Computer games industry threat to downloaders: 'pay up or we'll sue'

i still dont see why the jack asses havent cashed in on the file sharing, on itunes they must be making a pretty sweet amount of money for every song downloaded, if the companies of the music, game and movie industry sold it online they'd make money from it but they havent thought bout it properly and are actually deciding to bring in lawyers fees to the money they're already losing

reply to post by wheresthetruth

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It's about time action is being taken against these criminals...
If the trend continues soon we will have no music industry, no game designers and no software evolution...

Prison sentences should be included in the legislation to deal with multiple offenders, be they minors or not...

reply to post by NorthWolfe CND

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ROFL , this has been happening for years , and it did not seem to cause any damage to most company´s , since they continue to grow

And if you have money to spend in cinema , games and music go ahead and spend it , not everybody his lucky enough to have money to spend in the exorbitating prices of those products , i know i dont.

[edit on 21-8-2008 by dracodie]

reply to post by sir_chancealot

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You download a game, movie or music, and you have deprived the original owner of possible profit. By the definition you provided, that's theft. It seems you're the one who's ignorant of the law.

[edit on 21-8-2008 by Kranil]

Err, not quite so in other countries!

In Canada filesharing is 100% legal!

The RIAA has made the precedent of illegally gaining records and suing their own consumers. I thought this was illegal, but it would only be illegal if you were not a corporate entity with lots of money for lawyers.

This is gaining speed everywhere and pretty soon, criminals will be suing non-criminals for wages lost for home owners not allowing said criminals to rob their houses.

Once again, it is all about control and intimidation. Both the UK and the US are watching their countries turn fascist. Very sad.

A lot of people use this excuse of "If they put out decent product at good price, I would pay". Well to me that doesn't fly, if it's a garbage product or overpriced, why waste your time on it. Same goes for people who say they don't have any money, in that case you get no product, you do not have some magic entitlement to it.

When you make a product, it's your right to set the price and conditions, and if people don't like that, they don't buy, it's that simple. To me these arguments are as retarded as saying "I didn't like the price of that Ralph Lauren jacket, so I just took it". Just because the cost of reproduction is much less for digital items, doesn't mean you can just trample all over the owners rights.

Personally I avoid all this garbage mostly by using Open Source products, listening to music on Creative Commons, and so on. Sometimes this means I may not be getting the same quality product, but it's all free, with no legal worries, and because I save so much money, I don't mind paying up £7 ($14~) for an album or DVD when it's a good one.

I knew it.


DOWNLOAD EVERYTHING YOU CAN!!!!



The DNS patch was just a big spoof to capture all the pirates and hackers. Games are really dumb to spin. They obviously have code to detect unregistered copies. Unless of course the world wide big government just patched the DNS.

And furthermore there are loads of cds and other data storage media on sale right now for dirt cheap. Maybe the 20,000 or so people that were busted should turn around and sue these companies that make these technologies available. What the hell is everyone going to do with all this "empty" storage?

Then sue Microsoft for leading the piracy industry with their bogus firewall and virus protection code.

I currently work in the games industry, because of the modern day of age we live in, technology has made developers think outside the box and how to benefit from people file sharing and downloading.

This is where the FTP (free to play model) comes in, there's a massive shift in the online industry with this model. By providing the game for FREE you actively encourage people to join your game.

Ok, what does the developer get out of this?
Alright, they just made this game for FREE, that's right FREE, But in return they have valuable information such as your email and other personal details.

The main point with FTP is that you can only excel to a certain level, this is where Micro payment systems come in,
So you need a special sward or the next upgrade of Armour, BUY IT from the developer!!!!

This model works GREAT in Asia, seems no one wants to pay for games but are happy to pay for extra in game equipment.

This is the new strategy currently being implemented in the gaming industry.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-to-play
www.freetoplay.org

reply to post by crackerjack

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See, this is the kind of thing I was implying when stating game makers need to learn to make money through games without upfront payment.

Thats a novel idea.
Other game makers are realizing that there's an almost infinite amount of virtual billboard space in games, which can be used for advertising. Hence, income. The more people that play the game, the more money they get through advertisements in the game.

reply to post by johnsky

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Yep , there has been a big bang in advertising thru videogames

If piracy would end, believe it profits would go down.
For example the gamecube console , ps2 and xbox were easy to "crack" to read copied dvd´s , while gamecube read mini DVD´s , and it was a pain in the ass to "crack" it , that was one of the reasons that made gamecube a failure.

So being the other 2 easiest to "crack" they sold alot more , it was a win situation for sony and microsoft , the same is happening today with ps3 and xbox 360 psp and nintendo DS , all of them except the ps3 are VERY, VERY easy to modify to read copied dvd´s , or iso´s , and the piracy that is consequence of that does not seem to be affecting the game industry . on the contrary , the game industry is growing at a incredible speed.

Nintendo, being ever the innovator, is taking a hold most people don't even realize yet with their virtual store wherefrom old Nintendo classics can be bought and played on the Wii console.

And its wrong to call a person a "digital pirate" because it downloads content for personal use , the real ‘digital pirates" are the ones that profit of the download content.

A thousand facepalms are in order.

reply to post by Orion Crystal Ice

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Uhhhhhhh , OK.

It's been said before, but I'll say it again...

If I was certain that the artists true work was being represented, they received the majority of the profits, the media was distributed digitally and priced accordingly (I'd say 10-30 cents per track is fair), then I would purchase music.

Unfortunately things have not changed, despite great leaps in the venues of distribution. Even a 99 cent track on iTunes is a ridiculous price, considering the actual cost of storing and transmitting the data is a small percentage of that cost.

reply to post by dracodie

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This is just pure and utter nonsense. Want to talk about examples? Look at the Dreamcast. Sega screwed the pooch on that one and basically made the Dreamcast the most pirate-friendly console in recent history. Just burn a boot disk and away you go. Despite a strong start, and a great game library, by the end of the second year Sega was basically giving Dreamcasts away for free in a vain attempt to push it further into the market and gain a hold on the consumer base.

The problem is, console developers sell their product at a massive loss with the intention of making that money back on game sales via licensing fees. If everyone is pirating, then all that money the manufacturer is putting out to get their hardware base established does not return the investment. They LOSE money.

If you recall correctly, a somewhat similar problem plagued the PlayStation 2 when it first came out. It's architecture was horrid and it's launch utterly pathetic. Fantavision? Summoner? Nobody cared because all they were interested in was the promise of MGS2. They didn't buy a PS2 for games... they bought it for a cheap DVD player. So the attach rate for games to units was like 1:1 - and since DVDs don't return licensing fees - they lost out BIGTIME early on.

Not to blame the Dreamcast's demise solely on pirates, but they did play a substantial contribution to the console's death.


(Also, Wii is selling like gangbustas despite being harder to pirate for than it's competition)

[edit on 22-8-2008 by Lasheic]

The dreamcast was not a failure because of the piracy , it was principally because of the hype that the realease of the ps2 caused , and the poor marketing and advertising of the dreamcast.

PS2 sold because of the hype that was generated around it , and sony had a name in the market thanks to ps1 , plus it was the cheapest dvd at the time , and had a release game that sold ps2´s like candy , gran turismo 3.

That was the problem of sega , not the piracy of the console.

[edit on 22-8-2008 by dracodie]