Widescreen Gaming Forum

For instance, I don't pirate games for the same reason I don't take them from the local store without paying for them first.

File sharing and Stealing are two very different things. (I do understand that your not saying that they are, but im just making a point that most people fail to realize)


"Would you steal a this purse?" "Would you steal a car?"

No, but I sure as fraking hell would make a copy of them.

Dafox,

I'm glad you're willing to debate the point of piracy/theft. I'll assume we can go about this as gentlemen, so I'm willing to engage.

File sharing and stealing are not automatically the same thing, I agree. Stealing is acquiring a product via illegitimate means (without payment or permission)--file sharing is simply sharing data on a network. The crux of the matter is the content itself. I can file-share my own family pictures because they are mine to do with as I please. If I share a commercial product like a game (which I do not have the authority to do), then I have enabled others to acquire that game without payment or permission.

Now, if the digital transfer of my game over a network was limited to only 1 recipient, and it automatically resulted in the game disappearing from my hard drive (no longer in my possession), then that is tantamount to me giving a game CD to a friend, aka, a gift. I am finished with a product, so I give it away, or I even have the right to re-sell it. But it is no longer in my possession.

The fact that digital content can be perfectly replicated and distributed without removing the original source does not mean the product/content is legitimately acquired. If I could 'copy' a Ford Mustang at will and distribute them to an unlimited number of people, without payment to Ford or their permission to do so, do you think a judge would dismiss Ford's lawsuit against me or send me to jail? I may not be 'taking' anything, per se, but such actions have the potential to kill any company because it directly cuts off revenue. That's why I would be in jail.

For every customer remotely aware of drm at all there's a dozen more that are clueless and will buy the game regardless.

Even if every single person who understands drm and the unforgiven restrictions it puts on the software you've paid for boycott EA, it would still get way more sales than it needs to keep afloat.

The problem with near monopolies is, they're same as a monopoly, no matter what happens, they'll crush anything in their path.

So...now your attacking my budgeting. Thanks Cranky.

Think of it as a recommendation. You've said you have a full time job, and you've also said you have no money. This is a problem. The usual solution is better budgeting.

I'm out of this conversation, mostly because you've pissed me off.

You pissed me off too with your attitude that gaming is your personal entitlement. Yet I'm still here.

File sharing and Stealing are two very different things.

A common argument despite being wrong. The argument tries to allude to file sharing and pilfering being different, which is true, but makes the fallacy of equating stealing with pilfering. Stealing is a very broad topic - it covers pilfering, but it also covers plenty of other things that do not involve displacing a physical object, such as fraud, theft of services, sneaking into a theater through the exit door, and pirating games.

"Would you steal a this purse?" "Would you steal a car?"
No, but I sure as fraking hell would make a copy of them.

I'd rather you just steal them. Make it possible to copy cars and the car company goes out of business. Make it possible to copy purses (more importantly their contents) and you've destroyed the economy forever.

Furthermore, I can produce condescending images masquerading as pictorial graphs to show oversimplified points too.

So...now your attacking my budgeting. Thanks Cranky.

Think of it as a recommendation. You've said you have a full time job, and you've also said you have no money. This is a problem. The usual solution is better budgeting.

Or realizing that some of us don't have the extravagant sums of money to pay for things other than essential modern civilized needs.

Gaming class computers, broadband Internet connections, and nice big widescreen monitors don't count as "essential" needs. If you have these things, you have enough income to pay for entertainment every now and then.

Gaming class computers, broadband Internet connections, and nice big widescreen monitors don't count as "essential" needs. If you have these things, you have enough income to pay for entertainment every now and then.

Gaming class computers and nice big widescreen monitors aren't monthly dedications, unless someone purchased them on credit in which case the money that would otherwise be spent on payments for those items anyways.

And why assume broadband internet access?

Fair enough, you guys both got me on that one.

I was just discussing piracy with a friend minutes ago, he made a good point (Reminded me) that even if there was no such thing as piracy, It would barely help. I know that I would not buy THAT many more games, I would play the games that i bought more and I would be wise with what I spent my money on. The point is 95% of the games that I pirate I would not buy even if it was the only option of obtaining it.

I'm just a poor student; I can barely afford the 1-2 games that I buy every year.
At the same time, without piracy I really would not be interested in building a decent PC (thats where most of my extra money ends up, rather than games, a PC that is needed to play them) which in turn is good for the economy.
Same with the DS and Wii for example, I purchased both of those for the sole reason that I new that I could get any game free. I would have never ever even thought to buy either of them if it was not for piracy.

TL;DR A pirated copy is not a lost sale.

I'd change that to a pirate 'sale' is a possibly lost real sale. One who'll download has an equal chance to have bought vs not have bought the title. Just because it's downloaded doesn't include that were it unavailable to download it would be bought, it's an assumption used far too often.

As for file sharing vs piracy, I always considered file sharing normal as long as the file isn't copyrighted. Linux isos, free independent films and a number of other things are file shared to save the maker some bandwidth fees yet they're always grouped up with the 'bad' ones.

The games I download, I'd never buy. Mercs 2 is a good example. Download, try, delete.

The ones that i would, i do.

Already paid for Warhead but I'm not installing until i find a crack.

[quote]

So...now your attacking my budgeting. Thanks Cranky.

Think of it as a recommendation. You've said you have a full time job, and you've also said you have no money. This is a problem. The usual solution is better budgeting.

Or realizing that some of us don't have the extravagant sums of money to pay for things other than essential modern civilized needs.

[quote]Gaming class computers, broadband Internet connections, and nice big widescreen monitors don't count as "essential" needs. If you have these things, you have enough income to pay for entertainment every now and then.

Gaming class computers and nice big widescreen monitors aren't monthly dedications, unless someone purchased them on credit in which case the money that would otherwise be spent on payments for those items anyways.

And why assume broadband internet access?

This is true. The ideology comes FROM budgeting. For instance lets say you put $200 in savings for food. You want to buy a game and have no money that hasn't been budgeted. You say "I have no money" because you have money that is to be used for food. Herego: I have no money. Whatever I budget, after that goes to paying off student loans, and after that hopefully new tires before winter. I have a 17" LCD hooked up to my computer, ALL of my PC equipment, stereo equipment, even most of my furniture are items I acquired while I lived at home. Now I live with my wife, I have many expenses and cannot be as robust with my income as I once were. I agree with Dem, unless you know someone life situation I highly recommend you keep your month shut when making personal comments. (and btw: I have no highspeed internet...just your boring 768kb downspeed)

I am a finance major, my finances are solid...just lower.

Here we go again...

Confirmed - Crysis Warhead Limited Installs & Online Authentication

For anyone concerned, that non-transferable license blurb is absolute horse pucky in the US at least. The First Sale doctrine means you can give away or resell any product you want to. Autodesk attempted to stop an ebay seller from reselling their software under such "license terms" and the judge slapped them in the face and gave the ebay seller the green-light.

Warhead's rating on Amazon:


Conveniently, after serious forum angst over the past couple of days from eager members asking about Warhead's DRM, the entire Warhead forum gets locked today as it is ported to a new site:



I'm going to try a little experiment on their forum....
-EDIT-
Here's my thread on their forum. Got locked in 31 minutes.

Crysis Warhead is released on steam, It SHOULD'NT have any activation stuff but, these days ya never know.

Crysis Warhead is released on steam, It SHOULD'NT have any activation stuff but, these days ya never know.

Not promising:


Bioshock had the same DRM on Steam as the CD. I have no real faith that EA would 'clean' the game and use only Steam's DRM.

Here's the angry thread on the Steam Forums:
ANGRY

EA have no reason to provide the Steam copy of the game with SecuROM removed... not least of all because it would provide an 'in' for the crackers to circumvent the DRM. Of course, since Bioshock was broken, getting around SecuROM8 (I think it's 8...) isn't as hard as it was when it was a new and untested system, so they're pretty much pissing into the wind anyway.

edit:

I particularly love the way that the publishers are making out 'SecuROM' to be this blanket technology. This is so when the internet shitstorm that descends due to this latest version gets reported to the non-internet generation, they can make it sound like all games use the same SecuROM.

(I mention this because EA's support page says 'All Crysis games use SecuROM'... yes, we know that - the first game needed the disc in the drive, for example... what you don't intimate is the fact that there is about as much difference between SecuROM 6/7 and SecuROM 8 as there is between a bumble bee and a nest of angry hornets. Both are irritating, but one so much more so. ;))

edit 2:

Honestly, I'd accept 'rented' games in the nature of limited installs if one thing and one thing only happened: every game that used it dropped to a fiver. That way, I'd play it once, get my money's worth, and throw the damned thing away.

edit 3:

Y'know something that really pisses me off?

If the pirates react like they did with Spore, Warhead will become the second most pirated game ever (at least until RA3 comes out). Other people won't buy the game to make a moral stand against this sort of bollocks DRM.

This leads to Crysis Warhead sales being nearly non-existent.

And that leads to Crytek going console exclusive like they threatened a while ago.

Not only because of piracy. But also because of the stuff that was supposed to protect them from piracy.

:(

Yeah, the BS spin machine is gonna need an after-market cooler with all the SecuROM stroking going on. ;) :D

Games for $5? I might go for such rentals. Of course, if that means I still get to enjoy SecuROM causing Windows Explorer to crash...no deal there, either.

Of course, since Bioshock was broken, getting around SecuROM8 (I think it's 8...) isn't as hard as it was when it was a new and untested system, so they're pretty much pissing into the wind anyway.

Thats my biggest argument on anti DRM.

DRM only protects once, Bioshock is the best example of this. SecuROM8 worked just great for Bioshock, It took along the lines of 2 weeks to crack it, amateur pirates (I.E the kids that just use bit torrent and public torrent sites at that..) got ansy and you know what some of them actually bought the game because they got sick of waiting.

Now its just pointlessly pissing off everyone for no reason.


The cracking of SecuROM8 is so easy now, All you have to do is essentially copy/paste a SecuROM emulator into the exe, While its not Optimal it keeps the masses of pirates happy since it means a fast release, even if its not a quality release.

RELOADED (the group that cracked Spore first) really does only seem concerned with piracy, they want to please the masses of pirates, unlike other cracking groups which want to please The Scene, and archive what they have done. Reloaded's releases are not even up to the rather low quality standards that the Scene has set, Spore is 'nuked' meaning that its not acceptable and any other group can provide a proper release.
Maybe I'm just an elitist jerk but I have no even downloaded Spore yet because I refuse to support complete rubbish. A good crack by a group that cares, removes SecuROM it makes the game run BETTER in most cases.

Edit: I do realized I'm going to get attacked in multiple points because of this post.

I do realized I'm going to get attacked in multiple points because of this post.

I do prefer context-sensitive targeting. Let's see...first the feet, then the elbows, then kneecaps.... :lol:

Just kidding. I have no reason to attack you, and I certainly tried not to present myself that way in previous posts.

I agree that games are superior products when stripped of DRM, because they are simpler to use and entail fewer variables that could cause problems. This is simply a fact, though for some people facts are not very persuasive (yeah, I'm glaring at you, EA).

I just bought Warhead without knowing the DRM until it asks me to go online for activiation. This part is acceptable but not the limited (3 times ?) activation part.

To avoid being attacked personally in this topic, try not to use your personal situation as reason/excuse for pirating. Eg instead of saying "I am a poor student and I dont have extra money to buy games...bla bla bla", make it third personal like " There are students who usually dont have extra money to buy games...."

And, btw, feet...elbows...kneecaps? I usually dont bother with these but go straight for the headshot. It works best in FPS. :)

I just bought Warhead without knowing the DRM until it asks me to go online for activiation. This part is acceptable but not the limited (3 times ?) activation part.

To avoid being attacked personally in this topic, try not to use your personal situation as reason/excuse for pirating. Eg instead of saying "I am a poor student and I dont have extra money to buy games...bla bla bla", make it third personal like " There are students who usually dont have extra money to buy games...."

And, btw, feet...elbows...kneecaps? I usually dont bother with these but go straight for the headshot. It works best in FPS. :)

Starforce is/was a mess. I first encountered it with problem is Silent Hunter 2. Tremendous installation problem! After that, I stopped buying Silent Hunter 3 and 4. My strongest protest for this silly protection system. (And I did not pirate them either)

PS Meant to "edit" but somehow clicked "Quote"