I don't appreciate the strawman you created there, nowhere did I say or imply a pirated game is "equal" to a lost sale. But let's not live in fantasy land here, piracy leads to lost sales. PC gaming revenue hasn't declined solely because of free games and consoles. There's "no data" to back the claim because it's impossible to measure, an intellectually dishonest argument. However, common sense will tell us people that regularly pirate games, if given no other choice, would buy games instead of giving up the hobby entirely. Surely you don't dispute that, I've never had someone dispute that point.MrHealthy wrote:Kebo wrote:Thousands of people count game development as their profession, and the worse the industry does, the less jobs exist for them. Hell, games, movies and music play a large role in the retail environment too, which provides literally millions of jobs. This isn't just a bunch of rich CEOs laughing to the bank. Stop being selfish and either pay up, or don't buy it at all.
By this logic we should never buy a used game if a new copy is available, because the developers make no profit. Hell, even if a new copy is available developers might not make a profit. I recently bought Dementium: The Ward (DS game) for 10 dollars new. They didn't make a cent off that sale.
The whole notion that a person pirating something is equal to a lost sale is complete bullshit. There is no data to back up that claim. No one can determine whether someone would have bought the product if a free option was not available. In fact, in the Music industry, studies conducted in the UK have shown that music pirates, on average, spend more on music purchases in a year then non pirates.
And please for the love of all that is right people, please stop calling piracy theft. They are not the same thing. Theft involves removing a physical object, in which case the owner of said object no longer has or can use it. Piracy is making an exact copy of something digital, in which case the owner still has the original and can do whatever they please with it.
You have a point on the used market, albeit a flawed one. Used games market at a supply and demand rate. Some 'used' games of new games still sell at $55+ for the $60 game (why buy used when brand new is only $5-10 higher). Buying a used game keeps the price up higher, often causing someone to go buy a retail copy instead. Not to mention some people simply wouldn't buy the games if they couldn't resell them (and we'd be back to rental heavy market) because it would imply they aren't owning the property (this is more along the lines of digital distribution, which we're going into soon). I'm sure you're well aware of individuals' right to sell used cars. Which is better for game companies is hard to say. I certainly do not advocate buying recently released games used. To equate it to piracy, however, is lunacy. One clearly still will create a ripple effect in the market that leads to profit (not as high as it should be), the other is an empty void of selfish piracy. I can explain this idea in further detail if need be.
If music pirates had no option to pirate anything, they likely would spend even more on music. The notion that because they spend more on music as a whole has nothing to do with whether they would make more purchases if piracy was not an option. It's utter nonsense to pretend pirated software, at some %, wouldn't be bought by the pirates if they couldn't obtain it any other way. Yes, it wouldn't be 1:1, of course not. Anyone that tries to argue it's a 1:1 rate is being completely unreasonable. Even a 1:2 ratio of purchase:piracy is probably unlikely. Someone that pirates 200 PC games wouldn't go buy those 200 PC games. But if they buy 3 or 4, that makes a difference. Just because there's not data on this doesn't make it untrue. There's not strict scientific data on what creates consciousness either. Surely you're not going to dispute that we have consciousness. And going into detailed studies on motivations and the effects of piracy that can be deduced by common sense is just a waste of researchers' time and money.
Your idea of theft is terribly outdated, I'm sorry you haven't caught up to the modern age. If I develop software, and it's cracked immediately, and freely distributed to everyone, that's not theft? You can argue the semantics, which is pretty dishonest, because we all know, for all intents and purposes, it's stealing. I'm sure you're well aware some games are sold solely as a digital download. Therefore it is impossible to steal from them? Please, give me a break. Do you understand how cheap a game disc costs to make? Surely stealing a physical game is theft, despite its low cost. So that small amount of cost is what separates the two acts? So if I pay the manufacturer $1 for the game I just stole, it's ok? And it's not like they couldn't make trillions upon trillions, (or effectively infinite in our lifetime) more discs. Did you know you can 'steal' an idea? Let's play semantics, since you seem to want to. One of the definitions for 'steal' is:
to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment.
Nowhere in my original post did I suggest anyone be charged with theft of property, rather they should be rightfully charged with copyright/patent infringement and fined for it. I'm sure you don't need it explained to you how important copyright and patent laws are, especially in the modern day market. As more and more of our professional work force is based around creativity, ideas, software, and data that can be copied or stolen, the more we need to protect the products of their work. I shudder to think of a world with absolutely no legal respect for creativity and ideas.
In fact, I'm pretty sure I didn't mention theft or stealing in my entire post besides addressing your very own argument (the idea that it's 'not theft of physical property', and thus is alleviated of any legal, moral or ethical burdens). Honestly your simple and tired argument (which I've heard a hundred times over) is outdated and weak.
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