R* vs. Pirates; why should we pay the price?

[Cockstar]

Instead of issuing anti-piracy protection on the DVD, developers should target to take down torrent sites. I'll bet that would dramatically decrease piracy in both PC and console games. Not to mention legal buyers wouldn't have to "jump through hoops" and install unnecessary software which will anally molest their PC.

there are thousands of those torrent warez sites not to mention that there are many private warez sites where you can only get into with an invite

 

and even if they would do that, there is still the usenet, filehosts

 

 

they should just give it up already they are not shafting anyone but their customers

 

put in a serial so that multiplayer is locked to pirates - and that should be it

1000 sites that are easily found and shut down. It's not that hard. As long as they don't sue them, but threaten to, the numbers of pirates will decrease dramatically. And only a small percentage uses private sites, usenet and filehosts. In doing this over 80% of piracy would instantly diminish, cracks would be harder to come by, and people would realize it is alot easier to buy the games. Not to mention this in no way affects consumers.

Easily shut down?

Ill give you one you can try and shut down even with the fbi on ur side: the pirate bay.

 

good luck matey

[Big Lunk]

My personal take on it:

 

 

When i buy a game, it's not the disk and the code that i'm buying, it's the liscence to use it.

Sure, i am paying for the media the product is written on, but that is just a fraction of the cost. The bulk of it (not including profit, and covering development cost) is on the copywrights.

 

I get annoyed at DRM, (other than it is invasive, and usualy causes a whole load of problems for me) it stops me using a peice of software in a way i may need to.

 

Back when i was a little kiddy, when games come on cassette tape, it was normal for people to copy those tapes to a backup, and run the backup, as it was common for those tapes to be "eaten" by the player. In fact, some games companies ENCOURAGED you to make and use a backup version.

 

When i got my first floppy drive on my c64, i copied a large number of my favourite games onto disk, mainly as they where slightly faster.

I wasn't breaking any copyright laws, as i was not distributing, and they where only being used by me: the holder of the liscence.

 

 

Skip forward many years, and i recently had a DVD which would fail to play on my PC due to invasive DRM. I was practicaly forced to use an "illigal" dvd check bypass in order to access this product. Again, i am not distributing the software to others, and i am the only one using it, although from an image of the origional media on my harddrive.

 

 

 

There is currently only one company i can think of that seems to realise that you are not paying for a disk, but for the software on it, and suprisingly, it's Microsoft !

Yes, that big "evil" corperation that most people despise, will sell you a windows liscence seperate from the software/media if you already have an illigaly downloaded copy of Windows.

Edited December 8, 2008 by Big Lunk

[Cockstar]

There is currently only one company i can think of that seems to realise that you are not paying for a disk, but for the software on it, and suprisingly, it's Microsoft !

Yes, that big "evil" corperation that most people despise, will sell you a windows liscence seperate from the software/media if you already have an illigaly downloaded copy of Windows.

What do you mean by this, if youre trying to say that microsoft products such as windows cant be cracked and windows will always detect you have a cracked copy then all I can say is

[Big Lunk]

There is currently only one company i can think of that seems to realise that you are not paying for a disk, but for the software on it, and suprisingly, it's Microsoft !

Yes, that big "evil" corperation that most people despise, will sell you a windows liscence seperate from the software/media if you already have an illigaly downloaded copy of Windows.

What do you mean by this, if youre trying to say that microsoft products such as windows cant be cracked and windows will always detect you have a cracked copy then all I can say is

Sorry if that wasn't clear, but what i mean is that if you are using a cracked and illigal copy of windows, and you contact microsoft, tell them, and ask to buy a legitimate copy, they should in most cases sell you the rights to use windows, rather than sell you a full priced disk.

 

If you DOWNLOAD a copy of windows, like i said, you would assume it WAS cracked already, or packaged with the means to do so, right?

 

Hell, Windows is probably the most pirated peice of software in history.

[Nemon]

There is currently only one company i can think of that seems to realise that you are not paying for a disk, but for the software on it, and suprisingly, it's Microsoft !

Yes, that big "evil" corperation that most people despise, will sell you a windows liscence seperate from the software/media if you already have an illigaly downloaded copy of Windows.

What do you mean by this, if youre trying to say that microsoft products such as windows cant be cracked and windows will always detect you have a cracked copy then all I can say is

Wow, talk about failed comprehension.

[deadliest88]

well i think they overdid it this time with the potection okay they delayed them for 72 hours but for what ? sacrificing the budget the money could have been spent on more necesaryties like the performance issues to deliver a more stable product.

some titles barely have protection on them and they have amazing sales.

[Anamon]

* = NOTE: All developers take note, VALVe, Crytech, Bethesda etc, your HDR looks like crap and nothing remotely like real-time lifelike environments, stop tacking it on to games as a "feature" as its worthless and buggy, most of the recent games that choose to use it cluster**** AA and shadows which offer much more to the user in terms of visual appeal than the glut of shiny jaggy grey tones games, give it up until your capable of doing it properly then talk to us again.

I agree with you on that. I've seen games where the faces of characters were glowing, or a racing games where the dust the cars whirled up looked like sparks, they glowed so much! Who the heck came up with that? It looks totally ridiculous! Just like Crysis, the effects are so overdone that it actually looks butt-ugly, yet because of the technical specifications and because there's so much going on on-screen, you somehow feel you should actually find it beautiful... but aesthetically speaking, it was one of the ugliest games I ever played.

 

 

It makes me laugh that you all still call it piracy, when it is nothing of the sort. Piracy is a term coined by companies/industry to attempt to give the impression that it's a really bad thing. That it's on par with stereotypical pirates, raping and pillaging, sinking ships and stealing the gold of the good people, the traders and merchants.

 

I hear that a lot, but piracy in this meaning was actually coined as a term by the "pirates" themselves... it goes a long way back in the scene, before it had any public attention... but you're totally right on your comments about theft/copyright infringement. It always pisses me off if people who claim to know something about the subject bring the old analogy with stealing a copy of a game from the store... it's not rocket science to find out where the difference is!

 

About the MP3 player and blank media tax thing, we have that here in Switzerland. There's been some sort of outcry because everyone was considered to be potentially downloading/copying music, but most of the criticism was because the prices were calculated wrong and were too high. We mostly live with it because in turn, downloading (not uploading) music and movies is completely legal. Doesn't count for software (including games) though, kind of understandable considering software is used for commercial purposes.

 

I'm pretty happy with the laws we have here, for example it was completely legal for me to use the crack on my original GTA IV copy to bypass activation. In the rest of Europe, breaking a copy protection is outlawed, but in Switzerland it is allowed as long as "it is necessary to put the product in question to its intended use," which sounds pretty reasonable if you ask me.

[camdean]

Most countries that allow it, usualy allow dads to screw their daughters before the age of sixteen, but hey it's law lol

 

 

We have all been there at one point, heck I even thought it was the norm and asked the guy in the pc shop for copies before he flipped his lid and told me it was illegal lol

 

 

That was before I grew up, got a job grew a conscience and all that sh*te !

 

 

 

Pirates steal what they cant afford = scaffs, a binman in my area is named a 'Scaffy' - yep makes sense

[Cyc2u]

I think the problem is that R* arent noobs when it comes to making great games. Therefore, we shouldnt have a noob product when it ships. They should have this crap perfected by now. But they worry about pirates so much that a lot of their time was sacrificed on it. I mean god forbid if pirating is the reason they make a measly 2 billion instead of 2.01 billion. Theyre loaded beyond belief, and no other game makers put so much effort into stopping pirated copies. I hate pirates as much as the next honest buyer, but they failed at stopping it, and because of that they failed to put out a good product. That is unacceptable for a company with tons of experience and a loyal fanbase. The fanbase feels screwed over and they should.

 

And i have a feeling R* isnt such a honest company. When i saw the reviews for GTA 4 when the console came out i was shocked because they werent matching up with what the fans were saying. Gamespot gave it a perfect 10. Oh cmon now. And Gametrailers a 9.8 and in their review they talk about bad targeting, graphic glitches and cars not turning properly with the brakes.

The only conclusion to that is someones palms were greased.

If R* was indeed paying people off to say good things, then the gaming industry is friggin doomed. If we cant get honest reviews anymore from reliable sites because some pockets were filled, then who is left to trust?

[deadliest88]

I don`t think R* is a palm greaser cmon guys this game is trully great in every way thus its a shame they ported it in a poor condition and yes too much effort was spent on antipiracy which i think is just in vain. Because the games get cracked to hell anyway. You can`t stop piracy get it in your heads. Just keep annoying it with drunken cams etc... If you think its your money`s worth.

[Anamon]

Most countries that allow it, usualy allow dads to screw their daughters before the age of sixteen, but hey it's law lol

So you prefer laws that make it illegal for you to use software you bought if the DRM prevents you from using it? Well, to each his own, I guess. I'm quite happy to live in a country where big business does not have its dick up the ass of lawmakers and judges.

[sexmachine]

Well they might actually be real pirates, but instead of parots they have AK's, and instead of gold, they like to hijack wii's. Completely different.

Not realy, they just try and get something for free because they know they can, they dont consider damage or who it belongs to, they just want it for free, they could of been a worker in an office but chose to live the corrupted life, their choice, their bad.

 

 

I work on boats so pirates are seen as the scummiest sh*t ever, I'm sure you can understand when some group of people try and use boats as a way to free cash, it pisses me of, same with gaming pirates, just GET A JOB YOU SCAFFS

 

here have some free cookies

yes because everybody in life has the choice to work in an office ?

 

where did you pull this retarded sh*t out of ? i doubt your ass is capable of doing so

 

 

not everybody in life has the same privileges you had so f*ck off