did you pirate skyrim?

[ShenziSixaxis]

Just to throw it out there-- let's not try to give reasons for why EVERYONE pirates. You are not everyone. Don't act like it and try to say your reason(s) for any person other than yourself is a fact.



Back to the topic: I got Skyrim for Christmas for my PS3. This wasn't pirated. When I get a new laptop, I am still unsure if I will pirate Skyrim or not. It will likely depend on what amount of money I have and the price of the game at that point in time.

 

[Monolith]

Interesting debate. I am half ashamed to admit I've pirated Bethesda games in the past (Fallout 3 and Fallout NV), but I did buy Skyrim. It only cost me 31 euros (41.8 $ ) as I ordered it from a cheap online store, though I did have to wait 3 weeks for it to arrive because it was sold out.

Whether or not I buy games depends entirely on my financial situation at the time. I usually never buy full-priced games upon release: I either wait for the inflated prices to come down OR search for the cheapest vendor possible, even if it means having to wait for my game, which is what I did with Skyrim and ended up saving big bucks.

Somehow the act of "stealing" a video game from a faceless corporation doesn't feel like a tangible crime to me; it's more an impersonal act of taking something in cyberspace without paying for it. That being said, I do realize the repercussions of online piracy and the loss of revenue it creates, so I try to keep it to a minimum.

 

[Elsabob]

The way I see it, Skyrim is amazing good value for money.

For example, if I went to the cinema, I'd probably be spending about £7 ($11) on 2 hours of entertainment. So that's £3.50 (or $5.50) per hour.

If I bought a TV box set, I'd expect to pay around £30 ($47) (I don't buy the expensive ones), and there's generally 24 episodes in a season, so £1.25 ($1.96) per hour of entertainment

Say I go on a night out. We go for some food and have a glass of wine with the meal - £15 ($24), and then go on somewhere else for some more drinks, taking the total up to £20 ($32). We go onto a club, pay for entry and another drink and it's easily £30 ($47). About 5 hours entertainment @ £6 ($9.40) per hour

Skyrim cost £40 ($63) new in the UK, and so far I've played for 80 hours, and I don't feel like I've even scrathed the surface. So far, that's 50p (79 cents) per hour. And that's not counting the time I've spend talking about it, or posting about it, etc etc. Money well spent.

They've put a lot of money and resources into producing something that is going to entertain us for hours and hours and hours - I don't think it's too much to ask to pay £40/$60 for it.

 

[andrea]

no, I bought it

 

[xSuoiveDx]

Seriously people whether you agree or disagree to a pirated copy is your choice, there is no need to start slinging off at each other & turning the topic into a massive flame war, which is where it is headed.

I paid for my copy as I was only going to play it on the 360.

It's not $60 everywhere. Here in Australia new games are seldom under 120, which is even more in America since the Australian dollar is higher now. I didn't pirate it myself, but just wanted to state this fact.

I bought my new copy of Skyrim at my local Games store & I only paid $78 for it. A week or so before I paid $220 for MW3 Prestige, but most of my games are bought new & I rarely pay more than $80 for them.

 

[Skullrattla]

I would have payed for it if it weren't for Steam. The artwork in the game alone is worth the money, but I hate Steam's practices when it comes to forced automatic updates. They seem to think they can alter content on people's hard drives that does not belong to them (Steam). People who bought the DVD and licenced it through Steam seem to lose ownership of their game files. I disagree with the whole mentality of "automatic updates" because it can and does go wrong.

I want full control of the files on my computer, and I want to be able to read up on an update before I apply it. And it is going to be ME that applies it, not a remote machine.
Now it sounds like there are bugs and problems with the Creation Kit and Steam Workshop (specifically to do with mod intallations and mod loading order, incompatibilities and wrong updates). I am not surprised. People who want to apply mods should be shown how to manually install, and how to set mod loading order themselves instead of dumbly relying on an automatic service that can never work 100%.

BTW, I am thinking of suggesting a tutorial on how to remove Skyrim from Steam on a PC and run it as it should be, a stand-alone program.

I wish there was a way to send the message to Bethesda, that is , many of us will boycott games locked into Steam or any other online DRM.

As regards value for money otherwise, time spent on fixing the game and looking up solutions to bugs on the internet should be deducted from total time spent on the game to arrive at actual time enjoyed playing!
There is no way I would have played this game for more than a few days without internet access. Possibly the most oblique piece of software I have ever used. Bethesda charges money for value added to the game for nothing by the fans, namely modders and people who write the wikis.

I still fondly remember trying to figure out what was going on in Helgen, what i was supposed to do, and why that navigation arrow was leading me to an empty room. All during massive lag and mouse jitter because the PC version is a crappy port from the console and needs extensive tweaking. Not to mention how terrible the graphics looked without mods, especially in dungeons- is that a staircase or a vertical wall?

 

[Evina]

It's not like $60 bucks is alot of money anyways...

It is.

 

[XbSuper]

It is.

To some, yes it is, but those people just need to suffer without it. You wouldn't go steal a car just because you can't afford to buy one. Pirating a video game is no different.

 

[Evina]

To some, yes it is, but those people just need to suffer without it. You wouldn't go steal a car just because you can't afford to buy one. Pirating a video game is no different.

Well ain't that cute... but it's wrong.

 

[Maxlength]

Real fans of the Elder scrolls series "NEVER" Pirate such an awesome game like this... ~.~ It's not like $60 bucks is alot of money anyways...

$60?? Wow....mine was £24 stirling!

 

[Static]

ITT: People trying to justify pirating. I pirate things, like a lot of other people, but trying to claim it is a perfectly moral thing to do is just disingenuous. Just admit that it's wrong and carry on, don't bring in ethical treatment of workers and flaws in the capitalist system to justify it. Yes, workers are treated awfully. Yes, capitalism is a pathetic system that's barely a step on from feudalism, but we both know that in spite of your claims for disgust at the ethics and politics you don't do anything to support it. Just accept that you're breaking the law and stealing from the company and carry on.

 

[Skullrattla]

"Pirating" is a word created by the big media to criminalize people who just download free stuff they find online.

The word "piracy" normally means violent theft and selling of the loot for profit.

Perhaps people who run file sharing sites with payed-for access, or people who actually sell copied media are pirates. People who just download for themselves are not.

To some, yes it is, but those people just need to suffer without it. You wouldn't go steal a car just because you can't afford to buy one. Pirating a video game is no different.

I'm gonna have to take this up:

DUH, it is totally different. Software is not hardware.

The rich only feel good about their riches when they can see the have-nots "suffer without". That's the crux of the matter when it comes to people hating on "pirates".

If everybody had an iPhone 4, it wouldn’t feel like such a privilege to have one. The tight-arsed, ungrateful and ungenerous person who just payed money for an expensive item doesn't feel good if others can get the same for nothing. It makes it less gratifying to have money when others can get by without. The rich pay for privilege, because they like to feel they are better than those who just have to "suffer without". This is why , in the UK, it is actually illegal and arrestable to scavenge from skips even if they are left open in public places.

It is attitudes like these that just encourage us to pirate more.

Unauthorized downloads does not equal lost sales for the companies, and the only reason to hate on peole who dowload is the selfish sense of privilege.

 

[Fighter Hayabusa]

Paid.

There's no justification for stealing games. The developers put in an obscene amount of effort and time into games and deserved to get paid. Some of my friends work at game studios, during crunch time some of the crew end up sleeping under there desks rather than going home during the crunch phase of production.

So much study and preparation put into getting ready for the job in school, then an absurd amount of effort put into the execution. The work needs to be respected. People who steal creative work like games and movies are repugnant.

 

[MushroomGenius]

<--- 360 player, so bought it.. .but I bought it used about 2 weeks after release, but didn't start playing until Christmas.

Having played the game now, I'd have bought the Collector's Edition without hesitation.

 

[Opium_Bunny]

ITT: People trying to justify pirating. I pirate things, like a lot of other people, but trying to claim it is a perfectly moral thing to do is just disingenuous. Just admit that it's wrong and carry on, don't bring in ethical treatment of workers and flaws in the capitalist system to justify it. Yes, workers are treated awfully. Yes, capitalism is a pathetic system that's barely a step on from feudalism, but we both know that in spite of your claims for disgust at the ethics and politics you don't do anything to support it. Just accept that you're breaking the law and stealing from the company and carry on.

You obviously did not read the rest of the posts...or rather...didn't seem to digest it correctly, either way nobody was trying to say that they thought pirating is morally ethical. It is not as simple as "breaking the law and getting away with it"...perhaps you actually like sitting with that consciousness, but not all of us agree.

There seems to be a "holier than thou" attitude when it comes to people who buy things new and their hate for others who would rather download it, please get over yourself...you are NOT that unique & cool. It comes down to PRIORITIES...some of us just don't sit in unlit dungeons and play video games for hours...therefore we don't really want to spend 60 dollars on a game we are only going to play one time a week.

 

[Static]

You obviously did not read the rest of the posts...or rather...didn't seem to digest it correctly, either way nobody was trying to say that they thought pirating is morally ethical. It is not as simple as "breaking the law and getting away with it"...perhaps you actually like sitting with that consciousness, but not all of us agree.

There seems to be a "holier than thou" attitude when it comes to people who buy things new and their hate for others who would rather download it, please get over yourself...you are NOT that unique & cool. It comes down to PRIORITIES...some of us just don't sit in unlit dungeons and play video games for hours...therefore we don't really want to spend 60 dollars on a game we are only going to play one time a week.

I explicitly pointed out the fact that I too download things illegally, so I can't really be adopting a 'holier than thou' attitude. My point is that you can't claim it's in any way valid or fair on the game maker. Using the product less than others isn't a valid reason to not buy it, it's your issue, not the company's. By the same logic you could claim that you should be able to take duvets for free because you're an insomniac.

My point isn't that people who buy games are better, it's that illegally downloading games can't be defended. If you're going to illegally download a game/music/film/ebook then fine, power to you - I do the latter three so I can't belittle you - but accept the fact that doing so is completely unfair on the producer of that product and don't try to defend it.

 

[Ching Of Skyrim]

Girlfriend. Bought it as a gift for me and yet to this day she says itsthe worste thing she has bought me because I play it so much

 

[Opium_Bunny]

That second part was not dedicated to you sweet pea, I just didn't want to double post. The only thing I have ever actively stolen was a piece of gum when I was 10...I was caught and never ever did that again. I don't feel pirating is "stealing"...but for me to launch into what I feel is logical is going to be a rant.

I get what you are saying, and I respect that...however not all of us will feel that same way. Your logic may be different than what I feel is logical.

 

[Static]

That second part was not dedicated to you sweet pea, I just didn't want to double post. The only thing I have ever actively stolen was a piece of gum when I was 10...I was caught and never ever did that again. I don't feel pirating is "stealing"...but for me to launch into what I feel is logical is going to be a rant.

I get what you are saying, and I respect that...however not all of us will feel that same way. Your logic may be different than what I feel is logical.

Sweet pea?

And piracy isn't really stealing, as you don't actually remove a copy of whatever digital things you pirated, you just prevent a sale (arguably you don't even do that, as chances are you wouldn't have bought the product if piracy hadn't existed anyway). Frankly, I'm all for piracy: it one of the only things in the history of human-kind that is entirely altruistic, but I think that seeing as our modes of production at the minute necessitate X number of sales in order to produce profit it becomes something that cannot be endorsed by the entire population, or else the producer will stop, well, producing. The main reason companies lose money, however, isn't through piracy directly ('lost sales' and the like), but because most spend an inordinate amount of money pointlessly attempting to guard against it, only for their system to be cracked in less than a week. Not to mention the ridiculous amount of civil injustice they impose on scapegoats when they're caught for piracy, but then of course most businesses don't see than threatening your clients with ludicrous fines isn't a brilliant business plan.

The issue with piracy is one of both consumer and producer. Companies DO overprice things and they DO infringe of customer's rights (hell, the very existence of Steam is a massive infringement on a customer's right to ownership), but if nobody actually buys the product then they'll simply stop producing them, which would be a shame. In the case of Skyrim, I think the cost is worth it - as Bethesda are a brilliant (and relatively small) games studio and it would be a great shame if they ceased making the series they do. Companies such as EA, and Infinity Ward who continually fluff over their customers with things like secuROM and the releasing what effectively amount to a mod-pack every year for £40 can go fornicate themselves, however.

 

[Opium_Bunny]

I was going to write pretty much everything you said, except that I don't really care enough about this issue to try and explain my thoughts. I bought all 12 of The Sims expansion packs from EA, and found out they installed SecuRom on my computer and furthermore screwed up my system. Or the annoying people who preach about the issue, foam at the mouth, calling names and gnashing their teeth over it. This is just ridiculous and makes me less sympathetic to the cause.

Like I said video games is not central to my life, I play because I am always sitting in an airport for hours with nothing to do. I could care less if people do it, in fact if i succeed in downloading something...I always make sure to keep it seeded so others can enjoy it too.

Hello there are starving children in the Middle East, and a famine in Somalia...am I really going to lose sleep over a copy of Skyrim?