Piracy

[Battra92]

I feel weird for agreeing about people being buttholes for thinking theyre entitled to everything in this world whether they have the money for it or not, but that being said....I pirate a lot of shit. All the time. I just pirated Sonic Generations on my pc. It didnt run well, so I deleted it.

But I totally know its wrong. In my own moral code, it feels wrong. The thing is, I dont care. Im not going to even bother to justify it.

 

Well at least you are honest about it, which is more than I can say for some.

[Strangelove]

I used to shoplift a lot, and ive been illegally downloading shit since Napster and Limewire, so i dont really care anymore. Im not going to lie about my thieving ways unless youre a cop.

[Johnny]

 

Well at least you are honest about it, which is more than I can say for some.

 

And this attitude is why I often find this thread pointless. If you've already decided that pirates see their own actions as wrong, there's never going to be a dialogue. It's disrespectful and not conductive to a good discussion.

[SomTervo]

I download stuff, but never games these days. I just enjoy the security too much, and also enjoy having physical copies of them. The only games I might pirate are old SNES era games; I'll never have a SNES etc., and it'd be hard/ too expensive to get one, so it's the only way I could ever play them.

 

However, I think I'm on Johnny's side of the fence in a few ways. Like Malicious and Strangelove, I download a lot of music. If I love, say, 5 bands, and they all have a new album out, there's no way I'm going to buy all 5 of those albums. I'll maybe buy the one or two I can afford.

 

But even though I'm a fan of the other three bands and want to support them, I'll download their stuff. There's no other way I could enjoy them, and take them with me on my iPod. In fact, if I don't download the stuff now, I probably wouldn't in the future, and probably would never buy the disc anyway.

 

So I might as well have an actual good experience and listen to their music. I'll be better off than not having listened to it; and I tend to support bands in live performances more, anyway. So I'd probably support them more once I've listened to their stuff and decided I like them and will see them live.

 

I can, sort of, see it the same way for games.

 

The grit of my argument: On a social and economic level, it's wrong to pirate. Obviously. You're stealing content that a lot of people slaved to make some sort of money from. But on a personal level, if you have no money and no opportunities to make said money, you would (/could) pirate the products just so that you get the experience of playing them. That's how I feel about music; I'm not pirating out of a malicious theft of their work, but because I know if I don't I'd never get the experience, and improve my personality and quality of life from doing so. I'd be missing out on a lot if I didn't.

 

Games are tougher because they're so expensive, but that's how I justify my downloading actions with music. It's better that I improve my person and support them in future when I can, than not experience anything and stagnate, but still spend no money.

Edited November 18, 2011 by kenshi_ryden

[Thursday Next]

@Ethan: I'm not calling anyone childish in an effort to be demeaning. Impatience and a sense of entitlement are emotions I personally attribute to children and they are the driving force behind a lot of the justifications for piracy seen here.

 

Whether or not the goods are infinitely reproducible and whether or not any harm is done to the content creator is, to my mind, moot when considering these motivations. If you want to call my attitudes outmoded that's fine, I'll be the first to admit that I have a lot of old-fashioned attitudes, I don't swear in front of women, I don't start eating until everyone has their food, I hold doors open for others and refer to my elders as "Sir" or by their surname unless given permission to call them by their first name. However, I take issue with the amount of downvoting without response when most of the posts here are merely stating an opposite viewpoint.

[deanb]

However, I take issue with the amount of downvoting without response when most of the posts here are merely stating an opposite viewpoint.

As someone who can see all the upvotes n downvotes, they're not without responses.

 

 

edit: in other news here's a list of companies backing SOPA:

http://www.theglobal.../letter-359.pdf

 

Adobe isn't on it, wonder why

 

As far as games go:

http://www.theesa.co...out/members.asp

Basically all of those.

 

EA, Nintendo of America and Sony CEA doubley so. (They're through ESA, and individually put their names down too.)

 

Fun thing is, if I'm to understand the bill correctly, PXOD will have to go image free. Woot. Unless we knock everything up in paint or something. (we're hosted in the US and have a US domain registrar)

[Mal]

Games are tougher because they're so expensive,

Not to mention that they are, more or less, a one time thing. Doesn't mean you can't buy it later like I did for Recettear. I haven't touched that game since I bought it... kinds of evens out I suppose. Doesn't mean its right but yeah. Add that product to my pirate credit. I'll try to pay it off... completely in heaven or hell.

 

And yeah, SOPA... is shit. It just implies way too much.

[RockyRan]

You are pretty spot on.

In reality, it's not actually the companies kicking me when I'm down, as much as it is these knight-in-shining-armor anti-pirates demanding I pay (and pay extra!) for something that the company clearly does not even have an interest in selling to me.

 

No one is demanding you pay anyone anything. I will however say that if you don't want to pay the price, don't consume the content. You're not a five year old, you should by now have learnt that you can't have everything you want.

 

At the same time, though, it's really silly to treat one set of consumers just as willing and able to pay for content as your "primary" set as if they were second class citizens, giving them inferior and delayed products, and not expect any kind of piracy in retaliation.

[Strangelove]

The moment you want something, that's when it's entirely your fault. It's not like they're holding back the cure for cancer or anything. It's just a game.

[RockyRan]

It's just a game.

 

Exactly.

[fuchikoma]

Well, now I'm tempted to pirate anything I want from Steam... let me explain:

Someone tried to reset the password on my account. I received the reset confirmation email, but of course I didn't respond to it, so it should not have changed. Then I downloaded Steam and tried to log into it - failed. Then I requested a password reset... and never got the email for it! I must have requested over 40 resets and not one went through.

 

So I contacted support, and explained it to them. They asked for my billing and contact info, and I gave it to them. There is no room for ambiguity here, because I've only ever had one credit card, have not changed my address, etc - but apparently my name, email address, AND billing info all mismatch the account! The email address they sent a password reset email to before I requested it is not the one on the account, and now my whole account is gone because I can't guess what the hijacker changed it to.

 

So yeah, they just stole a whole account's worth of games from me - from now on, I am ["very angry" - redacted in case this gains notoriety], since the ethereal nature of digital products means any legal approaches would fail. My games are gone, but my money is still in their pockets.

Edited November 22, 2011 by fuchikoma

[deanb]

Well shit.

[Cyber Rat]

Post it on Reddit with the thread title "If you think Origin is bad, Steam is just as bad and worse" and explain your story. If it gets attention, it might even make it to some mainstream sites like those EA bannings and you might get your stuff back.

 

(I am serious with this suggestion. You have nothing to lose, really)

[fuchikoma]

I'll give them one more try first - it's possible the rep I got was just an idiot, though since I gave them specific dates, I figured they'd be able to look back in their DB to see that my info was on file before.

 

I'm a little apprehensive about blowing the whistle on Reddit since I can't really prove anything here, especially without totally exposing my info to the world, and they can say literally anything - they could go "oh, here's your info on file. You misspelled your last name, dummy!" (after the rep has told me that everything is different in a private support session, mind you.) Still, I will definitely keep it in mind as I've seen the pressure that mob can exert on crooked companies.

 

Then... with the unshakable love for Steam I've seen, I could just get downvoted to -3000 and called an EA shill, heh. I've found it seems taboo to criticize them.

[Cyber Rat]

If you contact support and they still blow you off, try telling them to escalate your ticket to higher ups as you are not satisfied with the support they've shown.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, sometimes you can get through to them by just asking to talk to someone higher up.

[fuchikoma]

Thanks. I will try to escalate the current attempt if it goes badly.

So far, I'm pretty shocked by this because while I'm pretty cynical about digital download services, I figured they'd be able to just check the history of the account and see that my info was originally there... maybe the guy I got was just lazy...

[Thursday Next]

So they said that the account had a different email address, name and billing info? How do they know that they are looking at the right account? Is there something else they were able to identify it by?

[fuchikoma]

The second rep actually solved it in a day where the first one took a week to tell me I was out of luck. (Glad I didn't go to Reddit now!)

 

It turns out the account name was wrong - but that leaves the mystery of how I received a password reset mail from them with my real name on it, for an account name that I made to play MMOs with... Of course I thought it could be a phishing attack, but all links pointed to the real Steam servers (https://support.steampowered.com/) and as far as I can tell, my account does not use this name as a nickname. I usually only use steam every several months, so it seemed totally plausible that an account name I've used for other gaming accounts was the one I'd used on Steam if Valve says it is. Now I'm waiting to see if they have any suggestions how it happened.

 

But anyway, the exchange (one response from them per day) basically went:

(Ticket: Password recovery)

Me: I was sent a password reset email for this account, and now I can't get any more to come in. Can you help me get back in?

Support Tech S: Sure, send me your CD key or billing info.

M: Here it is.

S: Also send some more info I didn't ask about.

M: Ok... here it is...

S: Something mismatched.

M: Ok, well I bought it a while ago. Here's the expiry date of my older credit card, even though you shouldn't count on people having that...

S: Mismatch.

M: Here is all of my billing info. It would never have changed and is the only info I've ever had on file here.

S: Name, email, and billing info mismatched.

M: Wow. I just got everything on my account jacked. You just lost a customer.

S: Yep. Tough luck. Have a nice day.

 

(New ticket: Account hijack)

M: I just got my account hijacked. Here is all of my billing and contact info.

Support tech W: That doesn't look like your account - you'll want to try this one, or this other one.

M: Thank you! So, any idea why I got that first email for an account I don't own then?

[Thursday Next]

HA! I knew it was a different account! How could the rep not have thought of that???

[fuchikoma]

No surprise: they're going to look into it and do what they think is right, but will not discuss what happens.

 

This is bizarre... I mean, the email wasn't for phishing, but that account name I was asked to reset should only be known to companies that run MMORPGs. Gravity, NCSoft, Blizzard, maybe Winch Gate, Turbine, or Perfect World Entertainment... I basically made it up for an account name that would not be a nickname, email address or anything else. But I can't imagine how any of these guys would benefit from sowing confusion among Steam users, especially not knowing whether I had an account with Steam... Whoever sent me the password reset request knew my real name though, and I always keep that private unless it's required.

[Cyber Rat]

So, I wrote a bit about console piracy. It hardly covers every console (I have 0 knowledge of the GameCube, let alone how piracy worked out for it, and the Master System was a tad irrelevant), but I think it gives a general idea of how piracy worked on home consoles. I thought the reason it failed on the N64 was hilarious.

[deanb]

http://torrentfreak.com/drm-free-witcher-2-cashes-in-on-bittorrent-pirates-111207/

 

They did say they would.

[fuchikoma]

Pirates be on notice... Good Old Games is also CD Projekt.

[Johnny]

I suddenly feel less inclined to buy games from GOG.