Piracy

[Bluu]

Piracy is rampant where i live...software piracy that is...and it is so because the cost of softwares and games are nowhere in the range that 98% of the people can afford...

This is how the maths works out:

Average salary of an individual who can be said is doing ok in life...Rs 25000.00
If this guy is interested in design and art and so wants to buy Photoshop, Flash and maybe a couple of other programs...the cost comes to close to Rs 100000.00

He obviously cannot afford this as he has to support his family also...so what does he do?

Goes a dude who sells pirated stuff and buys whatever he wants for Rs 350.00
Thats right...Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver etc for just Rs 350.00 (thats approximately $7)

Same thing for games...cost of Age of Mythology Rs 2000.00
Avg allowance of a teen...Rs 500.00

The teen has to save four months of allowance to buy one game...
Instead he/she goes to the piracy dude and buys it for Rs 75.00 ($1.5)

What do you think should be done about this?

[Yian]

Not just in your place, man, but almost everywhere in Asia... from what I heard, Taiwan is the most extreme of all - the private king that place is... it cost $220000 to just get a Windows XP... I'm not gonna pay shit if that is the price.

...then no one is buying the computers! So the retailers sell you all the shit pre-installed. They won't give you CDs but if you got anything wrong with the programs they come to your house and fix it for you for free, as long as you keep a good relationship with them and let them have chance to advertise. My first computer in Taiwan has absolutely everything (photoshop, ulead 3d, some games, 3dsmax...) and I didn't know you have to pay for it untill I came to America...

but who can possiblly pay $220000 for a piece of software? change that into US currency, $220000 new taiwan dollars would be $6600... are you gonna pay $6600 for Windows XP? No waonder people in Asia pirate all the time...

[Bluu]

absolutely...what should be done???

and btw...most of the stuff comes from the US...(games off the net i mean!)

[SaintDL]

become one of them. help save the poor, support mafia, promote piracy.

my father was a pirate. but thats in the sea. he robs fishes of their bait...

[Bluu]

Originally posted by SaintDL
become one of them. help save the poor, support mafia, promote piracy.

my father was a pirate. but thats in the sea. he robs fishes of their bait...

LOL!

I am one of them...almost

[Freakonaleash89]

I am a pirate because I only get about $50 bucks per month. Would you rather blow your whole monthly wad on one game, or "get it through other means" in about 6 hours?

[Yian]

6 hours? I thought it takes like only 20 minutes!

[Magical Fruit]

So SaintDl Are you saying that your dad is a .....

Master-Baiter????

[Magical Fruit]

Ok honestly the real problem is te price of the software. I am sure pretty much everyone on this board has pirated something in their lifetime. These companies sell their software for shitloads cuz they have anti pirating software that is built in. This raises the price and then no one still buys it. I think if they made their prices reasonable people might feel better about buying it. I mean come on Photoshop is like 100mb on my hard drive and i would have had to pay 600 bucks for it.

The other problem that i have is having to "upgrade" a perfectly good product. If i had to pay 600 bucks for photoshop shouldnt i get the upgrade for free???? I mean can you say microsoft windows 95, 98, 98se, nt, 2000, me (definitely should have gotten a free upgrade there) etc etc etc. I mean they put out a new office series every 2 years. Is it any different? No not really...so people dont want to pay for it.

Honestly i think that all software except games should be free unless you are making money off of it. I dont see how that could ever work though. I mean say i am a kid that wants to get into web design. Have you see the prices for the macromedia suite it's like 800 dollars... no kid in their right mind is going to pay that much when they could get it for free. Well anyway i am just dribbling on now.

[AVataRR]

I agree that application software can be a tad expensive, but don't fight it through piracy. You're actually making things worse for others. Because 1) You're making their software more popular by using it 2)You're adding to the price of their software because the makers have to counter you.

In the long term, its better to simply NOT USE their software. In the long term, its better supporting the alternatives so competing platforms and formats can emerge. Use Linux and GPL SOFTWARE! :D
_____________

But this thread was originally about games piracy. Now games are a bit different, because its was made using creative energy. *shrugs* The companies who make them don't really take into account markets like India - so piracy doesn't really hurt their projections. Its a shame they're missing out on a big, huge market..

I mean, it'd be a simple matter of translating and then selling at a lower price! Its not like there are any major manufacturing costs involved. Its just publishing software.

[JerraMaya]

where i live every cd latest or old its sold less than a dollar and empty cd_r less than half of the dollar as the software is pirated everywhere no one gets the original stuff nor no dealer buys it , so i have a friend i get the lastest cds i want from him and burn them and give him back TAKE THAT PIRACY hehe well to be honest there is no law and one cant find any original cd around and in china this happened they brought down the whole plaza of pirated cds and had a law on it which was very strict , and placed all the cds on the road and ran a buldozer over it , now whats happening there people carrying all the stuff in one bag and going house to house for sale hehe its more effective and less costly and isnt easy to catch , so i think most of the asia is covered by pirated stuff and still growing , i tell u something i have even saw many times people from US , UK , japan etc coming here and buying from 100 to 150 DVD and VCD movies coz they cost under 2 dollars so there are always people for this stuff as long as something comes which cant be copied or pirated there would be more buyers of pirated cd than the original one

[Yian]

Piracy harms the software industry greatly, especially the PC gaming industry, so many games were simply pirated that the small game developers or publishers cannot survive because they do what they need in return after all the efforts they put into a game, thus we witnessed small developers' collapse over the years, and how MS and EA used it as an oppurtunity to climb up...

We here who have posted our pirating experience sort of already admitted that we pirated some sofware in our life... sometimes, we can simply put that this price is unfair (MS gets one million every seconds and you really think they will die if their Windows CDs lower its price by 200 dollars?), but if it is a price for the best interest of both gamers and game makers, then what we are doing is called stealing. We all know that a good piece of game is hard to resis, especially when it is free and no one is gonna know it and most dudes around you do it, too... but stealing is wrong. I used to draw shit for a newspaper back in Taiwan and one day I say a dude selling some shirts with the logos I designed on each shirt. I really couldn't do anything to him, but those artwork was not easily created at anytime, instead I put time and energy into it inoder to forge them as the way they were... and he just took them for granted...fuck...

so... my point is... pirating is bad and I think we should stop doing it...

[Hobbes874]

Yeah software is very expensive!! but they have to sell it for the much because of the cost to make the programs expecially programs like 3ds max which are about $3000 and up but the amount of time spend making it and for advertising adds up really fast. :( it sucks!

[cr3am]

Originally posted by Freakonaleash89
I am a pirate because I only get about $50 bucks per month. Would you rather blow your whole monthly wad on one game, or "get it through other means" in about 6 hours? oh boo fucking hoo. $50 dollars per month. You're not even old enuf to have a job, so 50 bucks a month should be a lot to you

[Freakonaleash89]

Bullshit I just droped $358 on Klipsch speakers and the hell if I am going to turn around and pay for more software. I have pretty much completely gotten out of pirating games because of the pain of getting the downloading the games and getting them to work. My mom got me Battlefield 1942 and Road to Rome for my b-day and I've just been playin that.

[cr3am]

you're the one who wasted your money on klipsh :\

[Yian]

Originally posted by Freakonaleash89
My mom got me Battlefield 1942 and Road to Rome for my b-day and I've just been playin that.
Oh God... I hope my mom will buy me games, too...

[Ritz-101]

$50 a month isnt bad at all... before I got my job, I only got 5 bucks a week, stop complaining and go mow somebodys lawn or something.

[ReDeeMeR]

Haha yes, the best part is when the moms arent buying shit, I pay for ma internet, I pay for most of my clothes, I pay for my clubs, cinemas and other shit... and it's freaking hard to make money if you're in the 12th grade :(

Half of my games are pirated and I dont care even a bit about it, if they were smart they would make the prices that reflect each countries economical level, if they dont balance shit FUCK them. I bought all games that were sold for a reasonable price, hell it's cooler to have them in dvd boxes instead of lousy half-arsed cd case.

So again FUCK them all, there are companies that opened their fucking eyes here, Buka and some others are localizing some games, usualy crap ones but still THEY DO MAKE MONEY as we have charts an shit, some assholes like EA sold like 5 copies lmao, they are diggin their own grave not us.

We have market, it's just they dont want to sell anything...

[SaintDL]

well i almost been a top shot pirate aye sir, i been pirating everything since my school days.

but i buy the stuffs i like in original. like blizzard, i'm thir fan i like the game i buy it. and any other games which i find so cool i wan it original. cos of the manual and all that. but now games comes in small boxes anyway so i'm back to priacy. its the way to go. hell even police headquarters uses pirate software. thing is no body knows and that's fine with them anyways.

piracy in asian often means..... PORNO CD!!!!! YEAH HELL!!! YEAH!!!!! JAPANESE KOREAN THAI AND RUSSIAN HARDCORE OH BABY YEAH!!!!!! GIMME ANOTHER HARDCORE BABY!!!!!

that is provided sopme fine chick gimme the first...

[Bluu]

oh damn..i just bought Splintercell, Raven Shield and Freelancer for $4.5...I feel bad but i'm not going to spend Rs 5500 on them (thats $110)...god i hope they publish games at subsidised rates here...the same concept as books

[cr3am]

why don't you just wait a couple months, and get them for $20-$30

[Bluu]

thats still past my monthly allowance...and i hafta watch a coupla movies after my exams including LOTR!...so no go..


and MaxPayne costs Rs700 right now...so i guess games will never be cheap enough here...

[cr3am]

nobody knows what Rs means american.........

[ReDeeMeR]

Well as it's obvious people will never buy anything if it's just goes for an absurd price, I'm a big LOTR fan so I bought the original DVD(But it didnt even had DTS so TT is pirated) and the expanded(deluxe 5DVD's) one for total of ~139.40USD and I'm going to buy deluxe version of TT and then after that ROTK and those are the only "original" movie copies I have :D

In US it's even cheaper to buy DVD's then here, so wtf, they can kiss my ass, even if I had ass load of money I dont think I'd pay for the over priced shit.

[Bluu]

wow...i rent them for about a dollar and rip em to a coupla cd Divxs...


Rs = Rupees
50 Rupees = 1 Dollar

[Odm]

IMO, if you really like something, but it's too expensive, you should save up. For things that are ridiculously expensive, I'd buy a pirate version. Finally, if there's a game that you don't really want, and is expensive, then buy it pirate copy.

Reasons:
Good games are generally made by good companies, and good companies should make more money to make more games. However, you shouldn't bankrupt yourself.
Ok games are made by ok companies, and if they're overpriced then there's no use buying their product full price.

[Bluu]

i agree...entirely...i hate to buy pirated stuff...

[Freakonaleash89]

IMO, if you really like something, but it's too expensive, you should save up. For things that are ridiculously expensive, I'd buy a pirate version. Finally, if there's a game that you don't really want, and is expensive, then buy it pirate copy.

I agree games that you know are crap but you still want to try them out should be pirated but games that are really worth your money and support you should definately buy.

[Odm]

Exactly... like I'd never buy a pirated Blizzard game because every single one of their games that I've played is awesome.

[Dying_Corpse]

out of 33 games and programs...
i have paid a total of 0 $

[Odm]

Well, that's you

[Hitman]

My thoughts on piracy, I only have a few things to say.

Link me up.

[SaintDL]

Originally posted by cr3am
nobody knows what Rs means american.........


what it means cream?

[F4LLeN]

i personally do get warez etc but if i like the game and it has a good multiplayer, or it has a good single player and i want to find out what mp is like, ill buy it original.

electronics boutique rox with their 10 day money back guarantee, if i dont like the multiplayer, just take it back and get your money back. also on the best methods of countering piracy, CDkeys usually work the best, in conjunction with checking the files arnt cracked, ofcourse thats only if you know your game is gonna be focused on multiplayer.

[Odm]

Yeah CD keys are really good for that. I don't use warez often (except I'm testing Photoshop)

[Bluu]

what is there to test???

its the best there is...

[Odm]

Cough cough TESTING=USING cough cough...

[Bluu]

i kinda got that feeling too...;)

[Downfall]

im curently testing my version too......oh ill uninstall it eventually...probably when i begin testin photoshop 8

[Freakonaleash89]

Yeah I am "testing" Photoshop too. One thing though I think talking about pirating should stop because what if someone saw this thread and all the mentions of Photshop and they then tried to catch the "testers" by uploading copies of their own software themselves... I dont like this idea.

[Hitman]

lol @ Downfall.

[F4LLeN]

lol pld downfall

[IkYiolul]

Piracy rockz!