Can Piracy be Alright "Sometimes"?

[Rob Williams]

I'm sure that most of us have heard the old adage, "It's okay to lie, sometimes", but how well does that same mentality carry over to piracy? Is it okay to pirate sometimes? Personally, I'm not quite sure the "sometimes" idea works, because if it's wrong to do something, can it ever be right? It seems a bit unlikely, but it could depend on the situation... one I'm not sure piracy ever fits into.

Read the rest of our post and then discuss it here!

 

[killem2]

I have pirated exactly 2 games. Those two games were Final Fantasy 7 for the pc. Because I didn't feel I need to pay for a game that it's developers gave up on, and the only reason why it works on the pc is because of the hard work of people like you and me... GAMERS!

The other was, damn, I can't think of it. I know I did. It was for a similar reason. If I remember I'll post again. But that FF7 stuff really ticked me off.

 

[cloud8521]

no pirating is never right, weather they worked hard or not. if you cant afford it then you have no right to it. and if it helps their business then they should make it free for a limited time. there is no real excuse to pirate anything, you are stealing and its not fair to anyone, especially those who also paid for it with scrapings from their wallet. Developers who say it is fine need to figure out a better way to have the same effect without having to say pirating is fine.

 

[Doomsday]

i have been buying cds and dvds here since 1998 and Never it occurred to me that it was piracy! I was a kid with no know how of all this software making and piracy stuff. Only after getting a decent internet a few yrs back and reading reviews n stuff do i know now that all the game/movies dvds n cds i buy here for Rs.200 are actually really worth Rs.4000 to Rs.5000!!! well, which is A LOT!

 

[dlb]

I have pirated a few games myself. Most recently were Call Of Duty World at War, Call Of Duty Modern Warfare, and Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2. I did this just to see how they would run with my hardware, and once I saw that I could play the games, I removed 'em and went out bought them. The only reason I download pirated stuff is to see how it runs and if I like it. If it runs OK, and it's fun to play, then I'll buy it. If not, I simply delete it and move on. I remember shelling out over $40 for one of the Battlefield games a couple of years ago, and it sucked!!! (I think it was BF2142) I hated it and felt like I had been robbed. I tried to return it but they said they don't take returns after the game has been opened. I ended up giving it away to a friend (and he hated it too!). If there were more fully functional demos available for popular games, maybe piracy would not be as big a deal as it is now. Like the Crysis demo for example: it gave the user a real good feel for the game and was fully functional just like the full game was (it had all the same settings configurability and so forth). I ended up buying Crysis after playing the demo, and because there was a free fully functional playable demo, I didn't have to track down a pirated version to test.....

 

[madstork91]

I think sometimes that pirating while letting the extremely rich pay for it actually ultimately feeds this enormously fat beast that we call EA.... er... I mean, the gaming industry.

I realize that the cost of production has increased significantly over the years, but has the quality of games really improved at a 1:1 ratio with the price? IMO: no.

By pirating we make them think we want it, but are unwilling to pay. The reality in this argument is that people are unable to pay, which I fully agree with is the case for most piracy really.

Its like we are addicted to crack that keeps getting cut more, the price keeps going up, and our paycheck hasn't gone up at all (if we still have a job since we are crack heads)