P.S. The film comparison also answers the "a lot of games are rubbish" argument. The same is true of films and in both cases you have the opportunity to read reviews and even talk to other people who have seen it/played it before making your decision to buy.

Sorry if it seemed i was defending piracy, i wasnt. Just giving a valid reason for why people find a need to buy pirate copies. This all boils down to value for money and game publishers having to charge the amount they do to cover overheads such as overpaid programmers, advertising and the like. Myself i have always wanted to own a Harley but could never afford one but that doesnt mean i would steal one. But when i look into the shop window to gaze at one and see the price tag i dont see an over priced product. With all products you have to go with the market and what you are actually selling. When you buy a top game these days for 30 to 40 pounds, you are getting a short lived purchase, one that you have to take the risk that even if you like the game trusting reviews or the demo, that the game will work properly, instead of like most which needs patching. In any other product you buy that would be called faulty and returnable by law to the shop where you bought it. The film comparison doesnt really apply, simply because there is no initial outlay. you pay your fiver watch the film, like it or not, its cost you a fiver. With games there is the outlay of buying the hardware in the first place, and without software to run on it, its no more than a peice of plastic sat in the corner. The biggest reason i believe that game publishers get away with these high prices is the same reason why you have kids going to school in designer trainers carrying the latest mobile phones, and thats street cred. they have to have the game now or they wont fit it with their mates, and no way will they wait 6 months till it gets on the bargain shelfs. Game publishers know this as do all businesses who's main market is the younger end. Trouble with that is, we all have to pay the price, or like i do, wait for six months till it comes to the bargain shelfs and sells for a more realistic price, or as more and more people are doing now, resort to pirate copies. As an after thought why do you think that most people who are buying pirate games are just ordinary folk, not bad people, or criminals in any other area of their lives. could It just be that they too realise that games are way over priced and somehow feel they are not being held to ransom by the people who publish these games just so they can get some use from the initial investment of buying the games machine or pc in the first place [>:)]

Same here I dont condone piracy but there are circumstances where I can see why its done. Most 'pirates' are kids with little or no money, doesnt mean its right, just means they havent been taught its wrong because their parents arent involved enough in thier kids life or not enough into PC's to know what thier child is doing.With what I was saying for the Brazil article is that when there is no games on the shelves for anyone to buy legally it gives the pirates a flourishing market as they are the only suppliers of the media. Comparing that to wanting a ferarri doesnt work because a proper anology would be along the lines of wanting a modern Hyandai to something from the 1940's, but heres another anology, compare the SNES to a Playstation and which would you want now? considering games are no longer produced for the SNES for years now its not a viable option so they would have to import a console from another country, mod it to use on thier TV's and then need to get pirated games or import more which may or may not work.As for pricing this is the example which is why I did turn to Piracy compared to trusting reviews and demos. Master of Orion 3 before it came out was getting excellent reviews and the demo looked good. I pre-ordered it at $90AU (I was getting about $180/week at the time and paying rent etc out of that) got the game and spent the intitail hour just setting up and reading the guides before processing the first turn, crashed immediately. Loaded up again and spent 10 minutes setting up and processing 1st turn to crash again. So in other words I could play 10 minutes setting up macro-management only.You do the math on that and using the same example that was $1080 per hour or £480.The game was not patched for months after and unlike other products once opened games in general cannot be refunded so that was lost money. The same reviewers who said excellent prior to the games release then went and gave it scathing reviews went from 9/10 to 1/10. I went through the stage of downloading games to try before buying instead of trusting reviews or demos from that experience.There have been other times where the DRM installed has made games unplayable X2:The Threat is one example where I bought it and then had to go get a cracked exe to play it because the DRM wouldnt let the game load.What probly needs to happen is the realisation of DRM not helping, save the money there and either cut the sales cost or spend a little more improving quality. Bring more of the market to services like Metaboli where they are secure and they dont just get the money from the initial sale.PS with regards to my comments on the overpricing I was comparing them to products of the same calibur. They charge £10 per game whereas thier competition charges less (less than £5 in some cases) and that would hinder thier sales volume.

Quote: to cover overheads such as overpaid programmers

I take extreme objection to that one. As a professional programmer I can tell you I am not overpaid and have had to work long and hard to get to where I am today, including full time education all the way up to and beyond degree qualification.

Quote: a short lived purchase, one that you have to take the risk that even if you like the game trusting reviews or the demo, that the game will work properly, instead of like most which needs patching

In over 20 years of gaming I have only had a handful of games I would consider a waste of my money, and about the same number that have been buggy enough to require a patch in order to play.I also stand by my analogy to film - the initial outlay argument is bogus as soon as you add in the video aspect of film. Video enthusiasts will spend thousands on DVD, Wide Screen TV/Projector, sound system, etc. At least with a PC it can do more than just watch videos or listen to music - it can even do both of those as well.I do accept the peer pressure argument of why kids do it - it's a double effect too - its not just the owning of the game that is desirable, the very act of downloading and having a cracked game is seen as "cool". But, as Wildride says, that comes straight back to the parents. As my parents pointed out to me when I was a kid - "if my friends told me to jump off a bridge, would I do it?" My parents also always knew where I was, who with, when I would be back and pretty much what I was doing all the time. If, and when, I got into trouble, my parents would punish me not go round blaming everyone else.I'm now fortunate to be able to afford games as and when I want them - but I haven't always been able to. When I couldn't I would wait, save and get them eventually. Occasionally I would be disappointed, but not that often and the very necessity of having to save made me far more choosy and careful about my purchases. I think this is what is lacking these days (mouldy old git speaking) is a lack of patience - we live in a "I must have this NOW, I'm entitled to it and it's my right" culture. And that is another reason that games come out buggy - the pressure to deliver is enormous.The huge drop in price after a few months is also quite a recent thing - maybe in just the last 5 to 10 years. And I think this is evidence of another crazy aspect of current game players - a tiny attention span. Added to this urge to always have the latest and greatest means that most game genres are designed to have a short shelf life and an even shorter total play time.High quality sound and graphics also plays a factor in both the cost and short play time of current games. Putting these together can lead to ridiculous budgets for some of the top games - rivaling movie budgets in some cases.Those last couple of paragraphs sound a bit like I'm defending the games industry for poor quality and high prices. I'm not - when that happens it is inexcusable - but I don't honestly think it happens that much - especially to the careful buyer. Word quickly gets round when something is bad.Where I think a lot of people go wrong here, and Wildride seems to be falling into this trap, is in comparing games to physical products rather than creative ones. If you read a bad book, or watch a bad movie you can't take it back to the writer or actor and say - "Hey! this is rubbish, give me my money back." You can take them back if the media it has been distributed on is faulty - a bad DVD, CD or pages missing from a book - but not the creative content. For creative content it is very much buyer-beware.One more reason why piracy is on the rise - because it is easy and people are basically lazy. Films, music and games are all suffering from increased piracy and have done since the distribution media for them turned digital. Oh, analogue music and, more so, film did suffer piracy before the switch to digital but it sky-rocketed when things went digital. Books haven't - it just isn't worth the effort to photo-copy a book.DRM is a natural outcome of this and is only bad because it has been poorly and insensitively implemented. If it worked as it should - enabling legitimate users to enjoy the products freely with little or no intrusion and no external impact whilst blocking illegitimate use - no right minded individual could argue with it.I could witter on for ages on this subject - but I'll stop there, my dinner needs me.

Quote: DRM is a natural outcome of this and is only bad because it has been poorly and insensitively implemented. If it worked as it should - enabling legitimate users to enjoy the products freely with little or no intrusion and no external impact whilst blocking illegitimate use - no right minded individual could argue with it.

I couldnt agree with you more here, its not the idea in principle its the implementation which makes it more DOS (Denial of Service) than DRM.I also agree with the games statements, apart from RPG's a lot dont have the same long term appeal as they did 10 years ago. I remember playing some games for months now simular games only last a few hours. Maybe this is due to me being able to play more hours a day now but I refer to games like Wing Commander which in thier time were revolutionary (Hoping project RedLime is to bring life back to that series, but think thats going to be Crusader due to the company EA is working with for it.)I also dont agree with the programmers being overpaid because they arent, in fact Id think underpaid.

This is for everyone here who says piracy is bad/illegal blah blah blah.....I bet you everyone here has a copied music CD album in their collection. Or perhaps a pirated DVD.If you say you haven't then sorry, your lying.If you can get it free then go for it.Who here hasn't tried Limewire or Kazaa??For example EA's profits as of November 2007was $640 million (£316,892,559.06)so don't give me all this rubbish about the software companies/programmers being affected by piracy.

After reading the counter aurguments i still feel i have to stand by what i said before, although i didnt mean to insult anyone by implying programmers salary which i believe is around 35 to 40k a year (in the london area at least) wasnt earnt by that person through hard work and education. honestly put the way those guys can create something like Halo for example is something to marvel at. Still though, not to be accountable for a product because its under the banner of creative content for realeasing faulty goods at 40 quid a time is a bit off. I too have been in this arena for 20 years, and all i can say is that in the vast collection of my games, 80% of them needed some form of a patch release within a few months to make them less buggy. In any language, thats faulty merchandise with no come back unless the disk itself is faulty, you are stuck with it. I also dont believe the film argument is bogus. the initial implication was on going to see the film and in comparison to the value for money per hour of entertainment. to now throw in video players and widescreen home cinema's to flesh the debate is cheating. You can indeed go see a film for a very small outlay, the rest is choice. With Games you have very little choice, your pc wont work without software. It's true that people use their pc for other things than playing games, but again this supports the aurgument over relentless over pricing of games as all other utilities for the pc such a music creation, artwork creation, publishing and the like, have all seen a massive drop in price over the years, so why not games. Back full circle then to the reason why games are so high priced, not because they are worth what you have to pay for them, but simply because the software houses are counting on the targeted market (i want it now generation). it's true that a lot of piracy is done online by the younger end, but that doesnt account for all the cheap pirate copies bought. A vast amount are bought not by kids themselfs but by parents at car boots and sunday markets, not so much peer pressure as people quietly voting with their feet, or in this case their wallets.Thinking into the future, the gaming houses are digging their own graves with piracy. its not much of an aurgument saying that we have to keep the prices high to offset the balance of losses due to pirate copies being sold. Not everybody buys pirate copies but im sure like myself many people feel penalized for people that do and the resentment can only build in cases like that, which i would imagine will only fuel the fire for people to buy more pirate copies of games. Seems to me that the biggest enemy agaisnt the software houses is thier lack of good will towards people who would rather buy a legal copy but feel they are being penalised for something they arent doing, phycologically if your having to pay for something you arent doing then you might as well do it, and so piracy grows and the only way i can see it ever turning around is if the gaming industry gets off its higher than god attitude, takes it losses on the chin like most industries have to and give the gaming public value for money [>:)]

Quote: This is for everyone here who says piracy is bad/illegal blah blah blah.....I bet you everyone here has a copied music CD album in their collection. Or perhaps a pirated DVD.If you say you haven't then sorry, your lying.If you can get it free then go for it.Who here hasn't tried Limewire or Kazaa??For example EA's profits as of November 2007was $640 million (£316,892,559.06)so don't give me all this rubbish about the software companies/programmers being affected by piracy.

Good point in everything that you said and i agree, you would have to be a saint not to have at least something you shouldnt on your pc. The odd track, an episode or two of lost [:">] we all do it and its a slippery slope. It's all too easy which is why the gaming houses should be worried about piracy. with profits like that and still trying to claim piracy is damaging and making people pay through the noses is criminal in itself. Does smack a bit of treating it's customers like idiots. Not wise [B-)]

Very good post by Brian. I'm firmly in the camp that people copy games because they can and its easy. Everything else is just self delusion from people trying to justify actions which they know to be wrong (even if they wont admit it).

Quote: For example EA's profits as of November 2007was $640 million (£316,892,559.06)so don't give me all this rubbish about the software companies/programmers being affected by piracy.

Come on, you're posting in a thread about a developer that closed down citing piracy as one of the reasons. You cant really believe everybody is posting huge profits. For every EA, theres about 10 other companies posting significant losses. The difficulties the video game industry has been having (especially in this country) is well documented. Wheeling out the profits of one company without any examination of why they are successful doesnt prove anything.

ralw1969,OK, let me be 100% honest with you ...I do not have a single copied commercial DVD, Video, CD or track in my house. All of the software on my PC's is paid for or free without exception.I work from home on occasion and have copies of the development software I use at work on my home PC - but, again, it is all authorised by my office and fully licensed.I do, however, have copies of software that I own on multiple PC's, but I am the only person in the house who can use a PC and there is only one actually working at the moment. This could be considered breaking the strict license agreement of a lot of the software.I think I have a couple of pieces of donation-ware software that I have not donated for - yet.I do also have my CD collection copied to my PC & MP3 player in MP3 format - but I own all of those CD's. Again, I am the only user of the PC and of my MP3 player.I do also have videos recorded from the TV and we sometime tape things for each other in the family.I never give anyone copies of commercial CD's, DVD's, Videos or software. As the principle source of PC support in the family I make it well known that I frown on theft (lets not give it the nice P name) and if their machine gets in a mess due to it then they are on their own.I am not a saint, not even slightly religious, this is just something I have always believed in - being honest. It is not something I find, or have ever found, hard - it is just the way I am.strich23,Don't worry, you didn't insult anyone - you were merely expressing an opinion which everyone is entitled to do. There is no one answer to why piracy exists - except perhaps the fundamental reason of greed - both with the pirates stealing what is not theirs and with the software companies who dish out sub-standard products for high prices. It is not like the software industry is exactly alone in that practice (anyone want my last gas bill).Theft has always existed for all products - from simply stealing someone else's stuff, through distributing copies of other peoples products to manufacturing fakes.I come back to the thought that perhaps services like Metaboli could be one answer to help fight piracy - by providing a cheaper alternative that has some of the perceived "benefits" of piracy whilst being secure, flexible and legal.