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"Piracy (Crap Title, I Know)"

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Mon 11/11/02 at 20:48
Regular
Posts: 787
Everyone has their own views on copying games. Some agree with the process and others disagree. Personally, I think the majority agree to copying games due to two pretty simple and worthy facts - it's cheap and quite reliable!
Everyone has their own views on copying games. Some agree with the process and others disagree. Personally, I think the majority agree to copying games due to two pretty simple and worthy facts - it's cheap and quite reliable!

When gaming entertainment actually evolved into something worthy of playing, Nintendo in the late eighties, many were drawn into gaming. Years went by, technology transformed and a lot of brain boxes started to appear in the far horizon of the industry. Hackers! The ultimate evil!
Basically, these were very clever people who manoeuvred with certain consoles making it possible to play copied games for the console. This era didn't arrive until consoles that read on discs arrived (not sure about the Mega CD though). You see when the industry really started cartridges were commonly used, which were virtually impossible to copy. This was a huge advantage for cartridges, but as well these advantages came many more disadvantages than discs.

The 'chipping' dilemma really got a boost when Sony's Playstation was released. The Playstation gave hackers a huge money-making opportunity, which was simply to copy games and sell them to many willing gamers in the public. Copyright laws were firmly created restricting anyone from copying, but it still went ahead. When you load most consoles you can clearly see what's stated. Copying is illegal, but once again hackers refused to stop and carried on earning easy money. No-one really takes any notice of copyright warnings mainly because of all the writing. When you see it you instantly think 'bla bla...' and that's just the way of nature!
Playstation, in my mind actually earned more popularity because of this. Many audiences were aware of getting Playtstation's chipped and having copied games for a much cheaper price. A lot of commotion was often made just to get a copied game. Still, the whole idea of having a successful game company was to make a lot of profit, which they weren't receiving potentially. Obviously Playstation could not gather all their sold products back from the public and create a new 'un-chippable' one, it was totally impossible. So what they did was wait for a couple of years, say five years, and then created a newer and much smaller model, which was supposed to restrict the chipping process. Did it work, I don't think so! Many clever people, probably technicians, found ways to chip it making it posiible to play cheaper copied games again.
I didn't really see the point in releasing the same console with the same amount of power as its predecessor. The whole idea of having new consoles is to improve on the capabilities not just for looks. Ok, some PSone had a built-in screen and could run on batteries, but they still seem quite pricey, especially when you look at the logic.

So Playstation had a big plate on their hands, then look who came to join them...Sega! They entered the stage with great elegance with the release of the enhanced 128-bit Dreamcast, a huge success in their eyes. But what they didn't notice was the huge success for more hackers continuing making money from simply copying and selling a game.
It didn't take long until the Dreamcast was hacked, made possible to play copied games. It was no surprise that loads of people wanted copied games for the Dreamcast because it was cheaper - who in the right mind would want to buy something more expensive when you can get it somewhere else for a much lower price? No-one I'd imagine! This was the real factor that drew many crowds into buying copied games, the price. They wanted to play their favourite games for a lower price instead of going to gaming retailers and buying it for the 'recommended retail price'. Still, Dreamcast was quite successful, but not as successful as Playstation.

You would think now that Playstation would have made it impossible to chip their new PS2, but already people have found ways of chipping the PS2 once again making it possible to play copied games. When my brother bought his PS2 I had some idea that it was impossible to chip the PS2 due to all the commotion with the PS1 but I was totally surprised when I found out you could. It's times like these when you just wonder why haven't developers permanently restricted chipping? What's holding them back, they're sure to have the technology so what's stopping them? I don't know do you? Even the X-Box is beginning to get chipped, with Microsoft replacing the Motherboard inside yet they can still chip it afterwards. It's beginning to cause piracy problems aleready.



So what do you think about chipping? Are you for it or against it? Yes it may seem very tempting having the opportunity to purchase a game for cheaper, but it obviously isn't right. What it's doing to the industry is simply giving it a bad reputation, which isn't needed right now because we want gaming to improve. Look at it with this perspective. How would you like it if you created something, worked hard for it so you could earn well-deserved money then became very successful. Suddenly someone finds a way of imitating what you're doing and reducing your profit by the person selling copied versions of what you made. Very unacceptable wouldn't you agree? Well this is how many companies see it like today.

I'm sure many of you out there are FOR copying and not against it, but I don't blame you. It is very overwhelming, but we all have to emphasise with companies that work hard dat in day out creating better games/consoles and are gradually being foiled by illegal acts such as 'chipping'. Really it's up to you what kind of games you want but for some reason I prefer to get the real thing, and not have my console tampered with. By doing so you break the warranty on your console meaning if it breaks your f*****. Also if everyone gets pirate games, companies lose money, copanies stop making games, no more games to copy, everybody gets f*****.

If you've read this far then I hope this has given you a whole new perspective on the second biggest problem in the Gaming Industry (after, "Do gaming pollute the mind of a child?").
Thanks For Reading.
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Wed 13/11/02 at 17:11
Regular
Posts: 11,038
cjh wrote:
> Oh, and by the way, good post maddmun :o).

Thanks

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