let me say this: Read my opening statements again, look at my profession. And for the record, I don't have to justify myself to cynical idiots on the web, or in RL, so please, would you kindly take a long walk off a short cliff? No offence.

[Jopo1980]

You give a good rationale. If you like the game, then buy it. It only costs about as much as a couple of burger meals, so it isn´t that much. However, I cannot support piracy officially because of forum rules, so in principle piracy is wrong.

[Vagrant0]

But the thing is, there's no try-before-you-buy with some games. No playable demos, only a short trailer and a vid of some dude playing the game and sucking at it. Then an acquaintance of mine quite happily admitted to pirating games and cracking them (or downlaoding a crack) purely to combat this reason.

The problem is that this usually leads to people just never getting around to buying the game they've been playing for 30+ hours. Once they've played through the game when it was pirated, they have no reason to buy it or pay the company who made that game. Although, yes, everyone has those moments where they saw a cool trailer and bought a game on impulse (called Duke Nukem Forever), But the reality of all this is that it just doesn't work, and it doesn't change the fact that you're STILL illegally downloading as well as uploading that game.

 

Even as far as game demos go, companies tend to only show the content they want people to see in those demos... It's called marketing. If you're gaming on a budget, you just have to make your money count and only buy games weeks after they've been released and enough reviews of the full game are available. It's called patience and self-control and is a very useful personal skill to cultivate.

 

closed

[bben46]

As Vagrant said, people who steal a game with the good intention of buying it if they like it actually rarely get around to paying for it. And what about the ones they stole that they didn't like enough to pay for, but still played all they way through? :rolleyes:

 

Also, from psychology 101, when you don't pay a fair price for something, you do not value it as much. So, in the thieves mind, the game he stole is not worth as much as the one he bought - and he uses this as a rationale for stealing it. :facepalm:

 

Please support the game makers, or you may not have games to play in the future. :thumbsup: