Something has to be done. Ubisoft is pushing back the release of its new game End Wars for the pc. We all know why they are doing this. Its because of the Pirateing that goes on. People can try to denie it all they want but it gets done too much. Truthfully i got turned on to it because of Bioshock DRM issues. Why pay 50 bucks for a game. Have vista cause you to reinstall it...Or reformat your hdd a few times and your out of licences. As thats what happened to me and it was a pierated verson that allowed me to replay a game that i had only purched a few days ago. People are trying to show people that They don't like DRM by boycotting. Like they are doing with SPORE but thats only half the fight. If you go and do that. But pirate the game. Your only doing THEM a favor. Giveing THEM more data to support why they should use more and better DRM measures on the games. It was shortly after playing Crysis that i stopped Pirateing games. It was a big step to delete all traces of the new releases that i had. And then go out and buy them. But it was what needed to be done. I didn't want to be part of the reason why PC gamers Don't get the games that they deserve.

But companies should look for other ways to get around Pirateing. Look at Steam for instance. Look at all the games that Valve has on it. Yes there are ways to get around it and get pirated copies of the games to work. But not alot of people do it for the main reason that. Its near impossiable to lose that game. As long as you keep your email address right. And your credit info. You can still dl that game on 500 computers. And not worry about loseing it. Truthfully i would love to see Farcry 2 come out just on Steam for pc. Let them see how much pirateing goes on then. Instead of upsetting the customers the companies should find alternate ways to distrubute there games. Hell Push back the release date of pc games. But offer one time bonus's for the people who pay for it. Special maps for multiplayer games. Different skins or options. Its stuff like that. Small stuff that will save the company headakes and money loss.

But even with all this its down to the PC gamer to do the right thing. You might think that your saveing money by pirateing the latest game to play. But what would you do if you found out Diablo 3, Star Craft 2, Fear 2, Cnc:RA 3, Fall Out 3, and FAR CRY 2, Will never be released on PC because of Pirateing. Would you be able to tell your self that it was worth pirateing those games? Belive me. Someone who did it allot and offten. Its not worth it.

[Sorry for spelling Errors. I'm not a Spelling GOD and its late. But you get what i mean.]

Well; if it isn't another flaming thread...

I didn't mean this to be a Flaming thread. I mean it to be a eye opener. Gamers need to stick togather and stop this problem before it gets to big. Gets to the point where we don't get good new games because the companies think they will not make enough money. The last few weeks should be eye openers for everone who pirates games.

At the moment I don't think pirates have any motivation to stop. You don't really hear much about them actually being dealt with, just the problem of piracy itself. Get a couple of high profile lawsuits going where the pirates end up paying more than they can comfortyably afford for the rest of their lives and the numbers will lessen. I don't think the average pirate really cares whether they hurt the industry, so the threat of hurting their bank accounts is the only way to get through to them.

Less harshly, mass adoption of Steam would help prevent piracy and make it more affordable to actually buy the games for the pirates who do it because they "don't make enough money".

It's time for something new.

How do you think the folks that owned books felt when the printing press was developed and the value of their books plummeted?

They would have destroyed that damn machine if they could have. And the world would probably be hundreds of years behind in terms of general education (and level of innovation).

Remember all the whining about how VHS(beta) and cassette (jeez I don't even remember how to spell that) tapes would destroy the markets for TV and music? Didn't happen as far as I know.

I realize the web is a far greater challenge to intellectual property, but the industry as to embrace new tech and work with it instead of hanging on to old business models.

If people like to download free stuff, give them free stuff. Just make sure it's of high enough quality that you can sell them follow-up items.

Libraries work, don't they? Thay haven't destroyed the market for books.

Stop the Pirateing. ALL PRESS THE SPELLCHECKER

Yeah, that's one way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it is that game companies are doing more harm to the platform than piracy, with overly restrictive DRM and late releases for PC. It's that kind of **** that's going to kill the PC platform, and I'm not going to support it by giving those developers money. That means I'll miss out on a lot of games I'd otherwise buy, but so be it. I don't have much time these days for gaming anyway.

OK, I'm about to sound like an old fart, mostly because I am. I've been on this planet for 62+ years and some facets of human nature are inescapable when you see them as often as I have. People are selfish. They only care about others when being observed. Pirating is done in private (unobserved) and so no matter how noble pirates talk in public they revert when nobody is looking. The lesson to be learned is that as long as people can get something for nothing, they will. Therefore the only way pirating will stop is to make it impossible (unlikely) or to find a way to make it preferable. Peer pressure is unlikely to have a significant effect so threads like this one are a waste of time. I do agree that limiting installations is ineffective unless you're just trying to piss people off.

Not quite sure why I still bother, but I've got a few minutes and I'm bored.

Libraries do not hurt book sales because the cost of reproducing a book in terms of time, paper, ink, etc is greater than the cost of buying a book new. So consumers have the option of either being a book which they can keep or renting one for a limited time via a library membership; each having it's own benefits and drawbacks. With piracy the choice is different. Either you pay for a game in full and own it or you pay nothing and still get the same exact thing.

you cant boycott something that you don't know about, it is not like at the store theres a giant logo on the front saying "Warning this game uses securom DRM"

a pirate will never buy the game. drm wont make the pirate any more willing to buy the game

but drm will make a legit user more likely to become a pirate if the drm becomes enough of an annoyance

You missed the point completely. It has nothing to do with production costs.

Books contain intellectual property, which libraries make available for free.

There's nothing wrong with making something availble for free. If I buy a game and let me friends play it or give it away there's nothing wrong with that. It's the replication part of piracy that is harmful because it devalues the original product. You can have as many people as you want share a single unit like a book or a game on a cd because person only gets a limited share which is proportional to the amount paid for it. i.e. if 100 people pool money together to buy a book each only pays 1/100 of the price but only gets a 1/100 share. But with replication each person can get a 100% share for only a fraction of what it's worth. Just to point it out, libraries are not free; they are supported by tax dollars so therefore each tax payer has paid his or her share.

For some reason a lot of people seem do not be able to get that concept. But think about money. Couldn't we just eliminate poverty by simply creating a bunch more money? Replicating money is pretty simple whether it's printing new paper currency or just filling up bank accounts with virtual amounts. It would be virtually cost free to do so and would not involve taking anything away from anybody else. It's a no lose situation, so why don't we just do that? Because doing so would severly devalue the "real" money people had earned. And from there everything just starts to go downhill.
But sharing money is perfectly fine. Donations and charities are perfectly acceptable as opposed to counterfeiting or bank fraud. You can pass a buck as much as you want and there's no problem. Make a copy and you're in big trouble.

Maybe some part of an answer is to make games cheaper in some way. Say... you can play through the full campaign for $10 and every time you want to play it through after that, costs another $5 (This done through a control system similar to Steam). Multiplayer has a subscription-style cost to it, similar to an MMO, but cheaper.

I just think the pricing needs to be looked at. A game that takes 10 hours to complete costs $40, regardless of whether you're someone who plays it through once or ten times. A big issue in my eyes is that the cost of a game has gone or stayed the same, but many FPS's have gone down in quality (except graphics) and in length.

If I could buy a game for $10, play through it once for $10, and go online for 3 months for another $10, I'd get everything I usually get out of an average game, for less. Whereas if the game is exceptional, has a longer/more complex story, multiple paths, multiple ways to do things (All things I/people like), I might spend $20 or $30 replaying the game. I suppose this buying structure is kind of like renting, actually. But not only does this lower the cost of bad games, it raises the cost of good games. If it's a game worth playing a few times, or spending many months online with, the developer makes much more $$ off it, thus increasing the incentive to make longer, better games. I'm sure there are issues with this, and it would take some work to make all the numbers work properly, but it's late. I'll come back tomorrow and look at this idea again.

The best way to combat piracy is to have strong online play goverened by a cd key.
Or worthwhile downloadable content to registed users

So maybe we should have game "libraries" where people can check out games for a limited time.

It would be wildly successful, and surely put a dent in piracy.

How supportive do you think the industry would be of that?