I Have an Unpopular Opinion

[RealEgg]

It is ok to pirate a game if it is no longer being sold directly by the publisher. For example, a game you wanted to play stopped being available 15 years ago, sites like Ebay don't have the game or it is very expensive. That would be one of the very few situations where piracy is ok. What do you think?
DISCLAIMER: I am not encouraging any illegal activity. This is a hypothetical discussion.

[Dutchgamer1982]

Originally posted by The Cereal Killer:

Originally posted by NW/RL:

Join your friends on the open seas, copyright is cringe anyway

You would not be saying that if you wrote a best selling game or book and everyone was pirating that instead of buying a copy

if another person was selling it and claiming to be author i'd take offence .
but i woulf put a free pdf with a donate button on my own website..
-
if its such a bestseller enough people will want a signed version or donate via that button anyway.

your readers who love your work wont let you starve
but they wont give you 3 golden ferraries either..

copyright is protecting the interest of big publishers and big lables not most artist and certainly not art itself.
authorship right is all you need.

[Faster With Feeling]

Originally posted by NW/RL:

Originally posted by The Cereal Killer:

You would not be saying that if you wrote a best selling game or book and everyone was pirating that instead of buying a copy

I write software and release it under free licenses lol. Don't pretend you know me or how I'd act

Oh ok

[WhiteKnight77]

Originally posted by Dutchgamer1982:

I am morally pro piracy (to the point I think its copyright that should be outlawed instead)

but it is good :
-users who pirate tend to try out more games and spend more on games annually so its wrong to see each pirated copy as a lost sale in fact piracy boost the game industry budget.

-users generally want to own copies of what they like.. even after they already got a working pirated version.
- this means piracy serves as quality control and also as a counter for drm like steam.
*both in being the only way they can still be obtained once dropped from the steam store and to play them on the correct os after steam abandons yours.

-games are an art.. like movies and books, preseving them is more important than the profits of those who do nothing to saveguard its preservation as such.

-original authors must eat but how much of sales ends up with them and how much ends up in the many layers in between.. you pirating the game and donating 1 euro to the programmer in most cases makes both of you better of.

legally : you may make a copy of everything you own.
so owning pirates copies of games you own on steam, cd, or any other media is legal.
its the right of home-copy.

Copyright protects anyone who creates something, including you. If you take a picture of a sunset, you own that copyright. Would you want to see your picture(s) being used to make money by someone else? Movies, music, books, digital art of any type is all copyright protected, and in the US, for 70 years.

[NW/RL]

Originally posted by WhiteKnight77:

70 years.

*Life of author + 70 years. I could possibly look past copyright lasting the life of author, but the extra 70 years is ridiculous

[Masque]

Originally posted by WhiteKnight77:

Copyright protects anyone who creates something, including you. If you take a picture of a sunset, you own that copyright. Would you want to see your picture(s) being used to make money by someone else? Movies, music, books, digital art of any type is all copyright protected, and in the US, for 70 years.

I agree. I was friends with a photographer who had a little store where he sold his photographs -- nice landscapes and pictures of sailing ships, mostly nautical-themed.

More than once, he told me, he caught people brazenly, openly looking through his photographs, and taking really high-quality iPhone pics of them. Lining them up and framing them perfectly for the high-megapixel perfect shot. He was mad as hell, and yelled at them to get the F out of his store. One time I was there, it wasn't pretty. It was a woman and her teenage son. Straight up stealing right there in the store.

[Goose]

*heavy sigh*

>i have an unpopular opinion
>literally the most ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ based opinion i've read here today.

i don't think y'all know what unpopular opinions are.

[RealEgg]

Originally posted by Goose:

*heavy sigh*

>i have an unpopular opinion
>literally the most ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ based opinion i've read here today.

i don't think y'all know what unpopular opinions are.

Unpopular for the NSA agents reading this post and Nintendo fans.

[Dracoco OwO]

Originally posted by MarketBag177:

Originally posted by Goose:

*heavy sigh*

>i have an unpopular opinion
>literally the most ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ based opinion i've read here today.

i don't think y'all know what unpopular opinions are.

Unpopular for the NSA agents reading this post and Nintendo fans.

As a past Nintendo fan, just what the ♥♥♥♥ are you on about? Many such cases of peoples pirating games on the DS and 3DS and there is even an SD card port where you can put them.

[Ruckman_Void]

This topic

Of all topics

Is descending into a pitfight

Good old OT

[Ȼħⱥꞥꞥēł8753452]

Originally posted by Schindler's Lifts:

When it comes to online piracy, I'll always hold Gabe Newell's quote with me. Game companies just would not have to worry about piracy if they just gave their customers a place to legally purchase and download their old games online.

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Michaelangelo ain't makin' no more paintings, either, but stealing the Mona Lisa is still a crime. And, forcing someone to do something that they do not want to do is a crime, too.

To get the Mona Lisa, you have to steal it from the Louvre, which deprives others of a chance to enjoy it. To get an old Nintendo game, you just need to download an 8kb file. Nobody is being deprived anything. Not even Nintendo, since they don't make any money from secondhand sales of the game anyway.

It's a victimless crime.

While I "would never" endorse or support piracy on steam..

If developers take issue with it, they should rerelease their old games!
They don't benefit from some ebay reseller/scalper selling it for 3x the price and never have.

What? I'm supposed to feel bad for a developer when their game is stranded on a dead console and the only way to buy it is some dude selling it out of their basement who probably never actually played the thing?

Copyright law is important, but devs need to put some grease and sweat into a port if they want my money. Not going to buy a game from them they don't sell. (funny how that works)

This is why it makes me happy we have been getting so many quality remasters lately. Some are really bad but many are great.

The castlevania advanced collection is amazing, I can even look at the old manuals if I want to.We need more ports like konami has been pushing out.

[Haruspex]

Legally, no. It's not okay.

Morally, well that's another discussion, but it's one that's not allowed on these forums, so I'll say no more.

[Dracoco OwO]

Originally posted by Ruckman_Void:

This topic

Of all topics

Is descending into a pitfight

Good old OT

This is literally an one sided topic btw i don't think anyone's truly that against it.

[RealEgg]

Originally posted by Buckles:

Piracy of video games is absolutely not wrong ever. Not with the way video game companies stick it to us these days and act like we rent our games and play our games with their permission.

Stealing video games is how you keep things even. Redistributing them also helps keep things balanced.

Interesting opinion. I don't support downloading currently available games that are being officially sold.

[Ruckman_Void]

Originally posted by Dracoco OwO:

Originally posted by Ruckman_Void:

This topic

Of all topics

Is descending into a pitfight

Good old OT

This is literally an one sided topic btw i don't think anyone's truly that against it.

Never stopped OT turning something into a pitfight!

[Hobbit XIII]

GoG .
Steam .

If not on them and unable to get it elsewhere on sites /places like them beyond being an antique like mega old disc / cartridge on ebay then ok I see the logic for keeping the game alive.

If I made a game and everybody went yay lets take this ! then that would be a very big No, not happy.