did you pirate skyrim?

That's not even punishment. That's simply making them retroactively comply with the law which gives zero disincentive to refrain from continuing to engage in piracy. It's toothless and therefore worthless.

All the talk about jailtime being absurd for piracy is equally absurd because law enforcement agencies don't criminally prosecute casual downloaders. The only criminal prosecutions ever pursued are against large scale piracy operators like those that create file hosting sites which facilitate millions of illegal downloads, and even for those prosecutions the convicted usually end up serving probation. Prosecutions against casual downloaders are civil prosecutions not criminal prosecutions, and they are rarely pursued by government agencies.

for mods. For that same reason I bought the pc version. But when my bro left and took his computer, I could no longer play it, so I pirated it for xbox.
I wholeheartedly agree with Opium_Bunny that it is ridiculous to expect people to pay again for something that they already have paid for.
My example is going to be bad, but I feel it represents this situation well. Imagine going to a restaurant and buying some fish fillets. This is brought to you with ketchup as dipping sauce. However, you find out that fish and ketchup don't go together well, so you ask for tartar sauce. Instead of just bringing you tartar sauce, they make you pay for the whole meal again. This is exactly what the gaming companies are doing if you imagine the fish fillets as the game and the dipping sauce as the way to play.

yeah well, whats worse, "boo hoo I can't make copies of a game for personal use" or "boo hoo someone ripped off my entire game and distributed it all over the internet cutting into my already abysmal profit margin".

you're obviously not a game developer so I wouldn't expect you to understand how it works, but if you don't protect your game it WILL get stolen, I'll admit some people go overboard with their protection (limiting how many installs you can do is absurd) but a lot of the time it's just a matter of making illegal copies just that, illegal.

You're right, I am not a game developer but I have had stuff stolen. Unfortunately the thieves just make a creative person (or business) not want to create anything new, so I understand where you're coming from on that.

On the other hand everywhere I go I see companies of all kinds in all kinds of businesses doing shady things to their customers in the name of self protection. This is an extreme example, but it's out there. The problem is there are also the shady customers mixed in with the good ones, so they burn the good ones to protect from the bad ones. I understand what you're saying, but what I am saying is that I wish someone somewhere would figure out a way to balance it out. Maybe what companies need to be doing is considering other business models rather than punishing everyone. In the case of game developers, I rather like the idea of the free-to-play online games because there's no piracy if it's free and the developers get their monies from the people who love the game enough to invest in the server-side goodies and addons. Of course chances are it would destroy modding, but it's a start.

F2P and micro transactions are an entirely different can of worms, and one I would personally rather leave alone, it may not have any piracy, but you get an entirely different set of issues (one of the big ones that comes to mind is those that have vs. those that haven't in terms of payed goodies), trust me, it isn't anywhere near a solution to piracy, and F2P games are almost like a different genera to other games (not that I have anything against F2P, it's just not the way I like to play games) not to mention that dealings only get shadier considering the law almost never recognizes digital goods in the first place, yet alone digital items within a digital game.

the only solution to piracy would be for all the assholes of the world to somehow turn into really nice people, but that is never going to happen, as long as there is a cookie jar someone will be stealing from it (unless it's one of those talking jars, they are REALLY annoying, but at least you can hear the thieves opening them)

Really???? you want to tell that to the woman in Minn whom the RIAA went after with a major lawsuit for illegally downloading songs to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars?

I have a job, so.....no piracy. I had to work 3 hours to be able to pay for the game, and it has returned 30 fold. I will happily fund a company that makes such a great game in hopes that they make another.

Okay, so yes people are not nice and they steal stuff. Established abundantly in this thread. There is no way short of suing the pants off anyone who downloads anything ever, or shutting off the internet to the entire planet or outlawing DVD/CD burners/flashdrives/whatever can hold data or [insert extreme method here] to stop piracy. It's not going to go away because people can't be controlled and people are not nice or moral or whathaveyou.

What I'm talking about is:
1) in order to combat piracy companies are burning their legitimate customers and creating ill will and sour grapes. Some who are particularly vindictive have turned to piracy because of that, if for no other reason than a big fat "F you." I'm not saying it's right, but that's how it is. You only have to check out the "I hate Steam" threads everywhere to understand peoples' feelings about that, and don't even get me started on Spore, a very pirated game with it's 5-time install limit.

2) In trying to get people to buy things, there is supply and demand. Clearly something has gone wrong here and in regards to movies, music and software. It's obvious that people want something that companies have yet to provide. Similar reactions came ages ago from companies freaking out about people taping songs off the radio when cassette recorders came out and television when VCRs came out. People are not so freaked out about those things nowadays. This is where the business model argument comes in. Figuring out what people want (no, not the thieves, but people who wish they had other choices) can only be a good thing in a business sense. Adaptation to today's technologies is a must or people will have no reason to buy when what they want isn't available in the format that they want.

So it all boils down to this. Since piracy can't be stopped cold, what can be done to discourage it and encourage legitimate purchasing? Punishing good customers isn't the answer. Figuring out what they want, offering them value that pirates don't get are better approaches.

Try working for a record label and stopping illegal downloading our artists tracks. Simply putting it....you are stealing. The internet has only made is easy for this too happen. Wrong on many levels....

Just think, if you HAD to make a living and found out people were stealing from you...would you think it was acceptable?




NO!

Yes really. You're referring to a civil action pursued by a private party, not a criminal prosecution by a government agency. But please feel free to explain how this translates into people serving prison time for casual downloading.

I did pirate it, mainly because the xbox version is garbage compare to the open endedness of the pc version. I mainly did it for the bugs. But in the future i will prolly buy games pc only, I wont pirate them because they did put a lot of work into this and wont discredit their work by stealing it.

Your example is bad and a feeble and inapplicable analogy. What you did is more like going to a restaurant and being given a choice to have ketchup or tartar sauce accompany your fish fillets, ordering it with ketchup, then consuming it, and then deciding you wanted it with tartar sauce and ordering a second helping of fish fillet with tartar sauce and refusing to pay for it when presented with the check.

I pirated it. Truly, the only reason I did it was because I didn't know if it would run on my PC. Turns out it ran great! Normally I don't do this, but I bought it (on sale), simply because the game is that good. Best $40 I've spent in a while. Honestly, I've already played like 500hrs or something (I know that's like 5 hours every day), and it figures out to 8 cents an hour for entertainment, which is way better than a movie, by far.

Another reason I bought it was creation kit... Really wanted to check that out.

but in that situation, you would have the option to exchange the ketchup for the tartar sauce without having to pay for the whole meal again; an option that was not available to me. If I could have returned the game and bought it for a different platform, I would have done so gladly.

you are awesome.

I actually bought both of mine, but I have the money to do things like that.

Okay you finished your fish have some tartar sauce.

See how non-existent that analogy is?

If you haven't opened up a game you can return it to most game stores for store credit and get the PC version. Returning a game you played expecting to exchange it for a PC version is the equivalent in the restaurant scenario to inducing yourself to throw up all over your plate and asking if you can exchange the vomit for a new fish fillet with tartar sauce.

I lol'd so hard

buy me some tartar, but point taken

I am a huge software pirate, have been since the before the internet when us nerds shared everything via floppy. That said, I always kept this notion in mind: If a game I pirate rocks, I look into it's its development, it's creators views and history, etc...
When I discover that I have respect for the game and the people behind it's creation, I have usually purchased a legit copy eventually.
Yes, I have pirated Skyrim. Although I do have huge respect for Skyrim and Bethesda in general, This is one game that I will probably never purchase. The reason: Steam
Even the retail version of Skyrim requires registration and logging into Steam every time you play. I dont believe someone should require internet access to play a single player game. What if I don't have internet access at home? What if my budget doesn't allow me such luxuries? And what if I have to reinstall my OS during times of lack of internet? Plus, I do not have any use for Steam. It's only purpose is to detect legit gameplay, track your activity, and to use that info in an attempt to SELL you more games, which I have no interest in.
A gamer doesn't game to make companies money. A gamer games to game, and will allow nothing to get in the way of his/her fix. And despite Valve's efforts with their DRM policy, even their games are still pirated. Hell, There are even hacks for Steam itself to make it easy to download all their games for free. But I will personally rely on Steam for nothing. I've been a hardcore gamer since I was 4, and a Software Pirate since the age of 12. I'm now 33, It's in my blood. There's no turning back. Besides, in my 20+ years of Pirating software, I've NEVER felt any guilt for it. True, buying eventually is no excuse for the initial piracy, but I don't need to make excuses, I may or may not purchase a game, regardless of my feelings towards it. Rationalizing what I do isn't necessary, I just don't give a sh**. I will game on, regardless.