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Legal: Because they're (usually) illegal.

Capitalist: Because it upsets the market.

Anarchist: They're not; property is theft.

Pragmatist: They're okay as long as you pay for the ones you enjoy.  By purchasing the product, you are directly or indirectly contributing to the welfare of the creators of the game, leading to more titles by someone who is likely to create titles you enjoy.

[jwk5]

Apathist: I download them because I want to.

[baconman]

Sometimes I download them just to see what others have created with it. If I could buy Rockman 2/3/4/5 Endless Attack versions, I would. Some of the Metroid hacks are pretty ace, too. Also, I have a TV with video lag that prohibits my NES/SNES titles from acting properly, but it also has PC input/output which doesn't lag.

 

[Dustin Smith]

super mario world has great rom hacks too

[Core Xii]

u know how to save money?? by 1. playing the demo, 2. not buying it if you didnt like the demo. "wahhh i didnt like the game but im going to pirate it anyway because im entitled to steal from a corporate company because they didnt make the game how i wanted it to be!!!!"

Or you can 1. play the game, 2. not buy it afterwards if you didn't like it. A demo is never representative of the final product. The Dragon Age 2 demo had character creator, inventory and most skills locked out. If you were buying a car, how would you feel if you only got to demo part of it and then discovered after buying it doesn't go as fast as advertised? You can't vote with your wallet if you're forced to buy the thing before playing it.

Also, it's not stealing when the original doesn't change owners. It's copying. And there's nothing wrong with that, not in my mind anyway. It ensures great works of art survive. If there was a good book that was forbidden to copy, and the library it resided in burnt down, it would be lost forever.

If you don't like a game, by all means, don't buy it. If you don't like a game, you should have no reason to pirate it either.

Yet, you can't know if you like it or not without actually playing it. Hence, pirate.

Remember, the work has already been done. The game exists. You're not buying the product, you're giving money to the developers to support their effort to create more games. When I pirate a game and don't like it, I don't want to support a developer of poor games. The unethical thing here is trying to pass these pathetic excuses for demos as representative of the final product, which they never, ever are. It's like demoing a car with a unicycle. Yes, they are both vehicles. No, they don't provide the same experience.

[Drum]

... it's not stealing when the original doesn't change owners. It's copying. And there's nothing wrong with that, not in my mind anyway. It ensures great works of art survive. If there was a good book that was forbidden to copy, and the library it resided in burnt down, it would be lost forever.

You're not stealing the original copy - you're stealing the money you owe them for playing it.  It takes zero intelligence to understand this, how is it possible that you do not?
Ex:  If you go in to work, do your job, and at the end of the week your boss says 'You know how I'm supposed to pay you for this?  Well, I'm not gonna.  See you next week, ciao! ^_^'
That is pretty shabby treatment, right?  Well ..... that's piracy!
I will rephrase your 'ends justify the means' argument for piracy in this example:  Our society would fall apart if nobody did their job, therefore slavery is ok!
Now: Would it be ok to copy a work at imminent risk of destruction in order to preserve it?  Sure - a lot of old ROMs are basically orphaned works and it seems wrong to let them be destroyed if nobody is gonna get the money anyway.  I am on your side there.
Is it sometimes justified to not pay employees?  Well, maybe - in some weird pro-slavery morality porno example that I'm not gonna even try to think of (feel free to try yourself tho).
I mean, I can kind of understand your position - who do those fat cat employees think they are, getting paid by the people who are supposed to pay them?

All this said, I am sorta on your side as far as demos go - apart from the hysterical bleating about features in the full game being missing from the demo being 'unethical' (that's so fucking retarded it's beneath contempt).  Maybe if the demo had features that were missing from the full game (but when does that ever happen?).

[starsrift]

The reason I draw that destinction is because big-budget games have a vast captive audience; the vast majority of people who play games buy big-budget games and they buy them in droves. A few dozen (hell, a couple thousand) people pirating them isn't gonna make an appreciable difference to the kind of money they're raking in.

With the exception of games that rely on online content, play, and matchmaking (CoD, etc), reports from developers consistently indicate that the majority of copies being played are pirated. Not "a couple thousand". A beautiful example of this is the Demigods launch. I'm not sure if I remember the numbers right at all, but IIRC it was something like 20k legit users and 80k pirates, which effectively DDOS'd the servers and more directly created a negative impact by piracy rather than simply "potential lost sales". GPG, to their credit, even fucking apologized for the situation that the pirates created, though there was also a Gamestop fuckup with release dates as well that was part of it.

Just saying.

[Widget]

The first comment was supposed to be taken with a pinch of salt, if I'd said it out loud I would have been smiling and maybe we wouldn't have all this misunderstanding. Everything else I could say has been said better by someone else.

Criticise me if you will but I think it's more of a shame if a person buys a game they dislike due to an unrepresentative demo (or being convinced by a multimillion dollar ad campaign) than if someone pirates one. I don't believe that spending time and/or money on something automatically imbues it with value.

With the exception of games that rely on online content, play, and matchmaking (CoD, etc), reports from developers consistently indicate that the majority of copies being played are pirated. Not "a couple thousand". A beautiful example of this is the Demigods launch. I'm not sure if I remember the numbers right at all, but IIRC it was something like 20k legit users and 80k pirates, which effectively DDOS'd the servers and more directly created a negative impact by piracy rather than simply "potential lost sales". GPG, to their credit, even fucking apologized for the situation that the pirates created, though there was also a Gamestop fuckup with release dates as well that was part of it.

Just saying.

Fair enough, but I don't know every one of those 60k people. I know a handful of people who may well be part of the problem but it's not my responsibility to be disgusted with their behaviour. I'll grant you, figures like that are a concern, but not my concern.

[Toom]

If the parents surrendered perpetual rights when they sold the image, then I'm afraid they do! It's shit, but that's why you read contracts through. I'm not condoning that hideous thing, and I'm glad it's no longer around, but it is what it is. I did a painting for a PA agency a few years ago that I happen to know ended its life as a dartboard; not the purpose I had in mind when I sold them  the piece, but fuck it, it's not my painting anymore; it's theirs, and they can do what they like with it.

that still isn't really true: even if they sold the rights to use it, there are other laws which govern the use of one's work: defamation laws for instance, or the so-called "moral rights" of the creator. read this for instance:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights_(copyright_law)

Moral rights are rights of creators of copyrighted works generally recognized in civil law jurisdictions and, to a lesser extent, in some common law jurisdictions. They include the right of attribution, the right to have a work published anonymously or pseudonymously, and the right to the integrity of the work. The preserving of the integrity of the work bars the work from alteration, distortion, or mutilation. Anything else that may detract from the artist's relationship with the work even after it leaves the artist's possession or ownership may bring these moral rights into play. Moral rights are distinct from any economic rights tied to copyrights. Even if an artist has assigned his or her copyright rights to a work to a third party, he or she still maintains the moral rights to the work.

Moral rights were first recognized in France and Germany, before they were included in the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works in 1928. Canada recognizes moral rights in its Copyright Act, although the French translation of the phrase used in the legislation is "droits moraux", not "droit d'auteur" (the latter refers to copyright as a whole). While the United States became a signatory to the convention in 1988, it still does not completely recognize moral rights as part of copyright law, but rather as part of other bodies of law, such as defamation or unfair competition.

Some jurisdictions allow for the waiver of moral rights. In the United States, the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 (VARA) recognizes moral rights, but applies only to works of visual art.

so it really isn't true that people have no right to decide how what they created is used.

OK, two things:
- There is a world of difference between the moral implications of taking a photograph of someone's child and using it in a deliberately controversial advertisment, and emulating a fucking video game. I can't help but feel you've kind of Godwin'd this argument.

- The article you're citing states explicitly that the 1990 Visual Artists Rights Acts recognises moral rights, but only applied to works of visual art; I am in no hurry whatsoever to start an argument about games' classification as visual art, but my gut feeling is that it probably wouldn't stand in most courts.

My position isn't coming from so much a legal standpoint as, well, a basic tenant of being an artist, particularly an artist with any interest in producing creative content commercially. I was always taught to let your work go when you hand it over, and it's certainly saved me a nontrivial amount of sleepless nights over the years.

[battlerager]

I'm just reading this thread and don't really have an opinion, but I'm just dropping by to say that publishing and selling a game is also different to selling an image or photograph to a client. I think. 

[Ben_Hurr]

The reason I draw that destinction is because big-budget games have a vast captive audience; the vast majority of people who play games buy big-budget games and they buy them in droves. A few dozen (hell, a couple thousand) people pirating them isn't gonna make an appreciable difference to the kind of money they're raking in.

With the exception of games that rely on online content, play, and matchmaking (CoD, etc), reports from developers consistently indicate that the majority of copies being played are pirated. Not "a couple thousand". A beautiful example of this is the Demigods launch. I'm not sure if I remember the numbers right at all, but IIRC it was something like 20k legit users and 80k pirates, which effectively DDOS'd the servers and more directly created a negative impact by piracy rather than simply "potential lost sales". GPG, to their credit, even fucking apologized for the situation that the pirates created, though there was also a Gamestop fuckup with release dates as well that was part of it.

Just saying.

That's probably the only case where piracy directly costs you money per unit, because every user playing costs you money per unit, even the 'legit' ones.

edit: the only reason we equate copyright infringement with shoplifting stores is because of a skillful manipulation by the RIAA over the past decade.  Screaming "YOU INFRINGED ON MY RIGHTS TO DISTRIBUTION" doesn't provoke as much emotion as "THIEF!".

[Christian223]

Just a few days ago I pirated a movie that is not available in my country. I did search it everywhere I could so I could buy a legitimate movie.

But I made the decision to download it because it was a movie from 2009, it was impossible to find a physical original copy here, even on iTunes it was not available (which is the official way of downloading it from the official website of the movie), and on eBay they only had Region 1 DVD (I am in region 4), so that mean to me that they did not even think about people watching the movie in my country, which meant they do not care if I watch it or not.

I don't pirate games anymore, AAA or indie, If I want a game I save money or buy them when they are on a sale.

Regarding very old roms, I think that the copyright laws was meant to protect the interest of the authors, since they produce things for profit, then the law should protect their right of getting profit. But if there is no way in which they get profit anymore from a game, then there is no problem, it's like downloading a copy of a very old book which is no longer in print, the author won't even care because he is dead, and the company who printed the book does care either because it is not printing the book again or does not have the exclusive rights to do so.

So for very old games, I think nobody would mind for me to own a copy.

[baconman]

Threads like this one make me miss the "OBJECTION!" smiley.

[paste]

Remember, the work has already been done. The game exists. You're not buying the product, you're giving money to the developers to support their effort to create more games. When I pirate a game and don't like it, I don't want to support a developer of poor games. The unethical thing here is trying to pass these pathetic excuses for demos as representative of the final product, which they never, ever are. It's like demoing a car with a unicycle. Yes, they are both vehicles. No, they don't provide the same experience.

The "the work has already been done" argument isn't logical.  In practically every exchange of goods for money, the work (aside from the sale) has already been done.  You are exchanging something they want (money) for something you want (the game (or, more captiously, the right to play the game)).  You can't say stealing bread isn't stealing just because the work has already been done.

Also, offering demos that are not exactly like the full game are not unethical.  You know you're getting something different from the full game.  When you demo a car, they usually don't let you drive it on the highway.  But given what you do get to do, you can get an idea of what it might be like on the highway.  

[PaleFox]

If I can't get something somewhere, legitimately, then I feel less unhappy about getting it illegitimately.

For example, where can I buy Jurassic Park Trespasser? Nowhere!


  ...even though I want to

[Destral]

If you don't like a game, by all means, don't buy it. If you don't like a game, you should have no reason to pirate it either.

Yet, you can't know if you like it or not without actually playing it. Hence, pirate.

Remember, the work has already been done. The game exists. You're not buying the product, you're giving money to the developers to support their effort to create more games. When I pirate a game and don't like it, I don't want to support a developer of poor games. The unethical thing here is trying to pass these pathetic excuses for demos as representative of the final product, which they never, ever are. It's like demoing a car with a unicycle. Yes, they are both vehicles. No, they don't provide the same experience.

You make a valid point about the whole demo issue, but at the same time I disagree about demos not being representative of the final product. Have you had a specific bad experience with a demo you would like to share? Because usually, when I download a demo of a game, it's pretty representative: you watch the intro, which sets the backstory of the game, which may or may not be interesting to you, then you play a couple of levels that show you what the general gameplay of the game is like, and what you can expect to be doing for the next 20-100 hours, depending on the game. If you disagree, I'd be happy to be enlightened as to where your experience differs.

Would you prefer it if, say, you download a demo of the game, and after you finished playing through it said "Pay $5 to play the next section of the game", and you play through that, and you keep paying to keep playing the game in $5 dollar increments until you finish the game? By your logic, that would seem to be more 'fair', since you can stop playing and paying whenever you get tired of the game. At the same time, however, it seems like subscription, microtransaction, and other 'pay to play' business models are frowned upon by the general majority of indie developers.

I'm not saying the current AAA publisher business model is perfect, so by all means feel free to suggest, or even better, demonstrate, a better model. It would be nice if we could go back to the 'patronage' model of the renaissance, where rich people would give artists, painters, and sculptors money for commissioned work, or just so they could concentrate on making awesome pieces of art. If you happen to know a rich philantropist who loves videogames, by all means, be sure to pitch that to them (heck, if I won the megamillions jackpot I'd be throwing money at people on these forums like it was going out of style).

Until then, though, developers need to eat, and a lot of them have put a lot of time and money into getting where they are. Please give these people money so they can keep making games, instead of having to switch over to some other career path, like banking software.

[dEnamed]

Have you had a specific bad experience with a demo you would like to share?

I've had one. The recent Dragon Age 2 Demo is a prime example of a bad demo. They locked out the inventory system well knowing that the reworked system would probably piss off a lot of players prior to purchasing. There were almost no conversations as to not demonstrate the one dimensional dialog system. The demo also (of course) didn't hint at the massive area recycling (stupid cave - didn't I see you about 40 times already? And didn't you have a different name back then?) or made it obvious that every single fight was divided into at least 2 waves of identical enemies, or how they forgot the mainstory and left Act 2 and Act 3 unfinished or how I had to fight 6 hours with their stupid DLC Auth System or...
Of course Demos are meant to sell a game and in my case it succeeded, but it left me with a very disappointed feeling. Thats also part of the problem with Demos. You can't expect a decent insight from them as they have been tailored to sell and impress, not to help you evaluate. Nonetheless, I've found a way to properly gauge games for me. Let's plays are a wonderful way to get a decent sneak peek at how a game will play out, much better than a demo could ever provide. In fact, I think LPs are somewhat of an answer to the "do like, do not like" problem. If only they weren't persecuted and morally grey as well...

[Destral]

I don't play Bioware RPGs (short story: I prefer RPGs with less dialogue and more combat), so I haven't experienced this, but yeah, that's pretty terrible.

[jotapeh]

Pop quiz: the authentic Zelda 2 cartridge I bought from a speciality games store a few weeks ago cost me $25, and it still works great with my old NES.

25 dollars? Was it the gold or the grey cartridge?

Also, I go on NES cartridge buying binges on ebay. Just look up "Lot of NES" and you can usually find 10-15 carts for < $20, or 3-5 carts for < $10. I've got some childhood favorites that way including Milon's Secret Castle, Mighty Bombjack, and Little Nemo

Gold cartridge - not really worth it but I feel it's okay to pay my dues to help keep a brick and mortar store that stocks classics running.

That's a pretty awesome tip, thanks. I hit up the local pawn shop and rifle through their NES carts once in a while too .. but it sounds like that is a much cheaper option

[Core Xii]

You're not stealing the original copy - you're stealing the money you owe them for playing it.

I don't owe them anything. If you test-drive a car and don't like it, you're not obliged to buy it, any more than I'm obliged to buy a game I didn't like.

If you go in to work, do your job, and at the end of the week your boss says 'You know how I'm supposed to pay you for this?  Well, I'm not gonna.  See you next week, ciao! ^_^'
That is pretty shabby treatment, right?  Well ..... that's piracy!

You left out the part where you do a crappy job and don't perform up to expectations, and your boss says "you're fired". Piracy is merely a safeguard against getting screwed by dishonest marketing and hype (BioWare employees rating Dragon Age 2 perfect tens on metacritic... tsk tsk). Also, it was your choice to do business under those circumstances. Developers know their work will be pirated, that's a known fact and isn't going away. So the risk is theirs to make a terrible game nobody wants to buy. Don't blame me for not buying it. Again, nothing is lost by me playing it anyway (except perhaps my time, but that's my own fault).

In fact, I'm surprised of your argument because that's exactly how I intend to do business. I'm going to develop games, release them for free, and accept donations to support the development of more games. That's exactly as you described, and it sounds like a better model than those of old where you sell a "product" that costs nothing to copy. Trying to introduce artificial scarcity to an infinite digital good... well now, that's just bad economics, and I don't feel sorry for developers who can't adapt to technology.

There are no lost sales, only potential customers. People who pirate your game but don't buy wouldn't have bought it anyway even if they didn't pirate.

I'm not sure if I remember the numbers right at all, but IIRC it was something like 20k legit users and 80k pirates, which effectively DDOS'd the servers and more directly created a negative impact by piracy rather than simply "potential lost sales".

Another failure to adapt to technology. Distributing large content via centralized server is expensive and unnecessary. BitTorrent is a distributed protocol where no central server - and thus, bandwidth - is required. Developers could use it to distribute content essentially free of cost. They simply choose not to, or maybe they're too dumb to even realize it. Again, I don't feel sorry for them. Universe 101, adapt or die.

You are exchanging something they want (money) for something you want (the game (or, more captiously, the right to play the game)).

Yet again, I can't know if I want their game or not without actually playing it. The work-has-already-been-done argument justifies playing the game without paying for it, because nothing is lost in doing so. In an exchange of physical goods, the original product is lost from the seller. That's not the case with copyable digital goods. You have to pay for the car before using it (beyond test-driving) because the dealership loses the car when it's in your garage. A developer loses nothing by me playing a copy of a game - quite the opposite, in fact; They gain my potential support. My potential support doesn't exist unless I play the game. That's a fact. I'm not buying something without trying it first.

When you demo a car, they usually don't let you drive it on the highway.  But given what you do get to do, you can get an idea of what it might be like on the highway. 

They don't? I wasn't aware of such restrictions. But why would I buy something based on the idea of what it might be like? That's exactly the kind of stupid blind consumerism that I'm avoiding by pirating the game first, paying for it second, if it deserves my support, and exactly why demos are not representative of the final product. They give you an idea of what it might be like. I don't want an idea, I want to know if I want to buy the thing or not. If I only have a vague idea then it's not an informed decision.

You make a valid point about the whole demo issue, but at the same time I disagree about demos not being representative of the final product. Have you had a specific bad experience with a demo you would like to share? Because usually, when I download a demo of a game, it's pretty representative: you watch the intro, which sets the backstory of the game, which may or may not be interesting to you, then you play a couple of levels that show you what the general gameplay of the game is like, and what you can expect to be doing for the next 20-100 hours, depending on the game. If you disagree, I'd be happy to be enlightened as to where your experience differs.

AmnEn and myself already covered Dragon Age 2 as an example, you can also read my review here.

I would like to reference other disappointments but it's been a long time since I played demos, because I prefer to test the final product instead. I only played the DA2 demo because it was released earlier than the full game. Most games don't even have demos, just marketing hype which has led to spontaneous shopping, only to be disappointed by the game. I've sworn not to buy games without testing them first... well, except Valve. They seem to have a pretty good idea what they're doing, though I have lost some faith in them after what they did with Left 4 Dead 2 and Team Fortress 2.

Would you prefer it if, say, you download a demo of the game, and after you finished playing through it said "Pay $5 to play the next section of the game", and you play through that, and you keep paying to keep playing the game in $5 dollar increments until you finish the game? By your logic, that would seem to be more 'fair', since you can stop playing and paying whenever you get tired of the game.

That's very close to what I'm doing, though you word it incorrectly; It's not "Pay $5 to play the next section of the game", it's "Pay $5 if you enjoyed the previous section of the game you just played". I'm concerned it would break immersion though and be generally inconvenient. It's preferable to play the whole thing from start to finish, then decide how much it was worth, $5, $10, $15... or $500, if you really want more.

Until then, though, developers need to eat, and a lot of them have put a lot of time and money into getting where they are. Please give these people money so they can keep making games, instead of having to switch over to some other career path, like banking software.

I'm not disputing that. Developers of good games deserve to get paid. The argument here is if they should get paid before I even play the game, and my answer is 'no'. I feel no pity for developers who can't make good games, such is life.

I don't pirate because I want everything for free. I pirate because I want to know what I'm buying before I buy it.

--------------------------------------------------------

Hm, this is actually off-topic, isn't it? Doesn't exactly relate to ROMs the way the topic intended.

ROMs are OK because device-locking is evil. Emulators allow me to play games on the PC that are not available on it. It's the developers fault for not porting their product such that it's available to me. I'm right here, waving my metaphorical wallet at Nintendo, ready to throw my money at them. It's actually rather puzzling why they don't allow me to pay them, really.