Thursday Next

Epic Space Battles! Armies! Just two of the things you won't see much of in this film! At least it isn't spoilerific I guess... Also, very glad that special edition artwork tends to veer away from Orange/Blue-itis.

I smile as she cries out.

If I were to actually accuse you of something, I'd be pretty obvious about it instead of trying to include you in an explanation as to why pirates are generally so overly defensive. For example, in my last post I'm accusing you of not reading my post properly. In the one before that I'm accusing you of ad hominem (as I've already admitted, pretty foolishly) and of pretty terrible psychoanalysis. Ok, this is getting a little personal and I didn't intend that. I incorrectly inferred that your description of white knight, codblop, sheeple was directed at me. For that I apologise. As for the Robert Ebert thing, a rebuttal is not a generally defensive attitude. It was a direct response to an accusation. If you are asked the (debatable given the negative connotation of the word "pirate") neutral question "Do you pirate games?" and the response is "Yes, but..." and then some form of excuse, it implies, or rather, I infer, that you are of the belief that piracy is either wrong or at least perceived as wrong by the person asking, or the audience listening to your response. If someone said "Have you heard the latest Muse song?" I would reply "Yes." If you said "Have you heard the latest Justin Bieber song?" I would reply "Yes, but only because I was getting a lift to the station from my younger sister and she had it on in the car." I don't feel the need to defend listening to Muse because they are awesome on a stick. I feel the need to defend hearing a Bieber song because I know that listening to it is morally wrong. Admittedly this speaks more to my mentality than to that of every other person in the world, but as I'm the only person whose thoughts I can read, I kind of have to project that attitude onto the wider populace even if it is inaccurate.

Yup. More details here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12275913

Yup. I just love that they aren't being allowed to wriggle out of it now that they have court expenses looming and (presumably) less than brilliant chances of winning.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12253746 A lot of people have accused ACS Law of basically trying to bully pirates for cash without any intention of going through court proceedings. The ACS gambit is to send you a letter, tell you that they're going to sue you on behalf of the copyright holders agents, and try to sting you for ~£500. Well, 26 people have gone to to court with them and now they are dropping all the cases. Or at least attempting to. The Judge in one of those brilliant moments of making a lawyer squirm because he can is making it very difficult for ACS / Mediacat (the Copyright holders agent in these cases) to back out of what they presumably believe to be a losing battle. Judge Birss: "I want to tell you that I am not happy. I am getting the impression with every twist and turn since I started looking at these cases that there is a desire to avoid any judicial scrutiny," I don't really agree with the lawyer acting for ACS getting death threats and such, that's going OTT, but the database leak could cost the firm a LOT of money, which would be delicious justice.

The whole article is pointless. JRPG's are plenty popular in the West. They just aren't CoD or WoW popular. As I said in my Kotaku comments, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest all sell like hot cakes in the West. It's like saying that Haze is proof that FPS's are unpopular because the sales were low, but you're not allowed to count CoD, Battlefield or Halo as proof of FPS popularity because they are popular even when they are crap.

I too dislike Dickens. I find his writing style laboured to the point where everything feels padded out to no avail. Orwell's prose is in contrast to this much more to the point. I'm pretty sure it's just a matter of personal taste though, so keep flying the flag you Dickens lovers out there.

Going to jump in here and defend the Bad Company 2. For disclosure's sake I work for EA. 1. BC2 nickel and dimes you for recycled maps. - No they don't anyone who buys the game new gets the extra map modes. 2. BC2 DLC is "mandatory". - While there is a disconnect between VIP owners and non VIP owners, take into account why this is. Non VIP folk have not paid EA DICE to play, so it's not entirely unreasonable to hold back some content from them. - The SPECACT kit is purely cosmetic. While it may give you an advantage if you are a Russian medic, it is generally not an essential update. 3. VIP (online pass) is wrong to try to reduce trade ins. - You say that it puts a "tiny dent" in EA profits. This is untrue. If our largest retailer's profit is ~35% used sales then that presents a sizeable amount of income that EA is missing out on. It's only natural to try to make first purchase a more attractive prospect, even if that has the effect of making used purchases less desirable. Also bear in mind that this should reflect in the resale value of used games. If $10 worth of content is lost when the game is used then the used game should be over $10 less. It's then up to the purchaser if they want the extra content. 4. Publishers bully developers. - "There is strong evidence that EA pushed Bioware to scale back the sexuality in Mass Effect 2, and that they interfered with the production and creative direction of Medal of Honor." What evidence? Also, bear in mind that both these examples are ones that created a furore in the media. I can tell you now that EA tries to give their developers as much leeway as possible while keeping developers informed of the potential consequences of their actions. For example, early versions of "Saboteur" had numerous Swastikas throughout in all versions. The publisher informed the developer that this is contrary to German, Hungarian and other EU states law (and can lead to criminal sanctions). The developer then decided to remove them in softened versions. Would you prefer that the publisher just signed the checks without looking at the product? 5. Publishers do not support old titles. - See the link for services that are being shut down. http://www.ea.com/2/service-updates Many of these games are being shut down not because EA has a new game to support, but because the games have fallen into disuse, or because licenses have expired. Resources are finite and supporting ~1% of a global online community just does not make sense. I will however agree that for PC titles at least EA could release server code to allow people to keep communities going indefinitely. Also, not sure what ikiddo means about BFBC2 online being a "mess" stats can be a bit flaky lately (but that's being fixed) otherwise it all works fine for me. I rarely have laggy matches or drop connection or what have you. Maybe that's because I'm on PS3 and hardly anyone plays online cos it haz no gaems?

Approves this post.

Ok, in that hypothetical realm, where someone would not by the game under any circumstances, then yes, they have not "hurt" the developer directly. However, as there is no way for the developer to know what the pirate is thinking they will look at that download as forming part of the "demand" for the title and as such will perceive that download as a loss. A form of psychological hurt if you will. Please keep your quite frankly terrible psychoanalysis out of this. "He's defending himself, so he's got to be guilty"? We try to explain it because nobody likes having every white knight on the internet pointing fingers and going "THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT YOU EVIL FUCKER!" Especially when said white knights then stand in line paying overprice for fucking CODBLOPS, a game Activision has now released three times (CoD4, MW2 and BLOPS) in the span of four years and are sucking incredible ammounts of cash out of the industry. Cash that could have been used to fund untold interesting games. The mainstream games industry is bloated as fuck and it's attempts to try and make it seem like our friends while shoveling out games made to specification in order to gain a sale from the mindless sheep are incredibly weak. In comparison to the state of the mainstream games industry, fucking Hollywood looks relatable. I purchase what games I can afford - too many, in fact - and then I get demonized for wanting to look around and try games out before deciding which ones to support. Insulted by CODBLOPS-buying sheep. ---- EDITED because I realized I wasn't quite done and doubleposting is evil ---- By the way, if we're gonna use ad hominem, then why are white knights so eager to stand up and put blame on everyone? Is it because, maybe, deep inside, they know that paying for overproduced, overpriced games designed not out of artistic joy, but out of a desire to make a profit, really isn't as morally pure as they want it to be? But, of course, that would be a completely retarded line of reasoning. It wasn't ad hominem, an ad hominem attack is an attempt to link the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise. Where the premise is that "Piracy is morally wrong." the belief of a pirate is a key part of the premise as "morally wrong" is a totally subjective attribute. I merely cited that the fact that almost everyone who admits to piracy does so with a caveat of "but only to demo it", "because games are too expensive", or some such excuse indicates that pirates feel guilt on some level and therefore also feel that piracy is at least a morally grey area if not black and white wrong. On the other hand, your suggestion that in one part of my post I used an ad hominem attack and am a "CODBLOPS sheep" and a white knight and as such my thoughts on the issue are to be struck from the record are themselves ad hominem and do not invalidate the rest of my argument even if any of the accusations were true. No one in this thread said anything about pirates being "evil fuckers", there really is no need to go shouting and swearing. I also never said that anyone who was defending themselves "was guilty" I said that they accept that what they are doing is in some way wrong. I am not white knighting, I have never said that game publishers are altruists, and I have never owned a copy of Black Ops, in fact, the last CoD I bought was CoD4 MW.

Isn't that the same as saying "How does it hurt the developer if I steal it?" Tesco's annual revenue is approximately £62.54billion. Stealing one disc from them is going to cost a fraction of a fraction of a percent of their revenue, so they haven't been hurt, or if they have it is de minimis. Plus, the publisher/developer has already been paid by Tesco, so, who cares right? How is the developer hurt? It's not one person doing it, it's thousands, tens of thousands maybe more. If the stores know that a portion of the market is not going to pay for it, then they reduce their forecasts, the publisher produces fewer copies, there's less money for the devs. Even among those who say that they would never have bought it, they can't say for certain that if they walked into a shop and it was on sale and they had a gift card to use up and there was nothing else coming out in the near future that they wanted, that they wouldn't pick it up as an impulse buy. Further, I don't see why developers should have to defend their right to decide who gets to use their software while pirates are assumed to have an automatic right to get whatever they want for free and choose if they want to pay afterwards. I think you're placing the burden on the wrong people. In cases of theft you don't ask the victim why they wanted to keep hold of whatever item it was that was stolen and only try the thief if the victim can prove that they valued what was taken. You assume that what was taken had value to the victim and that the thief was wrong to take it.

Pretty much this. It's that whole, entitled, "I want to play it but not enough to pay, so I'll nick it." thing. I like going to see films at the cinema, but I think it's overly expensive. So I have a few choices, I pay up and suffer in silence (or noisily), I sneak in and "steal" what I want and suffer the consequences if I get caught or I do what I do in real life. Go on Wednesday when it's 2 for 1 (thanks Orange!). Yes it means that I don't go to the cinema at the weekend when it would be more convenient, but I do get what I want at a price I find acceptable. You don't have a right to play every game ever released. If there's a game that you think you might not like then (in my opinion) you should "pays your money and takes your chances" or not play it and forever wonder. At least Strangelove is honest about his dishonesty. Most people seem to be condemning some types of piracy while defending their own.

Used games are a whole other topic. A lot of people seem to treat buying a game like tipping a waiter. If the service was good and you plan on coming back, you'll part with your cash. If you weren't completely happy then hey, the waiter is still getting paid so it's not your problem. Also, I forgot to mention, with regard to the comment about music and film stars waiting on their golden statues and swimming pools. I work in the games industry and I don't have a single gold statue, swimming pool or private jet. In fact, sometimes I have barely enough money to pay for my car, rent, bills and food. It's not just Kotick's pocket that feels the pinch when you don't support the industry. It's everybody down to the QA testers on £14k a year (and that's before the tax man takes his slice).

Well, you could just say "First Puzzle; A1; One must fall".

And you need to feel better because piracy makes you feel bad because you know it is wrong. That there is some of that logic that D-K likes so much.

This is doing the rounds at work today. I've got a partial set of right answers. Let's see what the collective brains of TAY can manage...

I've scanned through most of this thread so here's my collected thoughts... Obviously, there's two arguments here, one of legality and one of morality. I think we pretty much all agree that piracy is illegal, beyond legitimate reasons like making a genuine backup. There are some grey areas, e.g. If I own a game in one format is it ok to pirate it in another format or emulate it on another platform? Valve offering Portal 2 free on PC to PS3 gamers muddies those waters nicely, it would seem that Valve's take is that you own a copy of the software it should work everywhere (a concept that EA is also driving towards, but that's another story). Morally it's a tougher issue. Copyright infringement is tantamount to stealing. It's not defined as stealing by law as the copyright holder has not had anything taken from them, there is no attempt to "permanently deprive", however, the pirate has received something from the copyright holder and deprived them of a potential sale. While illegal, some pirates do break the law in what most would consider a morally acceptable manner. Pirating to demo, pirating to have an additional DRM free version of software they legitimately own. However, even amongst these, take our own Dean by way of example have occasional lapses where they will play through the single player of MoH and then not buy the game because they are done with it. The rest of the excuses are pretty lame. As follows: "Games are expensive": Holidays are expensive. You have a number of recourses beyond piracy. You could save up for a holiday you really want, you can shop around for cheap deals, you can go on fewer holidays and only go on the ones that you really want to, or you can work hard and get a pay rise. You are not entitled to have luxurious holidays just because you want them. Same goes for games. You are not entitled to play every game you think you might enjoy just because it exists. "I tried it, completed it and I didn't enjoy it.": If I got to a theme park, I don't sneak in spend the whole day there, go on all the rides and then decide when I leave if I feel like paying. I either pay to go in or I don't go. "I wouldn't have bought it anyway.": Then don't play it. If it is not worth your money then it shouldn't be worth your time. I'm never going to buy Justin Bieber's album, I'm certainly not going to pirate a copy to confirm that it is as awful as I think it probably is. "I only pirate games that are short or I think I won't like.": If you don't think it is worth the money then don't play it, wait for it to drop in price and then pick it up in a bargain bin. If you think that spending £25 for 4 hours of entertainment is a bad deal then wait till it drops to bang:buck ratio that you are satisfied with. Bottom line, there are loads of reasons, excuses, justifications and what have you for piracy, they all prove one thing, that on some level you accept that what you're doing is, in some way, wrong. Otherwise why try to justify it?

Nah. It's not the same. I need to keep the whole thing. If you don't get it, I can't really explain it.

Woah! excel! long time. wb.

Yeah, the original Ico and Shadow came with postcards or artwork on postcard sized pieces of card... depending on how you look at these things. It's too pretty to give away for something as trivial as money.

While aiming (LB or LT not sure which) press the action button (probably "A"). Happen to be playing through Dead Space myself on the PS3. Amazing game. Pity the PC port was such arse.

Loved RED and Epxendables, I think they're from the same stable sort of. Both tongue in cheek and action packed. Both ensemble casts of oldie but goodie actors (though a different kinds of actors). I think that Malcovich totally stole RED. Stole it, ran away with it and buried it on a desert island.