Piracy poll trifecta complete.

[Fletcher`]

LkMax said:

It's clear DRM doesn't stop piracy, only slow it, so in the end it only affects legitimate users and in some extreme cases it limits game longevity (as in, the time the game will be playable).

Corporations don't care about a game's longevity. They want you to keep buying next year's 'installment.'

[CorSair]

Already made post about it, and most of the points still stand.
And about region locking or banning. Year ago, I remember Hotline Miami 2 was banned from Australia but apparently, developers said it was okay to pirate it in there. Dunno how much they lost sales from that, but the attitude... They got my respect for that.

Tosi said:

Buy the DRM-infected product, download the crack, apply it, and enjoy your DRM-free experience.
It's still illegal, but you'll feel better about yourself.

Question: What if the CD/DVD has only download manager for your game and you don't have internet?

rf` said:

Corporations don't care about a game's longevity. They want you to keep buying next year's 'installment.'

It's now become more or less of playing safe and sound, tried and true, and investors care about steady cash flow, instead trying to gamble with something new. But that's just my theory.

[Da Werecat]

rf` said:

Corporations don't care about a game's longevity. They want you to keep buying next year's 'installment.'

Well, sometimes we are graced with half-assed re-releases.

[june gloom]

dew said:

Nice propaganda, Trump 2016.

My thoughts exactly. Bucket's rigid moral absolutism (complete with popular faux-libertarian snarl word "parasite") is pretty funny, though.

Put me down for (x) Impse as a write-in vote.

[MFG38]

Even if DRM is piracy's fault and even if I'm against both, to me, piracy is still a greater evil. I can't imagine the end of piracy consequently bringing an end to DRM, though.

[Captain Ventris]

I like the implied assumption that we are all owed all the games that will ever exist, and so will pirate them (thus still playing and providing exposure for the game) rather than just avoid or boycott a product which bears consumer-hostile rights management.

Old, unsupported abandonware where no one is going back to re-release the thing notwithstanding. That's always a grey area which has more in common with snapping the padlock on an old lock-bearing book than it does with sneaking it into your pocket at Barnes and Nobles.

[Da Werecat]

I like how you know who assumes what based on whatever.

[Jaxxoon R]

I can't help but keep on reading the title as "Piracy troll trifecta."

[Mithran Denizen]

Bucket said:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/negotiate?s=t
You'll notice the word has quite a few definitions, only SOME of which necessarily involve other parties.

Yet that doesn't tell me what definition you're working with. The primary definitions as they apply to the situation you were describing do require the involvement of more than one party, and most of the secondary definitions either require or strongly imply so as well, especially if you are throwing a 're-' prefix into the mix. For comparison, here is a listing with the same basic definitions but with the interactive element made explicit rather than just strongly implicit.

Only one definition on the page you linked doesn't reasonably assume the involvement of more than one party, i.e. one can 'negotiate rough terrain' unilaterally.

All I'm saying is that your choice of words didn't accurately portray the scenario you applied them to. Nobody thinks or talks about theft / piracy / copyright infringement as a renegotiation, so why frame it that way?
Why is this worth arguing about, rather than admitting that you said something that could be phrased better?

[LkMax]

Oh, by the way, despite the retarded assumption of the original poster, I don't pirate games that were not abandoned (can't be bought anymore), and yet I'm against DRM all the same.
I just boycott shitty games or games with shitty DRM, there's a fuckton of games on the market (and on my libraries/shelf), they won't be missed. (I only open an exception to weak DRMs like Steam, but I wish GOG had all recent releases).

rf` said:

Corporations don't care about a game's longevity. They want you to keep buying next year's 'installment.'

Yeah, I know, they don't see it as being beneficial to the franchises they love to milk.

[Bucket]

dethtoll said:

My thoughts exactly. Bucket's rigid moral absolutism (complete with popular faux-libertarian snarl word "parasite") is pretty funny, though.

I resent being lumped in with those parasites on society who call themselves libertarians. "Look at me, I'm morally opposed to our system of taxation, while I enjoy all the modern comforts of civilization that they pay for!" AndrewB and I have butted heads many times over his minarchist/ancap/voluntaryist/etc. regressive gobbledygook.

This is simple objective observation. I'm not saying piracy is right or wrong. I'm not saying DRM is good or bad. I'm making a factual statement about causality. I think it's possible to have this conversation WITHOUT evaluating the ethics of either.

Mithran Denizen said:

All I'm saying is that your choice of words didn't accurately portray the scenario you applied them to. Nobody thinks or talks about theft / piracy / copyright infringement as a renegotiation, so why frame it that way?

You are not confused. You do not need clarification. You argued an absolute and were wrong (just like most people who argue absolutes) and now you want to bicker about piddling details to save face. Why can't you just be wrong? Does it cause you physical pain?

Why is this worth arguing about

Good question. Let's ask the person who brought it up in the first place.

LkMax said:

Oh, by the way, despite the retarded assumption of the original poster, I don't pirate games that were not abandoned (can't be bought anymore), and yet I'm against DRM all the same.

I don't recall making such an assumption about you - but thanks for adding your voice against piracy!

[Jaxxoon R]

Bucket said:

and now you want to bicker about piddling details to save face. Why can't you just be wrong? Does it cause you physical pain?

Why are you talking to that mirror?

[Coopersville]

I don't think I understand the new poll/thread, but I pirate software, and I buy even more software. I don't feel I've made a negative impact, but I feel DRM has.

[Csonicgo]

Bucket said:

There is EXACTLY ONE reason DRM exists, and that is piracy.

Cool starry bra, but you might not remember a time where game devs themselves would happily rip assets, kernel code, and game code from competitors to slap together another game. You know, REAL theft, the kind that drove Capcom to believe that all arcade boards needed to be ticking time bombs, require 10 minute warmup times, and overpriced, encrypted ROM chips. Never mind that such blatant theft gave us Ms. Pac Man. GCC didn't own Pac Man, had no right to tamper with Namco's IP, but did it anyway, and now their law-breaking ways gave us the highest grossing game of all time.

Bucket said:

Its actual effectiveness is a moot argument; one causes the other, simple as that.

See above.

Bucket said:

Furthermore, I can't imagine many circumstances that would bring about an end to DRM - but the end of piracy would be a start.

Perhaps affordable games would be a start. Perhaps games that worked on launch day would be a start.

We live in a world where 6 million copies of a game sold is considered a "failure", because budgets required to make them are so huge - no one asked for budgets to be this large or games to cost that much! When an RPG about dating a skeleton or whatever has a budget of $5k and outsells Batman: Arkham Knight on PC (that still doesn't run right, by the way), perhaps it's because the real circumstances are that the AAA publishers simply don't give a shit. I'm convinced that most of the AAA publishers are considering the PC to be a dead platform, which is bullshit, but they can go ahead and screw up release after release due to that mentality and see how well it does them when everyone slams the "Refund" button on Steam. They can't blame piracy for their broken games at launch.

Bucket said:

Cynicism aside, there is no other option MORE likely to end DRM.

Constant egg on AAA publishers' faces not working? Doesn't anyone remember how terrible SecuROM was? How despicable the SimCity launch was? Pirates had a better working copy of SimCity than actual paying customers for two solid weeks!

Bucket said:

The "two wrongs" argument is similarly inadequate as, unlike developers, people who download warez don't actually have anything to lose by breaking the cycle.

I think it's short-sighted to consider them two wrongs of equal value! When one wrong is to treat the customer as a criminal first, and perhaps a well-intentioned customer later when the servers aren't slammed by other well-intentioned customers, and the other wrong is a method to get a copy of the game I just paid for that actually fucking works and wouldn't have cost me a dime if I had just fucking pirated it.... why should I be mad at piracy again? That's the only way you can get a fully-working game!

Bucket said:

So, given these truths...

Given these truths the AAA industry can suck an egg. They made this beast, they know it will always fail, and then they continue to do it. Sounds like insanity to me.

When 9/10 times, piracy gives me a game that actually works, You're damn right I'm going to pirate it. Who wouldn't? it's almost common sense to expect this now. Publishers should earn our trust, not expect it, and they'll never earn it unless they make affordable games based on sane budgets that work on launch day.

[LkMax]

Bucket said:

I don't recall making such an assumption about you - but thanks for adding your voice against piracy!

I was under the impression that you were defending DRM and saying only pirates would be against it, but reading back I didn't find a specific post claiming that, so nevermind.
I still don't like the tone of the topic and DRM is far (I mean very, very far) from a good solution. I agree piracy can be harmfull to the industry if used by everyone just as a way to get free shit, though I have no sympathy for games that use draconian DRM being pirated.

[Da Werecat]

Csonicgo said:

When 9/10 times, piracy gives me a game that actually works, You're damn right I'm going to pirate it. Who wouldn't? it's almost common sense to expect this now. Publishers should earn our trust, not expect it, and they'll never earn it unless they make affordable games based on sane budgets that work on launch day.

But you're not owed anything. Just stop playing games!

[Quasar]

Preservation is a big reason that DRM needs to go away and that piracy cannot end. As someone involved in a couple projects for a legit publisher, I can tell you that some of the resources we needed to complete the releases would have been lost completely if not for "abandonware" sites graciously preserving them. When the original devs are gone and threw away all their stuff, or the IP has changed hands 800 times in the last 10 years, the best copy of something sometimes turns out to be on the net somewhere.

[Bucket]

Csonicgo said:

Perhaps affordable games would be a start. Perhaps games that worked on launch day would be a start.

How do either of these things put an end to DRM?

LkMax said:

I was under the impression that you were defending DRM and saying only pirates would be against it, but reading back I didn't find a specific post claiming that, so nevermind.

It's cool. Others on this forum would still take an "if you're not with us, you're against us" stance on the issue - apparently because downloading cracked games defines them as a person. *COUGH*

Quasar said:

Preservation is a big reason that DRM needs to go away and that piracy cannot end.

We're talking about video games, not the ozone layer.

[Jaxxoon R]

Bucket said:

We're talking about video games, not the ozone layer.

Oh okay, since it's been established that video games don't matter then neither do pirating or DRM, and in turn this thread.

[LkMax]

Bucket said:

We're talking about video games, not the ozone layer.

That's shallow.
Video-games are not literally life-savers but they have cultural significance just as much as movies and books. You're on a Doom forum after all, if the original Doom was "protected" with DRM that made it unplayable 5 years after release, much less have it's source code released and be so mod friendly, we wouldn't be here discussing about cool mods, mapping tricks and what source port is the best. Doom 4 wouldn't even gather as much attention as it's getting now.

[Bucket]

That's an untenable position. If you asked a thousand people what Doom owes to its longevity, I'd wager not many people would choose "DRM free" as their go-to answer. Hell, Doom made its mark on the industry even before there was a full version to pirate. Furthermore, Id has not shied away from some measure of copy protection on their later releases.

[Jaxxoon R]

If you asked a thousand people if Doom having DRM that made it implode after 5 years and having never had a sourcecode release like in the example he actually gave would factor into its longevity then I'd imagine you would get more than a couple people saying "yeah."

[Da Werecat]

LkMax said:

I was under the impression that you were defending DRM and saying only pirates would be against it, but reading back I didn't find a specific post claiming that, so nevermind.

When exploiting a controversial topic, it's important to not make your position entirely clear. Insinuate, but leave a way out for yourself. Think of it as a ladder to climb a high horse later on.

[LkMax]

Jaxxoon R said:

If you asked a thousand people if Doom having DRM that made it implode after 5 years and having never had a sourcecode release like in the example he actually gave would factor into its longevity then I'd imagine you would get more than a couple people saying "yeah."

Yeah, that's "kind of" a important central factor in this speculative scenario...

Da Werecat said:

When exploiting a controversial topic, it's important to not make your position entirely clear. Insinuate, but leave a way out for yourself. Think of it as a ladder to climb a high horse later on.

Uh... thanks?

[Doomkid]

Coopersville said:

I don't think I understand the new poll/thread, but I pirate software, and I buy even more software. I don't feel I've made a negative impact, but I feel DRM has.

+1

Bucket seriously just accept the fact that this issue is not black and white. Copy protection is fine until it prevents a game from being played or doesn't allow it to boot without internet or casues actual game breaking issues or whatever. Stories of this shit happening, stories that have nothing to do with piracy are a dime a dozen.

Claiming DRM to be a "pure good" or a "pure evil", excuse the colloquialism, is just absurd.

[Csonicgo]

Bucket said:

How do either of these things put an end to DRM?

DRM was the reason the game wouldn't work in the first place. Prohibitively high prices are also a factor to piracy.

Bucket said:

We're talking about video games, not the ozone layer.

[Mechazawa]

Bucket said:

And if you don't feel entitled to your free software, more power to you. If one disagrees with the seller over the value of something, one walks away empty-handed. One doesn't get to re-negotiate at a whim. We call that theft - and that falls within the legal definition as such, despite what equivocating internet scholars try to tell you.

No, we call that Haggling.

The thing is though, this is the digital world. Copies have no value and are able to be distributed freely, if this vendor doesn't want my price, I can go to another vendor who is giving it away for free. We have options and we can chose to take them. It isn't theft because I didn't take anything from the first vendor. If I did, then what did he lose? "Potential Sales" isn't a thing, so don't bring it up.

[LanHikariDS]

As far as pirating goes, I'm a little bit odd. I will pirate games, but only games I own. For example, BlazBlue Continuum Shift Extend. Yes, I did pirate it on my computer, BUT, I legally own that game, that exact edition, on PS3. I would play it on my PS3, if it hadn't died some time ago. By law, I'm allowed to download games that I own for archival purposes, so I don't totally consider it piracy, in my case.

Besides, I have plenty of games where I have purchased multiple copies of the same game. (Doom and Metal Gear Solid 3, mainly. I own it on PS3 and 3DS, and still plan on buying ANOTHER copy of it)

[Bucket]

Csonicgo said:

Prohibitively high prices are also a factor to piracy.

So you believe that solving piracy will in turn solve DRM. I'll put you down as "agree that DRM exists because of piracy".

Mechazawa said:

The thing is though, this is the digital world. Copies have no value and are able to be distributed freely, if this vendor doesn't want my price, I can go to another vendor who is giving it away for free. We have options and we can chose to take them. It isn't theft because I didn't take anything from the first vendor. If I did, then what did he lose? "Potential Sales" isn't a thing, so don't bring it up.

Slight difference: the product was owned by first vendor, not owned by the second. It's still theft. You might want to sit down for this - but the legal definition of theft is not limited to physical objects and hasn't been for some time.

[Jaxxoon R]

Why are you making so many strawmen? They're fucking everywhere I can't even walk in here and my eyes burn from all the goddamn hay!

Edit: Hell, you don't even have a real position, you're just kind of spouting shit with no real goal. If I didn't know any better I'd say you've just made this thread for the sake of arguing/being the center of attention/some other dumb reason.