Piracy

[fuchikoma]

You originally said it was "wrong" to pirate a work against the will of the creator, did you not? Now I gave you examples of creators encouraging people to pirate the game, and now you call even the creators "wrong". You're shifting your argument now that I've pointed out that the "poor victims" aren't really always "poor victims".

What I took from Yantelope's argument a few times was more that if, as a creator, you decide that it's ok to pirate your game, it's still wrong to encourage it if you've signed the rights to a publisher who does not allow that use. If that's correct, I can actually get behind that stance since it's violating if not the letter, then the spirit of the agreement terms.

 

 

 

Of course you can't guarantee that a particular person's subjective tastes will be satisfied by a particular product, but I don't see what that has to do with sampling. To go with your car analogy, the way you would "sample" its appearance would be to look at it, or look at a picture of it. Surely you wouldn't think it unreasonable for someone to want to see a car, or at least a picture, before buying it?

I wonder what the argument would be like if you weren't allowed to look at the car before you bought it because its likeness was strictly controlled IP. You'd have people smuggling the photos around trying to see what they're like while others argue that statistics are plenty to base a decision on.

As for other media, people sample it in various ways. For movies the public is provided with official "samples" in the form of trailers and clips, and I believe iTunes allows you to sample songs before buying them. If not, there's always the radio, or watching the official video on Youtube. Games have trailers too, but the fundamental difference between a game and a movie is that in the game the product is the act of playing it, whereas for a movie it's the experience of watching it. So while a trailer for a movie provides that experience in sample form, a trailer for a game is missing a critical part of the experience. There's no effective way to sample a game without playing it.

I'd just like to add that a lot of game trailers and ads in mainstream (not gaming press) media are also totally useless to tell what a game is like.

For instance, the American Gears of War series TV spots are tastes of the feeling of an aspect of the game. That's a pretty distant abstraction of the game itself. It's like watching a movie trailer like this to find out what the movie is like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvc8rIh8zkI

[Yantelope]

Well, lets turn the argument around, should it be illegal for a company to sell you a car without letting you see it? You don't have to buy it. Do you have a right to see it even if you don't buy it?

 

You can't know if you'll like a movie by watching a trailer and you can't know if you'll like a book by reading the excerpt. We're not guaranteed to enjoy any forms of entertainment so why should games be different?

Edited October 7, 2011 by Yantelope

[TheMightyEthan]

Games aren't any different. You can't know if you'll like a game by playing a demo (pirated or not). I passed on Arkham Asylum originally because I found the demo uninteresting. It wasn't until the game went on sale for $1 during one of the GFWL sales that I gave it another shot and fell in love with it. Just like a movie trailer or an excerpt, all a demo can tell you is whether you find that part interesting. I'm only arguing for a consumer's right to sample, not a consumer's right to experience the entire product before deciding whether to purchase it or not.

[Yantelope]

Games aren't any different. You can't know if you'll like a game by playing a demo (pirated or not).

 

Well then what we're agreeing on is that a demo can only help you make a more educated decision on a purchase. Everyone here agrees with that. You're not wholly in the dark without playing the game. I hold that a publisher has a right to decide what tools he gives you to make that decision. I don't think we're into consumer protection territory here.

 

You're also making an argument that as long as there's zero impact to the IP owner then the consumer has a right to sample the product prior to a purchase. I don't think you can prove that there's zero impact to the IP owner (based on our scifi timeline argument thingy) but holding that aside I don't agree with the premise of your argument. I fully understand that we're entirely in opinion territory at this point so I'm not going to try to say you're right or I'm wrong on this point, just wanted to say that I disagree.

Edited October 7, 2011 by Yantelope

[fuchikoma]

If a company sold you a car without letting you see or test drive it, you'd better believe there would be a law forcing dealerships to take returns - if there isn't already. If you happen to buy a PC game you didn't like? It's your fault for not asking your future self whether you liked it or not. Hell, even if you get a console game, you'd often lose half its worth in trade-in if the shrink wrap is off. You never hear "oh, it's too bad your new Ferrari accelerates slower than a Daihatsu Midget... Tell you what, you can trade it in for half of what you paid for it..." but you CAN buy a game that looks good in trailers and screenshots that's a buggy broken mess. No lemon law for games, sadly - but that's the thing - they're not just art assets that you subjectively like or dislike; they can also function better, worse, or not at all.

 

Also, it's entirely possible (I'd say evident) that the consumer's rights and the property holder's rights do not mesh neatly. A customer could, as Ethan says, have the right to sample, while the owner has the rights to defend their product from misuse.

 

(Though keeping in non-entitlement, I'd argue the consumer doesn't have the right to sample a game, but that the nature of the market makes it something of an imperative, right or no right.)

[TheMightyEthan]

Actually, at least at Walmart or Best Buy (I don't know what country you're in, or whether those stores are options for you) you can return a console game for the full price, even with the shrink-wrap off. With the receipt they'll usually refund you in the manner you paid, and without it they'll usually give you store credit. There's a time limit on that, but I don't think it's less than a couple weeks.

 

Hell, if you wanted to be dishonest you could probably buy most games brand new, play through them completely, and then still return them for full price within the return period. After doing that a few times though they might get suspicious...

[Yantelope]

If a company sold you a car without letting you see or test drive it, you'd better believe there would be a law forcing dealerships to take returns

Why? Isn't the point that you'd not buy the car that you can't see and only buy the car that you can? Maybe if all car dealers were colluding together to not let you see any car ever without buying it then you'd need government intervention but as it stands now I don't think we have any kind of collusion preventing videogame demos. Maybe you should only buy games that have legal demos. Maybe then companies would see that people only buy games with demos and they'd all be motivated to provide demos just as car dealers all gladly give you test drives these days.

 

 

I'm going to underline this section because for all you pirates this should be your recourse against game companies and not piracy. Resolve now to only ever buy games that have demos.

 

If you happen to buy a PC game you didn't like? It's your fault for not asking your future self whether you liked it or not. Hell, even if you get a console game, you'd often lose half its worth in trade-in if the shrink wrap is off. You never hear "oh, it's too bad your new Ferrari accelerates slower than a Daihatsu Midget... Tell you what, you can trade it in for half of what you paid for it..." but you CAN buy a game that looks good in trailers and screenshots that's a buggy broken mess. No lemon law for games, sadly - but that's the thing - they're not just art assets that you subjectively like or dislike; they can also function better, worse, or not at all.

Again, as Rage has been a prime example, I'm fairly certain that you don't need a demo to tell if a game functions properly. I will not be purchasing Rage until the game has been fixed and I don't need to pirate it to know that.

 

Also, it's entirely possible (I'd say evident) that the consumer's rights and the property holder's rights do not mesh neatly. A customer could, as Ethan says, have the right to sample, while the owner has the rights to defend their product from misuse.

 

(Though keeping in non-entitlement, I'd argue the consumer doesn't have the right to sample a game, but that the nature of the market makes it something of an imperative, right or no right.)

Yeah, it's a bit messy trying to keep both people's rights protected. It's a constant battle of tug 'o war. I fully agree. I'd be happy to rally with consumers on some issues other than piracy.

 

Oh, and one more late thought that just came to me, not sure why I didn't remember this sooner. For those of you with consoles, why not just rent the game? That's what I used to do back in the NES days before I had internet. That way the developer still gets a small amount of money and you get to sample the game without having to invest all your money. In fact, sometimes you can play the whole game with only a small amount of money and just return it.

Edited October 7, 2011 by Yantelope

[TheMightyEthan]

Oh, and one more late thought that just came to me, not sure why I didn't remember this sooner. For those of you with consoles, why not just rent the game? That's what I used to do back in the NES days before I had internet. That way the developer still gets a small amount of money and you get to sample the game without having to invest all your money. In fact, sometimes you can play the whole game with only a small amount of money and just return it.

For console games I agree with this 100%. All my arguments only apply to unrentable PC games. AFAIK right now D2D is the only place one can rent PC games, and as near as I can tell they only have 6. I also wouldn't count OnLive because of the problems associated with the playability of that service for some people.

[fuchikoma]

Again, as Rage has been a prime example, I'm fairly certain that you don't need a demo to tell if a game functions properly. I will not be purchasing Rage until the game has been fixed and I don't need to pirate it to know that.

Again, you must have a special power that no one else does then. An excellent example is the Grand Theft Auto 3 series. It looked great. It was popular. It even got good reviews. The trailers didn't mention that you can put a car into a garage, come back, and find nothing. Or that if you stand too close when the door opens, you might fall through the ground and land in the middle of a random street, dead. Or that in Vice City, your bullets would be stopped by the oversized hitboxes around objects (like shirts on a rack), that police could see and shoot you through solid objects like walls and billboards, or that in San Andreas, bicycles would often get stuck halfway underground, or that certain missions in 3 and SA would just glitch out and fail. I'm sure people buying Assassin's Creed weren't looking forward to watching guards hump walls, or riding horses that get twisted around bizarrely. Or that in Red Dead Redemption, that people would have to watch out for cougar people, ride donkey-faced women, do missions with a gunslinging coyote, or watch people fly around in the sky with knees bent, flapping their arms like birds. This list goes on forever.

I've tried to be nice and diplomatic about it, but the only dead horse beating we're doing in this thread is trying to debate moral objectivism with moral absolutists. It stops the exploration of relative qualities and turns it into an endless loop of disagreement because an absolutist can not alter their opinion, will not give consideration to an argument, and cannot offer a plausible reason to see things their way, so it all just dissolves into "no it's not!" "yes it is!"

 

It is certainly each person's right to believe what they believe for any reason at all, if any, in any way they choose. But in a philosophical discussion, the only arguments I can give any weight to are those that are philosophically (logically) sound, not simply those that feel right instinctively.

[Yantelope]

Are you arguing that a single glitch is reason enough to grant a refund or that your whole GTA experience was completely ruined by the car garage glitch? (I don't actually remember having that glitch happen to me).

[fuchikoma]

Are you arguing that a single glitch is reason enough to grant a refund or that your whole GTA experience was completely ruined by the car garage glitch? (I don't actually remember having that glitch happen to me).

 

No. Actually it's been about a decade since I played GTA3, but until GTA4, the 3D series was so damn buggy I could only use it as a sandbox to fool around in. Missions would always be stopped by things like psychic police shooting me through walls, or running from the cops only to encounter a massive intersection pileup with chain reactions of exploding cars, and a whole host of other glitches.

 

What I'm saying is that neither trailers, nor buzz among players, nor reviews left me sufficiently informed to know that the game was so buggy I considered it a write-off. If I had pirated it though, I could have made an informed decision.

[Johnny]

Well, lets turn the argument around, should it be illegal for a company to sell you a car without letting you see it? You don't have to buy it. Do you have a right to see it even if you don't buy it?

 

You can't know if you'll like a movie by watching a trailer and you can't know if you'll like a book by reading the excerpt. We're not guaranteed to enjoy any forms of entertainment so why should games be different?

 

Why shouldn't they be different? Wouldn't that be a GOOD thing?

Why the hell should we let how previous technology functioned limit the functionality of today's more advanced technology?

If possible, all entertainment media should do as much as possibleto make sure people know what they are paying for. If people only pay for things they actually consider good, isn't that good for EVERYONE?

[Yantelope]

@Fuchi, Ummm... well, in this one specific instance of GTA III I think you're on your own because neither I nor anyone I know experienced anything like what you're talking about. I guess the reviewers didn't either. Going to the deeper point, can there be glitches and bugs that aren't pointed out by reviews and such? Sure, but I don't recall a time recently when I felt victimized by it.

 

Why the hell should we let how previous technology functioned limit the functionality of today's more advanced technology?

 

Nobody is saying that. Companies are still fully free to produce demos if they so choose.

 

 

If people only pay for things they actually consider good, isn't that good for EVERYONE?

Not necessarily. The entertainment industry would make less money if people only paid for the content that they thought was good so it's not good for content providers.

[deanb]

If people only pay for things they actually consider good, isn't that good for EVERYONE?

Not necessarily. The entertainment industry would make less money if people only paid for the content that they thought was good so it's not good for content providers.

 

And? Why should they be rewarded for bad content? The content providers rights do not extend to being paid for content no matter what.

[Johnny]

Quite frankly, Yantelope, what dean said. Also, I don't know anyone who has enough cash to buy everything they like.

[fuchikoma]

To your point about game rentals, as a kid I spent most of my money renting games. Now there's nowhere to rent from really, as even Blockbuster is gone where I am. Sites like GameFly, when I last checked, don't cater to Canada, and most of the games I really like don't get English releases (which was actually what got me into console piracy, as I needed to mod my PSX to play purchased imports, but that also opened it to play copies.)

 

It's also highly disingenuous to pick one example of a bug out of a long list, and then pretend that is the whole argument, but all through this thread I've seen you pretend arguments are not there when they do not serve you... For instance when Ethan put a large effort into making a very detailed explanation of his stance, including his stance on creator's rights, his consequentialist philosophy, intangibility of product, the right to protect the product, and cases where piracy could and could not be acceptable, and then you simply accused him of not explaining, and simply claiming it was fair use to pirate.

[Yantelope]

And? Why should they be rewarded for bad content? The content providers rights do not extend to being paid for content no matter what.

Well, this goes back to my point about entitlement. You're not paying for enjoyment, you're paying for entertainment. Content providers can't please everyone but they try. If you put on a show and people don't like it and they all refuse to pay for it you'd be frustrated because you tried to entertain and you put in the work. You can't guarantee you're going to be entertained but you should still compensate those that put the time and effort into trying. It's why you buy your tickets before the show and not after.

 

Sorry, but at this point we really are . I don't think that we're really getting anywhere on this front.

 

I like that gif.

 

 

 

Quite frankly, Yantelope, what dean said. Also, I don't know anyone who has enough cash to buy everything they like.

 

 

Oh, there is a can of worms. Now you're going to talk about how we should spend all the money we have on content and "acquire" everything we don't have money for and then we can pick and choose who is the most deserving of the money we do have right?

 

 

Ooo, maybe it's like a battle of the bands where all the bands play but only the one that wins gets the prize money. Sucks to be the band that loses though.

 

 

For instance when Ethan put a large effort into making a very detailed explanation of his stance, including his stance on creator's rights, his consequentialist philosophy, intangibility of product, the right to protect the product, and cases where piracy could and could not be acceptable, and then you simply accused him of not explaining, and simply claiming it was fair use to pirate.

 

Ummm, except that he agreed he didn't fully explain his side?

 

You're right, I only explain one side of it

Edited October 7, 2011 by Yantelope

[deanb]

And? Why should they be rewarded for bad content? The content providers rights do not extend to being paid for content no matter what.

Well, this goes back to my point about entitlement. You're not paying for enjoyment, you're paying for entertainment. Content providers can't please everyone but they try. If you put on a show and people don't like it and they all refuse to pay for it you'd be frustrated because you tried to entertain and you put in the work. You can't guarantee you're going to be entertained but you should still compensate those that put the time and effort into trying. It's why you buy your tickets before the show and not after.

 

So a consumer with entitlement is wrong but a provider with entitlement is a-okay? No, that's not how it works. Effort =/= reward. You can write out a 10,000 word essay but if it's a pile of shit you can get an A for effort but you're still not getting that diploma. You make a game that's taken you 13 years. If it's a pile of poop then nope you get nothing for it "just because".

 

Also I want to know why:

Renting = okay

Demo = okay

Pirate = wrong.

 

All for the purpose of testing a game. (I'll agree with all of you, pirating for keeps is wrong, this is purely for testing as many of us do here. Though occasionally you seem to slip into the realm of "all pirating is for keeps" which means slipping into "you are all lying" too)

Is it because it's illegal? Cos laws can change and surely there's laws you disagree with? Used to be illegal for blacks to marry whites. Obviously there were people against it or the laws wouldn't change. I've kinda fallen back on the overall back n forth on the past few pages but I don't think you've yet stated why you thing it's absolutely wrong. Neither attributing it to personal morals or to the law. Thursday is clearly up for the whole law side, though I think he might disagree should tomorrow it suddenly become perfectly legal to pirate. Whereas you... dunno.

[Johnny]

Quite frankly, Yantelope, what dean said. Also, I don't know anyone who has enough cash to buy everything they like.

 

 

Oh, there is a can of worms. Now you're going to talk about how we should spend all the money we have on content and "acquire" everything we don't have money for and then we can pick and choose who is the most deserving of the money we do have right?

 

 

Ooo, maybe it's like a battle of the bands where all the bands play but only the one that wins gets the prize money. Sucks to be the band that loses though.

 

I... Yantelope, you're not making any sense right now.

 

Because each and every one of us (I think. Maybe someone here is secretly hilariously rich) has a limited amount of cash to spend on games, we have to pick which games we want to give money to wether we pirate or not. If we pirate, however, we have a better understanding of how good the games are so we can with certainty pick the games that actually deserve our money, instead of making the educated guess we're forced to make if we do not pirate.

[Yantelope]

So a consumer with entitlement is wrong but a provider with entitlement is a-okay? No, that's not how it works. Effort =/= reward. You can write out a 10,000 word essay but if it's a pile of shit you can get an A for effort but you're still not getting that diploma. You make a game that's taken you 13 years. If it's a pile of poop then nope you get nothing for it "just because".

 

This made me think maybe we should price games based on their metascore.

[Cyber Rat]

So a consumer with entitlement is wrong but a provider with entitlement is a-okay? No, that's not how it works. Effort =/= reward. You can write out a 10,000 word essay but if it's a pile of shit you can get an A for effort but you're still not getting that diploma. You make a game that's taken you 13 years. If it's a pile of poop then nope you get nothing for it "just because".

 

This made me think maybe we should price games based on their metascore.

 

This made me think you're an idiot who should be banned from commenting on the Internet.

 

EDIT: Seriously, how can you even think of such a thing? Do you hate video games? Do you hate the medium? I swear, I never missed being a mod, but I totally wish I was one now so I could ban your ass to oblivion. This is the worst post I have seen on this forum. Please, leave existence.

Edited October 7, 2011 by Cyber Rat

[Yantelope]

So a consumer with entitlement is wrong but a provider with entitlement is a-okay? No, that's not how it works. Effort =/= reward. You can write out a 10,000 word essay but if it's a pile of shit you can get an A for effort but you're still not getting that diploma. You make a game that's taken you 13 years. If it's a pile of poop then nope you get nothing for it "just because".

 

This made me think maybe we should price games based on their metascore.

 

This made me think you're an idiot who should be banned from commenting on the Internet.

 

EDIT: Seriously, how can you even think of such a thing? Do you hate video games? Do you hate the medium? I swear, I never missed being a mod, but I totally wish I was one now so I could ban your ass to oblivion. This is the worst post I have seen on this forum. Please, leave existence.

 

I don't think such a thing. I was just pointing out the laughable and simple logical extension of what dean is suggesting by somehow comparing publishers getting paid only if they do a good job and then comparing to grades in school. If you're suggesting the idea is bannable then you're suggesting that dean be banned but then that'd be awkward since he runs the place.

[Johnny]

So what you mean to say was that you didn't post in honesty before, you were just trolling?

 

I think that actually IS an offense according to our rules.

[RockyRan]

 

Well, lets turn the argument around, should it be illegal for a company to sell you a car without letting you see it? You don't have to buy it. Do you have a right to see it even if you don't buy it?

 

You can't know if you'll like a movie by watching a trailer and you can't know if you'll like a book by reading the excerpt. We're not guaranteed to enjoy any forms of entertainment so why should games be different?

 

Uh, yes? I do believe there are several consumer protection laws to prevent that kind of situation (as in, force people to buy a product blindly, refuse refunds under all circumstances).

 

Books are an odd situation, because you CAN actually go to Barnes and Noble and read the book in its entirety without buying it at all. Same for public libraries. And we don't cry DEATH TO PIRATEZ for people using a library.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

Some would argue that the internet is nothing but a digital library.