GetDotted Domains

Viewing Thread:
"Pirate Games"

The "General Games Chat" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.

Sat 15/12/01 at 10:24
Regular
Posts: 787
If you selected this topic looking to find some info and disscusions on games about pirates, you came to the wrong place. This message is not about the argh me maties, parot on the shoulder, sword swinging, tresure hunting pirates, no its about video game piracy.

For years nothing has been safe from the cruel world of piracy, videos, music, and games to name a few. Theres lots of ways to go about pirating, things that almost all of us know, because we have seen it on tv or somewhere.video piracy is one of the most comon as its so simple. Link two video machines together with a scart lead, then record from one video to another. In recent times with the inention of CD burners, especialy in Pc's, people can simply and easily copy a cd.

People think that its a victum-less-crime like punching someone in the dark, and that it doesnt hurt anyone. But what about the people who make a living out of the entertainment business. They lose out because someones making bogus copies of their products and are selling them off on the cheap.

Would you like chips with that?
The gaming world is affected by piracy because of chips. Just get the chip into your console, then play imported games, months before the uk release date. Sounds great doesnt it? well first of all, if you instal a chip into your console, you automaticaly void your warrenty. Chips have also been known to cause damage, usualy to the lense that reads the games. However there is one chip for the PSone which slots in the back like a cheat cartradge, and doesnt void your warrenty.

Sony have recently put an end to the production of 2 chip companies, just my threatening legal actions.

If you have your console chipped, then tell us, why you did it, and what its like.

Piracy is becoming more common every day. You cant buy a video or game etc from a market or boot sale without wondering if what your buying is the real thing. As almost every one has access to some form or pirating equipment. If you have two video machines or a cd burner, then you could easily set up your own business.

When you record something of the TV or a song of the radio, that is actualy pirating too. It may sound silly, as everyone does it, and blank cassets are sold everywhere.

Do the words emulators and roms mean anything to you? Well an emulator is a version of a console that can be played using different consoles and a rom is a copy of a game. There are many emulators about:

Bleem - lets you play playstation games on a dreamcast
Game studio - Lets you play gameboy games on a PS2
Boycot advanced - lets you play GBA games on a PC
No$Gmb - Lets you play original and colour gameboy games on your PC

Thats just a few. Most are for the PC. You can find emulators for Snes, Amiga, Playstation, N64, Dreamcast, GBA etc, to play on your computer.

Roms are legal, if you own an original copy of the game you have a rom of. If you dont have an original copy, you must delete the rom after 24 hours, otherwise you are breaking the law. I once was in Eletronics boutique, and over heard a member of staff, telling a customer some sites for downloading roms and emulators, instead of buying them from their shop.

And what about MP3's. you can download music for free of the internet, which is selling in the shops for around £15. It may feel good to make a saving that big, but what about the people behind the music, who won't make the money so eventualy will not do what they are doing anymore.

Sure piracy lets us have things early and cheap. But the quality usualy is poor, and you are breaking the law. Maybe one day, piracy will grow so much, respected companies will be put out of business and we wont have as many great games anymore.

Naturaly, I think all kinds of piracy is wrong, and it is stealing. It may not seem like stealing, but you are, and its not the right thing to do.

So what are your opinions on the subject?
Do you agree or disagree with piracy, and why?

Thanks For Reading
CDouch
Sat 15/12/01 at 14:17
Regular
"Vote For Pedro"
Posts: 5,679
some good points from everyone so far
Sat 15/12/01 at 14:06
Regular
Posts: 3,182
Who will admit to buying pirated games?
I'll confess that a couple of months ago I bought 2 pirated Dreamcast games: Jet Set Radio & Confidential Mission at 3 quid each.
But when I played them, I liked them so much that my conscience was tweaked, so I quickly bought 2 brand new official copies of the same titles.
One things for sure, I will not be buying any more pirated games again. It just didn't sit right with me.
I quickly came to the conclusion that the skill of the programmers should be respected and rewarded.
Sat 15/12/01 at 13:47
Regular
"¬_¬"
Posts: 3,110
Pirate music can be made 'legal' in a way by masking it a 'sharing'. Like on Audiogalaxy. I don't promote piracy, but if there is one song I want off an album and the rest are rubbish, I am much more likely to just download it (cue. Alien Ant Farm). I also downloaded the Japanese pokemon gold because I couldn't wait the extra year and a half to get it. I did delete it soon though, because I spent almost all Saturday playing it then got stuck.
Sat 15/12/01 at 13:30
Regular
"Picking a winner!"
Posts: 8,502
The good old piracy topic, crop up on here once and a while and I don't know why but I always like to read and reply. Piracy is a huge problem for the industry but one that isn't likely to go away unless society can accept it as being wrong. There are two sides to every story and piracy is no different.

Whatever way you look at it piracy is wrong, stealing a product someone has made to keep for yourself. So why do people do it? Well games these days are expensive, getting a copy for as little as £5 is a good deal to some people. I think what we have to remember is not everyone cares about the industry like most of us do, if a developer goes out of business. There are plenty of others to make the games. This is where the problem lies. If these people didn't exist then neither would piracy, plain and simple. Now I don't mean we burn these people at the stake, just tougher laws to prevent piracy.

Developers do there bit to make the games and console piracy proof. With the chips you can buy to get round the hardware tricks to stop piracy there is always a danger of it doing some damage to your console. I had my PSX chipped as a friend travelled to America a lot and would bring back games. I don't regret getting my PSX chipped but would be very cautious of getting my PS2 chipped as I think these days consoles may have been designed to ensure that any extra chips cause overheating or some other internal problems.

But looking at it from another side, Is piracy as big a problem as the developers make it out to be? Surely if it was then they wouldn't continue in this industry? Ok piracy is wrong but so is ripping people off, are we paying maybe a little too much for our games? Could a reduction in price maybe reduce the amount of piracy that takes place? Think of PC software, you can but software some costing more than £300, why pay £300 when you can buy the exact same thing for £15? This is something a lot of people will do. Also is the software really worth £300? How many bugs and faults are in the software? Is it going to crash and go wrong? What do you get if it does this, you have to download a patch to try solve the problems. Not really worth the £300 is it?

Piracy has been around for a long long time. The Amiga was a console that springs to mind when the word piracy was mentioned. I myself even had pirated games for the Amiga, Why? Well everyone did it, I didn't know any different and to be honest it was the only way to get hold of most games. Technology can also play a big part in the problem of piracy, First it was tapes then floppy disks, then CD's and now DVD's. All of these except from DVD's can be copied fairly easily these days and no doubt soon DVD's will be easy to copy to and by downloading a patch you can burn onto a copy of the original game then you could have a copy of a PS2 or X-Box game.

The GameCube by Nintendo seem to believe piracy is a problem, their new optical disks at the moment are piracy proof but I doubt that it will stay that way. In the past Nintendo have always adopted to go with a cartridge based game to prevent the problem of piracy and it did work as the cost of trying to replicate a cartridge is higher than buying the original. But maybe future technology will also play a part, new storage medium that is impossible to copy, problem is it may not have another use except for games as a lot of PC users require to save things onto a storage medium as well.

In the future I think we will see a lot more tricks and techniques used by developers to try and prevent this problem, some will work some wont. I think the problem also has to be addressed in society, make sure people know it is wrong and know the punishments for buying or selling these pirated products.

Not just the gaming industry that suffers though, the music industry also has problems due to people copying CD's and tapes and also downloading MP3's form the WEB. So what is the difference here?
Nothing, they are all as bad. If you copy a CD for a friend or download some songs for free of the Web then you are breaking the law and doing something just as bad as copying a game or buying a copied game. So why do we do it? Well I think it is because we can and we can get away with it. Nobody is going to waste time and effort to try catch one person who downloads a few songs from time to time or buys a pirate game every so often. Why? Although these people are part of the problem there is also those who do it as a way of life, just like drug smugglers these people do it on a large scale, selling hundreds to thousands of games a week.

I guess you have to ask who is worse in this situation, the ones who sell them or the ones who buy them?

I myself disagree with piracy as it can damage the industry. I also disagree with being ripped off and it does happen in a lot of places. I don't think we as the public know enough about the true facts and figures about the damage this does. (I know developers release figures but can we really believe these? And who much profit do they make from games? I suspect that the profit is a lot lot bigger than the amount the lose to piracy.

Piracy is a problem I don't see disappearing for quite some time.
Sat 15/12/01 at 11:58
Regular
Posts: 1,037
I disagree with piracy but agree to shipping your console to play the latest imports as they take a long time before Uk gamers get thier hands on it. A good example is that FFX will be released in a wekks time in the US fully voiced in English while we have to wait until summer for the same version only converted to PAL and the menus into other European languges.

Also there is the issue of black borders and slow downs on Pal conversions of some Ntsc games which really annoy me.
Sat 15/12/01 at 11:37
Regular
"Copyright: FM Inc."
Posts: 10,338
I disagree with piracy.

If you want the latest games and don't want to pay for them by importing a console (£260 for a US PS2 delivered) and games (£70 a time) from Japan and the US, don't play them.
If you don't want to pay £39.99 for a new game then wait for it to come out second hand.
If you can't afford £19.99 for a second hand game then stick to Lego until you can.
Sat 15/12/01 at 11:28
Regular
"Sally On Weekdays!"
Posts: 378
I absolutely hate pirates! Ok, I'll admit that a lot of media is overpriced, such as Nintendo games and Audio CDs, but I don't think resorting to piracy is the answer.

A lot of my friends rotate games in a sort of rotation, where they copy them, pass them on, get a new game, copy it, pass it on and it results in a continuous circle of piracy. I've been offerered pirates, but turned them down. I just stay out of piracy because I know the adverse affects it can have.

If you actually maufacture and mass sell pirates, you can be arrested. If you copy them for your own use, you can in little trouble. If you copy games you own, it is perfectly legal, as they are back-ups.

As for audio piracy, if I like a song, I download a few songs from the album and if I like them, I buy the album.
Sat 15/12/01 at 10:24
Regular
"Vote For Pedro"
Posts: 5,679
If you selected this topic looking to find some info and disscusions on games about pirates, you came to the wrong place. This message is not about the argh me maties, parot on the shoulder, sword swinging, tresure hunting pirates, no its about video game piracy.

For years nothing has been safe from the cruel world of piracy, videos, music, and games to name a few. Theres lots of ways to go about pirating, things that almost all of us know, because we have seen it on tv or somewhere.video piracy is one of the most comon as its so simple. Link two video machines together with a scart lead, then record from one video to another. In recent times with the inention of CD burners, especialy in Pc's, people can simply and easily copy a cd.

People think that its a victum-less-crime like punching someone in the dark, and that it doesnt hurt anyone. But what about the people who make a living out of the entertainment business. They lose out because someones making bogus copies of their products and are selling them off on the cheap.

Would you like chips with that?
The gaming world is affected by piracy because of chips. Just get the chip into your console, then play imported games, months before the uk release date. Sounds great doesnt it? well first of all, if you instal a chip into your console, you automaticaly void your warrenty. Chips have also been known to cause damage, usualy to the lense that reads the games. However there is one chip for the PSone which slots in the back like a cheat cartradge, and doesnt void your warrenty.

Sony have recently put an end to the production of 2 chip companies, just my threatening legal actions.

If you have your console chipped, then tell us, why you did it, and what its like.

Piracy is becoming more common every day. You cant buy a video or game etc from a market or boot sale without wondering if what your buying is the real thing. As almost every one has access to some form or pirating equipment. If you have two video machines or a cd burner, then you could easily set up your own business.

When you record something of the TV or a song of the radio, that is actualy pirating too. It may sound silly, as everyone does it, and blank cassets are sold everywhere.

Do the words emulators and roms mean anything to you? Well an emulator is a version of a console that can be played using different consoles and a rom is a copy of a game. There are many emulators about:

Bleem - lets you play playstation games on a dreamcast
Game studio - Lets you play gameboy games on a PS2
Boycot advanced - lets you play GBA games on a PC
No$Gmb - Lets you play original and colour gameboy games on your PC

Thats just a few. Most are for the PC. You can find emulators for Snes, Amiga, Playstation, N64, Dreamcast, GBA etc, to play on your computer.

Roms are legal, if you own an original copy of the game you have a rom of. If you dont have an original copy, you must delete the rom after 24 hours, otherwise you are breaking the law. I once was in Eletronics boutique, and over heard a member of staff, telling a customer some sites for downloading roms and emulators, instead of buying them from their shop.

And what about MP3's. you can download music for free of the internet, which is selling in the shops for around £15. It may feel good to make a saving that big, but what about the people behind the music, who won't make the money so eventualy will not do what they are doing anymore.

Sure piracy lets us have things early and cheap. But the quality usualy is poor, and you are breaking the law. Maybe one day, piracy will grow so much, respected companies will be put out of business and we wont have as many great games anymore.

Naturaly, I think all kinds of piracy is wrong, and it is stealing. It may not seem like stealing, but you are, and its not the right thing to do.

So what are your opinions on the subject?
Do you agree or disagree with piracy, and why?

Thanks For Reading
CDouch

Freeola & GetDotted are rated 5 Stars

Check out some of our customer reviews below:

Excellent support service!
I have always found the support staff to provide an excellent service on every occasion I've called.
Ben
Everybody thinks I am an IT genius...
Nothing but admiration. I have been complimented on the church site that I manage through you and everybody thinks I am an IT genius. Your support is unquestionably outstanding.
Brian

View More Reviews

Need some help? Give us a call on 01376 55 60 60

Go to Support Centre
Feedback Close Feedback

It appears you are using an old browser, as such, some parts of the Freeola and Getdotted site will not work as intended. Using the latest version of your browser, or another browser such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Opera will provide a better, safer browsing experience for you.