No More Pirated Games In Two Years

[tetris42]

You're saying we need to have a law that counters the EULA that you agreed to upon installing the game, and that subsequently makes the developer relinquish control of their IP?

1. EULAs don't mean a whole lot, they can literally put things in there that contradict the law when they're written, but they're not enforced, it's a way of lawyers covering their ass.

2. Nobody wants games to be able to terminate except bean counters. Customers want to be able to play the game they bought. Devs want players to be able to play the game they spent years working on. Upper management wants you to stop playing the second their profits dip below what they deem acceptable. This practice is a disease. The only reason it's "agreed upon" is because almost no customer reads it and it's the only way to play the game. There's no alternative if you want to play the game. It would be like if you went to a movie and had to sign a contract that said the theater could cut the movie off any time they felt like it for any reason. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they do. This is okay because you agreed to it? Why should that even be tolerated?

3. Who said anything about relinquishing IP? Having a patch to be able to play a game you paid for does not mean you own the intellectual property. It means you can play the damn game you paid for.

 

[Trooper94]

I thought Steam, Origin, GOG, etc. game sale days would kill that faster than DRM? If you can't afford a few dollars then you might have bigger issues?

Avoiding the whole abandonware issue, I know sites like gog.com and the various ridiculous discounts during Steam sales have given me many more games than I can hope to ever finish without having to resort to "other" means to play them.

It is when they are not easily available to purchase and play is when I am most tempted. But that goes with most media, not just games.

 

[yourgrandma]

Everything can be cracked, it just takes time.

Precisely the point of the copy protection, a lot of people who want the game and can't pirate it will end up buying it instead if they have to wait months for a crack.

 

[H-street]

Out of 100 people that pirate a game, I'd bet 15 or less would actually buy the game for full price if it wasn't possible to pirate. Maybe another 15 a year or two later for half price. The rest probably wouldn't bother. So I don't think sales wold really be effected if this BS was true. Not to mention people who want the multi-player aspect always buy the game to have access to the full community.

wow those are great numbers

you are saying if piracy wasn't possible they would get a 15% day one increase in sales? and a possible another 15% increase over the liftware..

that's a staggering 30% increase in sales over the lifetime of a game..

I don't think you understand much if you don't think any publisher/developer wouldn't jump/salivate at the prospect of a 30% increase in sales..

 

[Ur_Mom]

I hate DRM. I REALLY hate DRM that makes it harder for me to play a game. I have several games that I've legitimately bought and paid for that I either couldn't play or had to make some changes (no disk emulation running - CloneDrive, Nero, etc..). If DRM is limiting the game play of legit users, it's too much. Especially if it's super easy to download a crack and apply it to get the game running. The DRM did very little to stop pirates, but it did a lot to stop me from playing my game play. :/

Steam, Origin and others (so far) work fine. Minimal DRM, things work great (if they don't, it's not due to DRM). I like the model. At first, when Steam was released - NO WAY. Hated it. Never would have gone for it. Now, after a couple hundred games, I'm sold. I like it.

 

[nilepez]

You're saying we need to have a law that counters the EULA that you agreed to upon installing the game, and that subsequently makes the developer relinquish control of their IP?

I'm saying if you abandon software you sold, you have to unlock it. What difference does it make. There's not chance that these abandoned games are going to suddenly put back into service by an EA or Ubi Soft. You shouldn't be allowed to sell me a license today and tomorrow quit supporting it next year (or next week if you waited a few years to buy the S/W).

 

[alxlwson]

I'm saying if you abandon software you sold, you have to unlock it. What difference does it make. There's not chance that these abandoned games are going to suddenly put back into service by an EA or Ubi Soft. You shouldn't be allowed to sell me a license today and tomorrow quit supporting it next year (or next week if you waited a few years to buy the S/W).

Here's the thing about it:

Just because they stop supporting a service (Let us use the City of Heroes example), doesn't entitle you to continue using the service. Think about On-Star- You bought GM (publisher) vehicle equipped with On-Star(service). You bought the equipment to support it (a boxed game), and pay for the service of On-Star (the back end servers for the game to run). GM decides that the service isn't making any money after a few years, and closes up shop(shuts down the servers).

The license agreement on both of these services contains the same language. I provided Blizzard's because it is easy to locate: ". In the event that Blizzard determines that it is in its best interest to cease providing the Service, or license to a third party the right to provide the Service, Blizzard Entertainment shall provide you with no less than three (3) months prior notice."

You don't own the game, period. You own a physical disk, and a license is provided to you for however long that a publisher deems fit. While it sucks ass, it is what it is.
Creating a law that states that a publisher must continue to support a title, especially one with a required online service like an MMO, beyond it's monetary lifetime is silly.

As far as offline games go, and the online component is simply DRM, I agree with you 100%. If the game goes out of publication, and therefore leads to shutting down the DRM servers then the publisher needs to issue a patch. Not issuing a patch "because we don't wanna" is unacceptable. Most especially if issuing such patch is of minimal monetary liability.

 

[alxlwson]

Playing Devil's Advocate with myself here, in reference to my last statement: Just because the publisher decides to pull it off the shelf permanently, aren't they still entitled to protect their IP? Issuing this kind of patch would complete circumvent copy protection. Just because they discontinue it doesn't mean that they aren't entitled to continue to protect their investment.

I dunno man, there really isn't a good answer to it.

 

[Criticalhitkoala]

There are these things called "countries"...and there are a few of them in the world. In some of these countries people make a lot less than than people do in Western countries. So something like a even a 50% discounted $60 game would be like buying a fully loaded Surface Book in comparison. Think about that for a second and realize why piracy exists considering that well over 70% of the worlds population is in that boat.

How do they afford the machines to run the game?

This is why free games like Dota are popular and don't require a lot of hardware.

 

[tetris42]

You don't own the game, period. You own a physical disk, and a license is provided to you for however long that a publisher deems fit. While it sucks ass, it is what it is.
Creating a law that states that a publisher must continue to support a title, especially one with a required online service like an MMO, beyond it's monetary lifetime is silly.

[/quote] You're mixing terms again. Just like they have no requirement to relinquish their IP (still not sure where you go that idea), no one's arguing they need to SUPPORT the game after it's monetary lifespan. What they do need to do is have some sort of end-of-life plan, like a patch to run it on a private server, or open up relevant source code for noncommercial use. You say it "is what it is", that's only because they're running this stuff unchecked. I'm pretty sure a law that required a game you sold to be able to run in some fashion after the servers shut down would clear up the situation. "Games as a service" is just a smokescreen for publishers to take rights away from people paying them money. These games are designed to die, and it's completely unnecessary the way we're doing it.

As far as offline games go, and the online component is simply DRM, I agree with you 100%. If the game goes out of publication, and therefore leads to shutting down the DRM servers then the publisher needs to issue a patch. Not issuing a patch "because we don't wanna" is unacceptable. Most especially if issuing such patch is of minimal monetary liability.

Why should a game that happens to have an online component be exempt from being able to run it after a company decides to shut down a server? I can play Quake online today from 20 years ago, but can't play Battlefield Heroes from less than 6. Again, they're being designed to die and it shouldn't be tolerated. It wouldn't be in most other industries.

Playing Devil's Advocate with myself here, in reference to my last statement: Just because the publisher decides to pull it off the shelf permanently, aren't they still entitled to protect their IP? Issuing this kind of patch would complete circumvent copy protection. Just because they discontinue it doesn't mean that they aren't entitled to continue to protect their investment.

I dunno man, there really isn't a good answer to it.

I think the publisher should be obligated for consumers to be able to use their product that they paid for, especially when the only reason they can't is because the publisher killed it by design. To me, that's as anti-consumer as it gets.

The rest of your statement I don't understand at all. How exactly is their IP threatened by customers being allowed to play their game? Let's say EA released a patch so people could play Battlefield Heroes on private servers, but offered no further support. EA would still own all the IP rights to that franchise. At no point would the players own the IP to the game, they would just be able to continue to play it. This has nothing to do with the intellectual property. It's a not-screwing-consumers issue.

As for a good answer to it, the only solution I see would be some sort of consumer law where if a company doesn't make any effort to allow customers to use the game in some fashion after they kill the servers the game depends on, they would be obligated to refund their money. Then companies might actually have an end-of-life plan built into the actual design from the beginning. Some people invest thousands in online game transactions. Not saying that's a wise investment, but it's practically criminal to just pull the plug on people who pay them that much with no recourse whatsoever.

 

[Ur_Mom]

Why should a game that happens to have an online component be exempt from being able to run it after a company decides to shut down a server? I can play Quake online today from 20 years ago, but can't play Battlefield Heroes from less than 6. Again, they're being designed to die and it shouldn't be tolerated. It wouldn't be in most other industries.

I think the publisher should be obligated for consumers to be able to use their product that they paid for, especially when the only reason they can't is because the publisher killed it by design. To me, that's as anti-consumer as it gets. [/QUOTE]

Stop buying the games, then. If enough people are pissed about it, send emails, tweet, Facebook, snail mail. Make the problem a big deal, and don't just take it.

I think it sucks. They should provide a private server software or whatever. Otherwise, when they shut some down, that software becomes 100% useless. Some are multiplayer only, and with no servers, it's worthless. The game isn't a service. You bought something that does not work anymore. You should be able to either have private servers available or a pro-rated refund.

 

[Snowdog]

The opposite actually, they usually harm sales.

No surprise. With games you are expected to pay $60 without being able to try them first and no refunds. Without a demo, people get shafted buying things they don't like. A demo would give some people an out, of this unfair situation.

Thus I greatly appreciate the demo service provided by hacker groups that get us level the playing field.

 

[jj14]

This is good and bad. I like that people crack games to show the big companies that they cant just run off and produce a bad game and charge alot of money for it. People will only pay the right price for the right game. I do however understand how cracked games hurts the community. Its a fine line.

 

[Bowman15]

FYI: Steam and Origin have DRM

FYI: that wasn't the point.

 

[haste.]

Out of 100 people that pirate a game, I'd bet 15 or less would actually buy the game for full price if it wasn't possible to pirate. Maybe another 15 a year or two later for half price. The rest probably wouldn't bother. So I don't think sales wold really be effected if this BS was true. Not to mention people who want the multi-player aspect always buy the game to have access to the full community.

Well unfortunately for them if this is true the majority of that group won't be playing any retail games as they can't steal them anymore. I prefer steal to pirate as everyone loves pirates matey!

 

[Pieter3dnow]

If there are no more pirated games it will trickle down, it will make hardware sales drop and the install base for certain platforms a lot lower which in turn would not be as profitable to support,

A consumer can not spend their money more then once that means that before when people "tried" games and found it good enough to support that will not trigger sales anymore nor would sales jump because people who play pirated games would think twice of buying any game really..

 

[c3141hf]

You may have noticed that JC3 runs like ass.

Denuvo is the reason why.

Constantly encrypting and decrypting everything at random is extremely performance intensive.

 

[rsbennett00]

I thought Steam, Origin, GOG, etc. game sale days would kill that faster than DRM? If you can't afford a few dollars then you might have bigger issues?

I thought steam had. I didn't realize real "piracy" did still exist with the easily exploited nature of steam. Those that know what their doing don't pay money but still get the games and as I've been told many times, steam isn't going away, as much as I wish it would.

 

[mls1995]

You have drunk the "1 pirated game = 1 lost sale" kool-aid, haven't you?

I don't believe that developers should pour their heart and soul into designing a game only to have someone steal it. If that means I drink kook-aid then so be it. But with steam's return policy these days, there just aren't excuses anymore.

 

[mls1995]

You may have noticed that JC3 runs like ass.

Denuvo is the reason why.

Constantly encrypting and decrypting everything at random is extremely performance intensive.

Stop preordering and check user reviews before you buy. Or buy from Steam and if the game runs like ass get yourself a refund. If a game runs like ass then we all should get a refund or just not buy period.

It's generally better to wait for a steam sale down the road. Waiting drops the price and also increases the chance that the game has less bugs due to patches.

 

[mls1995]

So if they stop piracy, and the developers are no longer losing billions to the pirates, then the games should be a lot cheaper. Right?

Just like downloaded games are a lot cheaper, since the distribution costs are less, and you can't resell the game so there's no competition from used games. Right?

No.
If they manage to stop all piracy, they will just raise the prices, cut the quality, and sue anyone who puts up a bad review. Then they will wonder why the sales are down.

Nothing you said makes any sense to me at all.

Will games be cheaper at release? Probably not. But more sales may increases the chance of quality games for PC instead of crap ports.

 

[lostinseganet]

yeah right. feel free to quote me on this - thats a load of shit. reading the context of the post, hes implying that drm will get so complex that the pirate groups window of opportunity for their work to become popularized, ie, within the first few months of a games release, might be missed. that would only happen if these guys remain complacent.

failure to acknowledge the simple fact that cracking groups could easily expand or even band together to defeat higher orders of complexity in drm makes me question this guys motives, in fact

The bigger you get the easier it is for the man to find you

 

[travbrad]

I hope this happens and games stop being cracked. That would make the PC a more legitimate platform, we might get better releases versus some of the crap ports we get now.

The revenue from PC gaming in 2015 was almost exactly the same as the revenue from ALL console gaming in 2015, so obviously piracy isn't nearly as big of a problem as you are being led to believe. Blaming piracy is a convenient excuse for making a bad PC version of a game, but the real reasons are usually just incompetence and/or corporate greed refusing to give developers enough time/resources to actually finish development on a game.

I haven't seen that many bad ports lately either, but maybe I'm just playing the wrong games. Plenty of bad games of course, but usually nothing to do with the quality of the port. If anything there are more buggy PC exclusive games than buggy console ports, especially with "Early Access" allowing them to sell totally unfinished games to people.

 

[Flogger23m]

No surprise. With games you are expected to pay $60 without being able to try them first and no refunds. Without a demo, people get shafted buying things they don't like. A demo would give some people an out, of this unfair situation.

Thus I greatly appreciate the demo service provided by hacker groups that get us level the playing field.

To be fair very few this let you try before you buy. Can't do it for meals, movies, hardware... or just about anything. You can watch youtube vids and while not 100% indicative of overall gameplay it does give you a good enough idea in the majority of instances.

 

[tetris42]

The revenue from PC gaming in 2015 was almost exactly the same as the revenue from ALL console gaming in 2015, so obviously piracy isn't nearly as big of a problem as you are being led to believe. Blaming piracy is a convenient excuse for making a bad PC version of a game, but the real reasons are usually just incompetence and/or corporate greed refusing to give developers enough time/resources to actually finish development on a game.

Another thing to consider is from the developer standpoint, used games on the console are practically worse than piracy for them on PC. At least on the PC, the majority of pirates probably weren't going to buy the game one way or another. With used games, they're handing out money to Gamestop and the developers don't see a dime past the first sale. Those Steam sales for $5 do a hell of a lot more for the developer than a used game bought for $50.

 

[KazeoHin]

The founder of notorious Chinese cracking forum 3DM is warning that given the current state of anti-piracy technology, in two years there might be no more pirate games to play. The claims come after attempts to breach the Denuvo security protecting Just Cause 3 pushed the group's cracking expert to breaking point.

 

[Stiletto]

I remember watching a while ago about how Just Cause 3 was programmed. They flat-out stated that a lot of the graphics processing for the explosions and effects actually takes place remotely. They're outsourcing your GPU's job. So you have to be online for this stupid single player game to work properly. It really doesn't surprise me that such a stupidly designed application is hard to make playable without constant server authentication checks.

 

[nilepez]

No surprise. With games you are expected to pay $60 without being able to try them first and no refunds. Without a demo, people get shafted buying things they don't like. A demo would give some people an out, of this unfair situation.

Thus I greatly appreciate the demo service provided by hacker groups that get us level the playing field.

I read it also hurts, because people play and enjoy the demo, but figured there was another demo they could play for free, so why buy the rest of the game? It's also an issue that demos require resources and if the demo doesn't sell games (regardless of how good the game is), then why bother?

They've basically decided they can accomplish more by showing a video of game play.

 

[__hollywood|meow]

The bigger you get the easier it is for the man to find you

heh. depends on whos looking.

Blaming piracy is a convenient excuse

dont rain on his parade, hes busy boo-hooing about those poor devs trying to feed their starving children. but really, if people want to get stuck in antiquated mindsets & cling to antediluvian business models, let em bog down software with more & more drm. like the big newspapers or the RIAA, theyll either adapt - or get left in the dust where they belong

 

[sonsonate]

I used to pirate a good bit back in the day. I would buy legit and discover I still needed to pirate because the game just wouldn't work or the service I needed to use was ridiculous. Prime example, the first CM DiRT game. Literally would not run for me because a patch couldn't or wouldn't verify some thing. I then got tired of swapping discs or signing into GFWL and started getting cracks for all the games I owned. It was a hassle.

These days, quality has gone up. You can actually buy a game and find that it works -- except for a few select companies like Ubifail. I can get a refund, buy really great games for very cheap -- $5 goes a long way vs the $75 which is $106.XX today (for N64 games and rare PSX games back in the day on STT). There are constant sales and discounts. Adjust for inflation and I'm spending way less and enjoying a lot more. Sure, I do wish to be able to resell old games, but I feel like it is,overall, a lot better.

My days of being a pirate are over as there isn't much else to complain about if you skip pre-orders, watch reviews and gameplay videos and get a refund if you're still dissatisfied.

 

[Hornet]

I remember watching a while ago about how Just Cause 3 was programmed. They flat-out stated that a lot of the graphics processing for the explosions and effects actually takes place remotely. They're outsourcing your GPU's job. So you have to be online for this stupid single player game to work properly. It really doesn't surprise me that such a stupidly designed application is hard to make playable without constant server authentication checks.

This is the kind of retarded anti-piracy measure that would stop me from buying a game. A single player game should be standalone, it's not an online game where we know that the service isn't going to be around forever. A single player game is expected to be functional at all times.

 

[nilepez]

This is the kind of retarded anti-piracy measure that would stop me from buying a game. A single player game should be standalone, it's not an online game where we know that the service isn't going to be around forever. A single player game is expected to be functional at all times.

The article pretty clearly states that the issue is that the DRM itself is encrypted, which makes it very hard to crack. They also state that FIFA hasn't been cracked yet and it came out 3-4 months ago.

Based on this article, there's no reason to believe it has anything to do with remote rendering. That said, I'm not sure why they'd do that, unless the game was geared towards low end GPUs

 

[Deleted whining member 223597]

There are these things called "countries"...and there are a few of them in the world. In some of these countries people make a lot less than than people do in Western countries. So something like a even a 50% discounted $60 game would be like buying a fully loaded Surface Book in comparison. Think about that for a second and realize why piracy exists considering that well over 70% of the worlds population is in that boat.

If you are that poor, video games should be the least of your concern. You aren't entitled to video games.

 

[cthulhuiscool]

shrug, it's a cat and mouse game. Devs will come up with new forms of protection that will stump the hackers for a while, then one smart/lucky dude will stumble upon the solution to it one day and it will become a thing of the past. As long as there is software, someone will find a way to pirate it.

 

[M76]

How would you manage to buy a computer to play the game if you couldn't afford the game?

You scrape together enough to put together a low end gaming PC, but you've poured all your savings into it. And every half year you get a slightly better GPU or CPU used, for the price of maybe one game. There was no way anyone other than the very rich could afford to play retail games.

The opposite actually, they usually harm sales.

Of course they hurt sales. People can actually decide if they want a game or not.
But that doesn't mean there shouldn't be demos. It's a customer service, publishers should care enough about their customers to let them try games before purchase.

Playing Devil's Advocate with myself here, in reference to my last statement: Just because the publisher decides to pull it off the shelf permanently, aren't they still entitled to protect their IP? Issuing this kind of patch would complete circumvent copy protection. Just because they discontinue it doesn't mean that they aren't entitled to continue to protect their investment.

I dunno man, there really isn't a good answer to it.

If they stop selling a game, then what investment are they protecting? There is nothing to protect anymore.

 

[ashmelev75]

I remember watching a while ago about how Just Cause 3 was programmed. They flat-out stated that a lot of the graphics processing for the explosions and effects actually takes place remotely. They're outsourcing your GPU's job. So you have to be online for this stupid single player game to work properly. It really doesn't surprise me that such a stupidly designed application is hard to make playable without constant server authentication checks.

That is not true. I had to firewall the game because of the day1 server issues. Had no problem playing and finishing it, explosions and all.

 

[Viper87227]

I think that the game publishers will find out like the music industry that their sales won't go up. To be exact they most likely will shrink to the point that the industry consolidates operations. Very few hardcore gamers will pirate their entire game library. They most likely do it because they don't have the money to buy everything or they are on the fence about a title and want a test drive. Thus they will spend their money wisely only on the cream of the crop games and completely skip everything that has less than a 90/100 rating. 99% of the product out there is below this standard.

Take me for example. Back in the day I could find any song that I wanted in seconds on various pirate websites. I would download terabytes of music for kicks. 99% of it I played for a total of 3 - 5 seconds and hit skip. It was fun to do and regularly I would find new music that I would run out and purchase the CD for to get the best quality and support the artist. I owned over 20,000 CDs and concert DVDs. Every wall was plastered with concert posters of various artists and memorabilia. If I had been sued I would have owed millions if not billions in damages going by the high profile cases that finally stopped me from pirating.

Since they made it so that you can be sued into oblivion, I have purchased 5 CDs in the past decade plus. I no longer look for new artists unless it shows up on NPR or other free services. I did get a Tidal account and I had a FREE Spotify account before that. Other than that you will never see me purchasing a CD unless it is by my favorite artist Prince. Everything else is too much of a risk to purchase because I might not like it. Hell I can listen to it for free on Spotify or in high quality on Tidal. So why spend money on music nowadays?

That's how I see the game industry evolving if they cut out sharing. Consumers will just move on to something else that will allow them to share the happiness of their purchase with their friends around the world.

I understand what you are saying, but there are some clear differences between the music and video game industry that are worth considering. The biggest is something you pointed out... Spotify, and the large amount of other subscription services like it. That basically dominates the music industry right now. Almost everyone I know uses these, whether it be their free or paid variants. The bottom line is that in today's music industry, it is incredibly cheap to be able to listen to whatever you want, whenever you want, without having to actually purchase specific items. Even the last sentence in your post suggests that Spotify and Tidal have as much to do with your lack of music purchases as does giving up piracy. There really isn't a need to pirate music anymore. Pay the $10 a month and have it all. Anything less is just being a cheap asshole. The same can be said for movies and TV. Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon are bringing tons of great TV at a very affordable cost. They are much more select than streaming music, but it's still a means for people to get a wealth of entertainment at a low price without having to resort to piracy. Point being, with music, and TV/Movies to a lesser extent, the risk of piracy is not worth it when the price of admission for streaming services is affordable to basically anyone. Same goes for purchasing individual items. Why bother when you can stream entire catalog for less than the cost of one album or movie purchase a month?

There is nothing like that in the video games industry. For people who want to play a wide variety of games, your options are to spend a lot of money to play day one, save money (but still spend a considerable amount) by taking advantage of things like Steam sales, Humble, GMG discounts, etc, or pirate. If great strides were made to curb video game piracy by way of DRM (or greater risk of punishment like other forms of entertainment), what other options do people have in today's industry? You start spending more, keep several years behind the curb to keep things affordable, or don't play. I don't see the later being the common choice. You might see an increase in Ramen sales as peoples favorite hobby starts getting more expensive, however . Bottom line is, without another low-cost legal option to turn to, I think it's reasonable to assume that a heavy decline in video game piracy could lead to increased spending from would-be pirates.

Another thing to consider, even if it didn't usher in a noteworthy increase is cash flow in the games industry, it might result is better games... and equally healthy upside. If your logic stands true that your average would-be pirate will not spend more money in a world without piracy, they may instead respond by being much more selective with what they chose to buy. If the trend changes from "buy good games, pirate bad/buggy games" to "buy good games/completely ignore bad/buggy games" maybe some light bulbs will start flickering? The end result is the same for the publisher/developer. If they make a shit game, it sill won't sell well, whether by piracy or just not being played. If the numbers are there to prove it, and they can no longer use piracy as a scapegoat.. will that inspire positive change? A pipe dream, perhaps, but it is something to think about.

 

[Deleted member 222586]

Why do people complain about DRM? I've yet to have any problems with it. Now, it has gotten old to have Origin, Steam, Battle.Net, uPlay, etc... to play these games. While I simply wish to have one platform to manage all of my games (I like not having hunt patches down like in the BF1942 days), they are simply another icon on my desktop. I've never had any issues with any of them, ever.

You know, because I had to use cracks and other shit on games that I bought with money because of stupid DRM?

Well unfortunately for them if this is true the majority of that group won't be playing any retail games as they can't steal them anymore. I prefer steal to pirate as everyone loves pirates matey!

Sorry, but pirating ain't stealing. We are talking semantics here.

I don't believe that developers should pour their heart and soul into designing a game only to have someone steal it. If that means I drink kook-aid then so be it. But with steam's return policy these days, there just aren't excuses anymore.

You are american, right?

Go check the prices for EU customers... then see how many people here buy their games from Steam on day 1. Meaning... we can't get refunds because we do not buy directly from Steam.

And also, piracy doesn't harm anyone. And it ain't stealing.

 

[alxlwson]

You know, because I had to use cracks and other shit on games that I bought with money because of stupid DRM?



Sorry, but pirating ain't stealing. We are talking semantics here.



You are american, right?

Go check the prices for EU customers... then see how many people here buy their games from Steam on day 1. Meaning... we can't get refunds because we do not buy directly from Steam.

And also, piracy doesn't harm anyone. And it ain't stealing.

It is stealing/theft.
You are using a good/service without paying for it when the IP owner charges money for it.
to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully

 

[Viper87227]

You know, because I had to use cracks and other shit on games that I bought with money because of stupid DRM?



Sorry, but pirating ain't stealing. We are talking semantics here.



You are american, right?

Go check the prices for EU customers... then see how many people here buy their games from Steam on day 1. Meaning... we can't get refunds because we do not buy directly from Steam.

And also, piracy doesn't harm anyone. And it ain't stealing.

You are delusional. Piracy is stealing. You are taking an item that costs money, and you are not paying for it. Your playing the game, but the developer isn't getting paid. Do you think they make games as charity?

It's unfortunate that games cost more in your particular region, but tough shit. Pay MSRP for the convenience of Steam refunds on things you end up not liking, pay grey market prices to save money, or else don't play the game.