Some personal thoughts on piracy (warning - long post)

[Yuhaney]

I'm not.
Since someone is always talking to you via microphone or is with you in the same room while you are playing the co-op.
This is something I have proven by myself, since I have said that "this ain't scary game", when someone was sitting next to me while I was playing singleplayer, but when I played it alone, it was totally different experience.

[Frontcannon]

Multiplayer, especially CoOp, needs coordination. Coordination needs communication, and communication kills atmosphere.

To make a MP-game truly scary, the communication would have to be fitted perfectly into the game environment, which means not using VoIP for talking to your friend, but using the game. The voices would have to match the ingame avatars / characters, which means they have a position in the game world, are affected by echoes and distance to the player.
It's still a pretty rough idea, but imagine listening to your friends voice as if he'd be an ingame NPC.. I think it could avoid the usual problems and actually preserve the game's original atmosphere.

[hollowleviathan]

Co-op could still be scary, but it would require a lot different approach, taking into account the communication of the two players, cooperation. Imagine if suddenly one of your screens goes black and the other person has to scramble to find you and grab your hand before you're pulling into the abyss? Or something like that.

This is of course wildly off-topic.

[Rodriguez]

Pirating is way too easy nowadays, with all the torrents and rapidshares, especially with small games like Amnesia, it's almost no effort to download it for free, so i can fully understand the people who do it, even if it's not right to do so. But obviously these people simply do not care about, if they damage the company, they just want to save money and it's soo easy, to not pay for software nowadays. If there is DRM, there will be a crack as answer. I don't have any money problems (luckily), so i buy most of my games, because i'm an old fashioned collector, but i could also download them all for free, just like that. On the internet it's a piece of cake to get software for free, that's the point and if they don't change that, there will always be piracy. Piracy is a mindset of our internetgeneration, because there is nothing which could put them into jail. There is little the companies can do about it, but to catch out the big fishes of the piracy community.

Nowadays a game needs to be really good to be bought, if a company produces crap without soul, they deserve to go under sooner or later. The gameingindustry is a tough territory, but if you create quality, this quality WILL be rewarded.

I bought Amnesia, because 20$ and now 10$ is more than a good price for this jewel and i definitely want to see more games from Firctional Games.

[Gunslingerjh]

One way or another, you should always support the indie game developers! They need money the most!

[hollowleviathan]

Somewhat related: What about games that are no longer in print/available for purchase? They're still protected by law, but there's nowhere to actually buy them; Abandonware a la Home of the Underdogs.

Is piracy so clearcut then?

[Yuhaney]

Abandonware is legal as far as I know.
Site you mentioned uses Google AdSense, so, that most likely means it's legal, since Google would ban such users / site owners and remove the ads, so that it's not possible to become part of the AdSense program in the future if they would share pirated stuff or share links to warez sites, etc. .

[mattwestwick]

I think that so long as you can't buy it anywhere whatsoever. Its up for download without incrimination. I don't know the specifics but abandonia etc. would clear that up.

Plus good old games snaps up all the old gems anyway so theres not much decent abandonware out there.

[hollowleviathan]

I'm almost positive abandonware is still illegal. It's copyrighted still, just not for sale. Meaning you have to hunt down a rare copy and pay probably a collector's price, or break the law.

Matt brings up a good point that companies have figured out they can make their own version of HotU, and charge a small sum to recoup. Sadly, not all games are up yet.

[mattwestwick]

Turns out that most abandonware is still copyrighted but often comes under the category of no one gives enough of a fuck to enforce it.

But as soon as they do, you can usually buy it from somewhere.

Plus you are bound to get a virus from most abandonware sites.