Confession...

[Adeno]

Just to add, these days, most games contain the EULA agreement thing where it states that you, the consumer, do not buy the "game". You only buy the "license" to play the game. As we have seen, games being sold have all sorts of security on them that restricts where you can play them, and even the number of times you can install this game on a machine.

There are even times when, I forgot what the security is called, you upgrade a hardware part of your machine, the game suddenly won't load anymore because when you first installed it, the security recorded the information of your machine and now that it's different, it thinks you're trying to pirate it or sell it to another person.

There's also the security type where it loads some type or "rootkit" or whatever spy thing on your machine. Some people are affected by this from a computer resource perspective, while others don't seem to care. The point is that there are people whose machines are affected, and they have no other way of regaining whatever resources they are losing due to the "rootkit" aside from finding a way to uninstall the game and the said "rootkit" which sometimes continue to linger in the machine long after a game has been uninstalled.

One more example would be the security that forces you to play ONLINE, even if the game is a single player game. An example of this is Assassin's Creed 2 by Ubisoft. If you bought the game...erm I mean the license to play the game, and suddenly you lost your internet connection, you're screwed. What if you do have an internet connection, but it's unstable due to your geographical location? You're screwed. What if your computer has been infected by some malware or virus that causes your internet connection to go haywire? You're screwed.

Another factor as to why people "pirate" games is to check if their systems can actually handle them. For some weird reason, demos of games are becoming more overlooked. Sometimes, no demo of the game is released! How can a person who only relies on checking the "Minimum System Requirements" (which barely states if you can ACTUALLY have a PLAYABLE game environment, not just RUN it) would know if they're not wasting their money? Most stores these days won't give you a refund if you try to return a game because YOU might have copied the game and you're just returning it to them.

In my own opinion, these types of security used in games which restrict when, where, and how you play the games is not good for honest gamers who actually pay for the "licenses". All it does is add a lot of irritation in the supposedly enjoyable world of gaming, especially if you own a machine which is negatively affected by one of their rootkits or whatever.

Does piracy affect sales of games? Most likely. Still, they can say that they expect such figures of sales to be met after a certain amount of time, but that's just all speculation. They may hype a game so much that you see commercials of it on tv very often, yet their sales would still fail. They'd often blame piracy for them. What they don't realize is their games failed to sell well because it's just no fun at all. It's bland. It's been done before, it's nothing new.

What a lot of publishers/developers forget these days is that it takes more than advertising to sell a game. No matter how much you try to prevent a person to have a taste of the game you're selling by not having a demo available, those who have been misled by the hype who suddenly experience how crappy the game is will strongly voice out their opinions on the internet. People will readily be able to watch videos of the actual game on youtube and judge to some extent the real quality of your product.

Look at Batman: Arkham Asylum. That was one heavily pirated game, yet it still sold millions! Why is that? It's because people were able to judge for themselves that the gameplay in the Batman demo was great and fun, and actually made them feel like they're The Batman. Does it mean that those who pirated the game also bought the game? Maybe, but some people definitely do the "Try Before You Buy" and "If You Like It, Then Buy It!" principle.

What about Amnesia? Look at the its position in Steam. It really didn't have that much of advertising, but it managed to get very high up there! They had a playable demo, and people liked what they experienced. People will buy a game that is actually fun and works on their computers. Amnesia's so good that I even stopped playing Metroid: Other M just to spend more time with it.

In my opinion, a lot of publishers/developers are scared of letting players try out their games before an actual release date (with the help of demos of course) because of the power of free communication on the internet. It only takes a few bad reviews and some youtube videos that show actual gameplay (and bugs and glitches) to kill your million dollar advertising campaign.

The game industry and the Hollywood movie industry are two different things. Although both of them can hype up their product with the use of trailers, the game industry has the extra ability to make demos of their products available to the players with actual interaction. Some Hollywood movies do well in the opening week due to a movie's hype. The movie could have sold millions of tickets, only to be met by very poor reviews. You can call this the "burst" effect of hyping up a movie.

In the gaming world, people naturally want to know if a game's going to work on their machines and how it actually "feels" like when playing them. Unlike Hollywood movies, players are not just watching the game. The players need to get a feel and interact with it personally. Even well established game franchises will need to make demos available to people, because unlike movies, the computers and requirements change all the time, and just because a game from a different company works well on their machines doesn't mean it will work for what you're selling.

Yes, the gaming industry is definitely a very great place to make lots of money from, but you need to be sure that the quality of the product deserves the expensive price tag for the "license" to play it.

[Harry]

One thing thats really gotten my goat recently in the way games are advertised is that they throw up all these pre-rendered shots and clips (e.g. Kane and Lynch 2) and seem to forget that the reason most of us play games is not to watch the cutscenes but to be IN the action.

It's almost as if the major publishers would rather be making a film and just 'happened' to make some gameplay on the side just to make the player feel like they actually did something meaningful to make the next cutscene appear.

Demo's should be a major part of a videogame's marketing strategy. Very few companies realise that if you put out a thoroughly wretched and bland game, you might get large sales because you kept it all hush hush, but the word of mouth and ill feelings spread quick and remain in a consumers mind when the next game comes 'round. Customer loyalty is a big issue which companies like Frictional Games understand, and which the big companies like EA and Activision will never command.

Good to hear the OP came around to his senses, but its still kind of a bit strange. Frictional DID release a demo which in my mind ticked all the boxes it needed to to inform a potential buyer about graphics/plot/gameplay so there really is no excuse for pirating the full version. On top of that, many of these early release pirated games are usually review copies, which usually have bugs and glitches that get fixed right before going gold. It's hard to see how one can make a decision to purchase when you're playing an incomplete product.

Personally, I usually go onto pirate sites to get no-cd cracks for my own games or to remove some of the purely evil DRM measures companies use but indie games are out of the question.

The love, passion, blood, sweat and tears that go into creating an indie game should always be rewarded, and even torrenting their game can affect this. You might have pure intentions but what about the people who leech from you? Numbers of people torrenting will also affect the company policy in future DRM measures of cost viability of a game.

TLR = OP has conscience, but faults too

[Mina Darsh]

Well, as I said, no excuse is good enough, but also I hate to pirate. Silly enough of me, I didn't check for a demo when I wanted to try this game, so that's why really. Luckily I can enjoy the good stuff now that I've bought it, only hope I can get my custom levels to run without running into the evil Exception_Acces_Violation.

[Harry]

Well, as I said, no excuse is good enough, but also I hate to pirate. Silly enough of me, I didn't check for a demo when I wanted to try this game, so that's why really. Luckily I can enjoy the good stuff now that I've bought it, only hope I can get my custom levels to run without running into the evil Exception_Acces_Violation.

I didn't really say this, but props to you having the guts to actually post about this. Thumbs up mate.

[Mina Darsh]

Thanks, yeah, I was first like: "Won't I get reported or any..? Will people think bad about it?" But I guess I realized that the fact that I admit and wish to better myself by working on not pirating might be acceptable. And in the process I hope game creators learn why it is so ingredibly important to make demo's.

[Razerelite]

Yeah well some times its good like say look at MW2 it was a garbage game. I bought it on the first day for PC and got home and there wasnt even servers just some crap ass console ported "Matchmaking" garbage. It was so bad it would just randomly lag out try to switch host and then drop everyone half way through the match. If i would have pirated it first to see what the game is like i might have saved myself 70$. That and the campaign takes like a grand total of 2.5 hours to complete.

And even in a few days when the system started to stabilize it seems like its so over the top its unplayable. I go in and start the game get a few kills and like a few minutes in bam, get nuked. Not really fair when the developer hands out a tool to people who have no lives and just play call of duty all day to ruin the experience for everyone.

[Riku98523]

I have no problem admitting that I pirate every game I play now before buying it for the simple fact that 99% of games suck so bad they might as well be put on wii (ha I kid wii has some good games ... >.>)

The gaming industry sucks and imo is close to another crash because most games are shovelware a large reasoning behind this is because most people play consoles now (sorry but its true consoles are killing our games) and the thing is consoles have a large hit also because used games cause an even larger hit than pirated games (on console because its harder to pirate on consoles and you can't get used games on PC at least not usually)

I pirated this game (without regret I will never regret pirating a game because I usually end up regretting buying the game) but after about an hour I opened my steam up and bought it and I am now looking into some of Frictional's older games and will probably purchase those as well.

I would have never known about this game though if I hadn't seen it uploaded lol or even frictional games lol.

[Razerelite]

Yea i only pirate games that dont have a demo. It should be required for the developer to release a demo, i dont buy games before i know if they are any good.

Think about it, would you go to a car dealership and buy a brand new car without even sitting in the damn thing or taking it for a test drive.

[Mina Darsh]

Think about it, would you go to a car dealership and buy a brand new car without even sitting in the damn thing or taking it for a test drive.

I guess there is no better comparison than that one.

[iTIMMEH]

On most forums talk about piracy is an invitation for the banhammer, don't know about Frictional.

I don't really agree with pirating indie games if you have the means to pay since that purchase is far more important to the developer than, say, buying Halo 3 or Modern Warfare 2. I guess the problem is piracy is so easy these days. You can't really blame someone for choosing 'free' over $20 when it is so simple and there are no repercussions.

The industry's stance with regard to piracy and used game sales is all wrong. At a time when they should be encouraging people to purchase using positive techniques, they add increasingly restrictive DRM schemes to software and nickel and dime the paying customer with subtractive DLC, by which I mean removing features from the game to sell at a later time as opposed to adding something new.