You excluded them by saying that the greedy people wouldn't pay if they had to. You're wrong. They would.

I'm not entirely sure what you were trying to say here, but people buy games that they think are going to be great. Advertising is a major part of that. However, it's up to individuals to take advertisements with a grain of salt and do some research before buying, just like with every other product sold through advertising.

Exactly. Nobody's really pirating for a justified reason. They do it because they can. You know what else people do when they can get away with it? Murder. Take the law out of any region and see what happens. Suddenly people can do whatever they want and some do (those that are immoral, one would argue). What do you think the American "Wild West" was? A large nation with insufficient law enforcement. And lots of people did what they wanted because they could get away with it. Same thing happens in poor neighborhoods today.

The same way you know what cars and what computers and what food to spend your money on. You either do your research or you take a risk. The Internet, the very tool pirates use to get away with their deeds, is probably the best counter-argument here. The Internet allows ANYONE anywhere to publish their own opinions about a game so others can find it. It's not just the bribed reviewers anymore. Anyone can write a review and Google makes it easy to find them. Before I buy a game, I start by looking at all of the official advertisement material (screenshots, trailers, etc.). If it looks interesting, I'll check out what people have written on Wikipedia (sometimes I start with Wikipedia and then go to the official material). This typically includes a summary of review scores across the industry. I always take those with a grain of salt because even if the reviewers really like a game it doesn't mean I will. It doesn't necessary mean they're bought. In any case, then I start looking for the nameless reviewers on YouTube and blogs, etc. These are the people that will usually tell you if there are any serious problems or if the advertising is overly deceptive. YouTube also often has gameplay videos that show you exactly what it looks and sounds like to play the game. You can't get much more than that. On PlayStation 3, it's also incredibly easy to try out a demo for most games by downloading one free off of PSN. Steam occasionally releases free demos for certain titles also. All of this information, even with some of it missing (i.e., demo) is plenty of information to make an informed decision. Much more than you get with most products.

Ask yourself how much you can possibly learn about a car you're going to buy before you buy it? A car is so much more complicated that you can't possibly hope you learn everything about it. Look at Chris Katko, an obviously experienced car guy, and he ended up buying a VW that he's now afraid is going to blow up on him. It's only been what, 6 months?! Does that mean he has the right to steal the car? Obviously not. As the saying goes, Buyer Beware. If you can't afford to risk the money then you shouldn't be risking the money. If you have no other choice then you have no other choice. There are no guarantees. That is no excuse.

Of course I have. SOCOM: Confrontation is an example of that. Based on previous titles I thought it would be a lot of fun so I bought it, but it ended up sucking, IMHO. I haven't played it since that first time. And I'm happy to voice my opinion so the next guy hopefully doesn't bother and the developer gets the hint that they didn't do a very good job. I haven't bought a lot of crappy games because I'm very careful and go without games that I'm not sure I want. It's easy.

Moreso, I've bought my share of music CDs that suck (only a handful because I'm usually very careful before buying an album). It pisses me off to no end. These albums shouldn't even be in store and I hold it against the store that sold it to me that they're even stocking them. I actually just throw them away, brand new, when I find that I don't like the album as a whole. One good song on an album isn't enough for me. I throw the CD away to get it out of my collection^[1]. That still doesn't justify pirating the music though. Somebody spent a lot of money to write, compose, record, mix, master, and produce that music.

That's the only business model that makes sense to the entertainment industry right now. It isn't possible to build art that you know people are going to like. There is no formula yet. It's a lot of experimentation and revision and doing your best. Sometimes an idea that sounds awesome turns out to be no fun at all. Sometimes an idea that sound stupid can be the greatest thing you've ever played.

When a development studio first starts out they essentially have no money and need to hire programmers and artists and designers and writers and Foley artists and musicians, etc., etc., etc. These people need a salary because they have families to take care of, mortgages to pay, etc. So a development studio comes up with a game idea that they think is good and propose it to a publisher (who has lots of money to invest). Remember, we're talking multiple people at $50k-70k per year for each person hired, and most professional development studios require tens or twenties of each type of person. If the publisher likes the idea and thinks it will be profitable, they agree to pay the development studio so much money to develop it, which is enough for employee wages, development equipment (expensive computers and development kits), etc. In the end, the publisher needs to get all of that money back or it was equivalent to burning money. They get their money back by consumers licensing the game (or subscribing, for the MMO model). If you can show them a better way to do business I'm sure they'd happily do it, but I don't know that such a thing exists.

See above on screenshots, trailers, reviews (professional and amateur), gameplay videos, and free demos (unfortunately, free demos on PC often give pirates an early look at cracking the real game, so demos on PC have almost completely faded).

Pimped up.

Huh? Trailers rarely show gameplay these days, more like cinematic rendered videos.

I don't believe the reviewers are bribed very much, it's another situation. Magazines and gaming sites need to get some spot at "exclusive" previews and demos of games. If they don't get it, who would buy their mag? Also, who doesn't love being paid hotel, food, and treat you like kings just so you give them good scores? After all, reviews are another stage of advertising nowadays for hyped games.

As you said, demos are fading for the PC. Demos are the only source I'd ever consider for buying a game, if they don't look too pimped up of course.

Whoa, wait. That's a weird statement. We're talking about piracy, not taking someone else's life, which is a terrible sin, no matter how someone justifies it.

I know you weren't referring to me, but I want to be clear. I'm not pro-DRM, I'm anti-piracy. I agree with developers that piracy is bad, but I disagree with their solutions.

Including people who have different tastes than you. Quite often I find movies and games that I enjoy, that most people don't like. And movies/games a lot of people like, that I can't stand. Sometimes I like what a given person likes, sometimes I like what that same person doesn't like.

It's very difficult to determine whether a game is enjoyable to you without experiencing it yourself. That's what demos are supposed to be for, but too many demos don't give a proper feel for the full game.

As for advertisement material, you need to consider that it's largely the publisher, not the developer, that handles that. Just like publishers can make crappy games look good, they can make good games look crappy (by not putting much care into the advertisement). There's also when the advertisement material doesn't even attempt to portray the actual game (I'm looking at you, Dragon Age).

Well, this ain't Assassin's Creed, but it took less than a day? I'm pretty sure other Ubisoft games will be cracked this fast. No 1st day sales excuse now I suppose

Haha, damn, what was I thinking. Cant believe I said a month.

Piracy, is above all, a move against the establishment. Otherwise lawful people pirate games because deep inside they have a disregard for the System. These people will break the law every time they can, because it makes them feel powerful against the System. When they can't break the law, they appear to be law abiding citizens.

What meaning of disregard do you mean? Generally, the way you just used it means a deliberate flouting of respect for something. In which case, I just have to say "Huh?" I've pirated my share of games in my time, and I have no idea what Establishment or or System I'm supposed to be rebelling against.

So in that manner, I'm disregarding it in the other sense of disregard, which is to be ignorant of.

I think there's a little angle to this whole "piracy -> DRM -> piracy" scenario that most folks overlook. Many of the publishers (not developers, in this case) are publicly traded corporations that have boards of directors and investors to answer to. That means when a game is released and it doesn't bring in the bacon, someone gets called to the carpet. I suspect the conversation goes something like this:

Exec: You just spent the last 18 months making "PokeMonsterGrabass Extreme", and it went on to sell 4000 copies last month, with no tail in sight. What's the deal?

Dev'r: (WANTS TO SAY) We shipped a crap title that no one really wanted.
Dev'r: (ACTUALLY SAYS) Those pesky pirates. Yeah, that's the ticket. Pirates.

Exec: Gadzooks! What can we do to fix this? Stronger DRM?

Dev'r: Uh... yeah, that sounds good. Sure. I still have a job, right?

Exec: Get on it!

I think that's ridiculous. Firstly, the investors would be told how the business works and that failed projects are guaranteed. Not all games can do well. Indeed, many games from the same publisher are competing against each other for sales. Publishers don't need to concern themselves with the sales of a particular game so much as they do with all of the games they publish as a whole. In the end, the sales from all of the games need to make up for all of the investments they've made and risks they've taken. The sales of particular games would only influence their willingness to take a risk on a particular developer again.

The board of directors probably doesn't understand DRM at all. They probably do have minions look into the popularity of games and (these days) compare how many people are playing it versus sales. When they see that a game is super popular, but sales are lacking, that would tell them that they need to take precautions in future titles to protect them from piracy. And there's nothing wrong or malicious about that. That's a sensible strategy. They aren't all fat rich suits interesting in stealing your money. They're business men that care nothing about games and intend to make money. That's what they're supposed to do. The developers care about the games and the developers are paid by the publishers (indeed, the developers NEED these profit seeking business men to have jobs at all).

As consumers, we also rely on these profit seeking publishers for the industry to even exist. Get off your high horse.

There's a fairly old interview with Ubisoft spokesman.

There is no safe copy protection. There will never be one. Instead of investing millions into new (pointless and useless) copy protection/DRM systems, which then have to be paid for by the customers who buy the games, they should invest some of that money into better programmers(or more training and research) and more QA, so that we(the players) might actually get to see some reasonably bug-free and good and fun games coming out.

Also, if they spent less money on pointless efforts like copy protection, they could sell the games for less, which I believe would enable a broader audience to afford the games, so they'd sell more copies and make more profit.

But the main reasons any company in the PC games market these days isn't selling all too many units of their dope isn't piracy, it's rather this:
It's always the same crap. People are tired of playing the same shit only with new graphics over and over again. It's boring. There's no innovation. There are too many too similar games. The market is quite saturated. If they keep complaining they can't sell anything they should at least have the guts to admit that it is because their games suck and because competitors have better stuff out there and they should just give up instead of finding lame excuses, like piracy.

The people who pirate games do that because they don't have the money to afford those games. So that money does not exist in the first place. Money that does not exist can't possibly be booked as a "loss" in anyones pocket.

Another thing: Maybe games are just not as important as a commodity as their producers would like to believe they are. Maybe games are dispensable and no one really needs them. Maybe they're just not worth much to most people.

and I want to add this:
I don't pirate games. Most games I play are either free-ware, are older titles that were made free by their original developers or are among the few full-price new games that I actually buy per year (and that's only 3 to 5 games).

I do know people who pirate games but they rarely ever finish any of them. I hear them talking about games all the time, about what they're currently downloading, what they're going to play next... truth is: Nobody actually has the time or the money to play all those games and the fact that most people who pirate those games only start playing them/testing them for a couple of hours then get bored and move on only proves that those games aren't worth playing.

Bottom line is: Good games will get bought and will live, bad or mediocre games will go down, with or without piracy. Piracy is not the reason that sucky games suck and that their producers are not making any or little profit.

Games are not expensive. If you can't afford to buy the occasional game then you can't afford a computer or a car or a decent place to live (you must obviously be living in a crack house^[1]).

If the games weren't fun they wouldn't be pirated. Who would waste bandwidth and disk space on crap, sending developers the message that they are making worthwhile works, instead of leaving the games stale and untouched and sending the message that something is wrong? Pirates clearly do still enjoy the works. As do paying consumers, like myself.

The games are better than they ever have been, albeit in fewer numbers (it takes years to develop a decent game, and from the sound of it that hasn't change since the beginning). In terms of there being so many similar titles in existence, the first few titles don't even begin to get any idea or innovation right. It takes many iterations to improve upon the design before you start to really extract the full value from an idea. There are tons of first person shooters in existence and there are still improvements to be made. Eventually, the gameplay innovation curve will level off and change little, but as long as there is a griping story to go along with it players like myself will still enjoy playing them. For me, video games are like books or movies that I can experience for myself on some level. Books and movies have also been done over and over again. Hell, look in our very own depot to see clone upon clone of popular games from the 70s, 80s and 90s. Complaining about that is complaining about innovation. Reiteration is how things improve.

I've already been over this. That's a bullshit excuse. Most people who pirate games do so because they can. Nobody ever said you had the right or expectation to play every game ever made. If all you can afford is one game every year (which is less than a penny^[2] dollar a day!) then that's plenty to afford a game. You can't complain that games are too expensive. They're not. Unless you're living above your means.

Then why pirate them? Why bother? More bullshit excuses.

No, it proves that those people have short attention spans or, as you said, access to so many works that they can't stay on one very long or they'll never keep up. These people sound like the social type that play games to be part of a crowd, like smokers of past generations. They don't really enjoy playing the games, but it's one of the things to do to fit in. I have a cousin who is the same way. He usually can't play a game for more than an hour without getting bored. Even though the game is lots of fun. He's the same with music. Can't keep a music library for more than a week. His "taste" changes constantly because fads come and go that quickly.

Essentially, you're saying that only the best 5% of any class of author deserves to get paid for their efforts. Even though people experience the work, they should only pay when the work is AWESOME. That other 95% (the majority of the members of this forum, probably) should have to just hand their works over? Indeed, the top 5% were part of the bottom 95% for years while they honed their skills and innovated their practices. They probably couldn't have reached that 5% without support from players.

Paying only for what you enjoy isn't how creativity works, or any industry really. Imagine: you only have to pay if you like it! Shhhiiitt, a lot of people would dislike everything.

People need the ability to be creative and that means occasionally you will be paying people for their mistakes, but people learn from their mistakes and that's how great things come about.