What do you guys think about it?

Works in some countries, not so much others?

Could it save lives?

Originally posted by Stake from Jate Farm:

Originally posted by rojimboo:

Monetarily speaking it actually does more harm to AAA companies...

Pure amounts, sure.

Percentages.... ehhh....

They have bigger investments and rising costs to develop the game in a risky industry.

No wonder we are seeing console ports.

Originally posted by Stake from Jate Farm:

Piracy doesn't hurt AAA companies as much as people think. That's like stealing a dollar out of a vault filled to the brim with gold bars.

Monetarily speaking it actually does more harm to AAA companies...

Originally posted by Quiet Kelp:

Will the world end up like Mad Max if this continues?

Possibly.

If I recall correctly, it was after a war, possibly nuclear.

Competition for resources could increase conflict.

Originally posted by Kptn Howdy:

Originally posted by rojimboo:

At the levels of piracy that we are seeing though (Witcher 2 80% piracy rate, World of Goo 92%, Machinarium 90% etc etc), the overwhelming effect is of lost revenue.

That sounds a bit too high, doesn't it? I'd like to see your source on these claims, cause that's a ridiculous fear-mongering number. All of those games made serious cash, so I highly doubt that they had such high piracy rates.

Most websites are complete bogus anyways. They all give you those ridiculous numbers for fear-mongering.

The sources are everywhere, but conveniently in the Ghazi article which I linked to.

http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_4.html

Witcher 2's developer reported this themselves, and it was striking because it ticked off all the boxes that it SHOULDN'T be pirated as much. DRM-free version, free content updates, excellent value and reviews, decent price, indie developer etc. Yet we saw rampant piracy.

World of Goo and Machinarium pretty much the same story. The methodology is known and linked in that article.

One can only imagine what the piracy rates are for AAA games worth 60bucks.

Originally posted by Ninten:

Originally posted by rojimboo:

Sure, those piracy rates seems so high, but in reality we have to ask how many of them would actually be lost sales.

Nobody knows the true answer to that question, though there are estimates.

So we know for sure, some are not lost sales, because the person just can't afford it and would have never bought it in the first place.

However, these people somehow managed to procure a gaming PC capable of playing the game. Min 1000$ usually. So to spend 60$ on a game is so inconceivable? I think not.

Just because it was pirated doesn't mean it was played. It could just be to benchmark said games.

Again, then that's probably not a lost sale. But you've spent hours downloading a 30gb game and now you will innocently delete it and buy it for 60 bucks? Maybe. Maybe not.

And there are plenty of game benchmarks online.

Well one of them is science illiterate (possibly without the science part) as they believe climate change is a hoax.

It's nice to get big oil on your side I suppose, but still.

Originally posted by Zennock:

Shouldn't another advantage be that people actually get to play the game that they always wanted to do so?

Sure, those piracy rates seems so high, but in reality we have to ask how many of them would actually be lost sales.

Nobody knows the true answer to that question, though there are estimates.

So we know for sure, some are not lost sales, because the person just can't afford it and would have never bought it in the first place.

However, these people somehow managed to procure a gaming PC capable of playing the game. Min 1000$ usually. So to spend 60$ on a game is so inconceivable? I think not.

How to stump skeptics you ask?

Nobody asked that you delusional fanatic

Ask them these simple six questions and bet on something like your career that they cannot answer them without saying 'increased greenhouse effect'.

Answer these questions please. All are empirically observed, and verifiable.

1. Why are nights warming faster than days, if the culprit is the Sun?

2. Why is the stratosphere (upper part of the atmosphere) cooling and the troposphere (lower part) warming?

3. Why are the oceans warming in the way that they are specifically, penetrating from top to bottom according to an increased greenhouse gas effect?

4. Why are winters warming faster than summers?

5. Why is more infrared radiation observed on the surface of Earth?

6. Why is less heat (longer wavelength reflected radiation) escaping to space?

Originally posted by Zennock:

Can I hear your opinion on piracy?

Sure buddy.

There are some positive effects of piracy (discussed in my literature review). Positive network externalities - this is when increasing the user base has a positive effect on the gaming experience. For example, in multiplayer games, if legit user=pirated user somehow, you get a better experience the more players there are playing (up to a point of course, we don't want to overload the servers or anything).

Second, the competitive effect. Theoretically, piracy keeps developers on their toes as it is so easy to voice their opinion on something they don't like by just pirating the game. But this is only true if the gamer never meant to pirate the game in the first place.

At the levels of piracy that we are seeing though (Witcher 2 80% piracy rate, World of Goo 92%, Machinarium 90% etc etc), the overwhelming effect is of lost revenue.

That is just bad in all sorts of ways, also to gamers. They run out of money to improve the current game, make new games, make better new games and so on, diminishing the experience for the gamer.

On top of that there are indirect effects. Such as changing business models. Nobody wants to make a quality singleplayer exclusive PC game with no DLC, microtransactions, episodic content and intrusive DRM.

So the gamers suffer, even though temporarily you get something free.