Do you consider borrowing #VideoGames the same as pirating them? If not, then what do you think the negative effect of pirating is?
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There is a difference between is it bad (a moral question) and if there is a negative effect (a functional one)...
There is clearly a negative effect for those trying to sell games. Whether it is moral or not is far more complicated and is a matter of varrying degrees..
Morality aside some of the negative effects that result from a culture of pirating:
1) People are less incentivized to create good games since they cant make as much profit off of it.
2) When games are made they need to use heavy DRMs that punish the people willing to legitimately pay for it.
3) Job loss
A moral judgement would have to weigh the good of giving someone a game to play and some enjoyment, vs these negative effects.
@freemo @darth I agree with that statement, however what I don't get is when companies who released games 20 years ago try to clamp down on people sharing them as abandon ware. That really is a victimless crime because the game is not on sale anymore. If someone is selling copies of abandon ware though that is a different matter. They're profiting from someone else's work.
Depends on the game. There are plenty of super old games still being sold and making money off of that have been refreshed for new platforms (even with no visual changes).
Now i know there is some abandonware that hasnt been sold in decades, but I would image the idea is that at some point someone might revive them but if the games are free then they loose that opportunity.
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@freemo @davespice @darth Yeah that's not abandonware then, by definition. =) Abandonware is software that isn't being sold, never mind updated for modern platforms, and doesn't look like it'll see a revival because e.g. the company went out of business a decade or two ago.
You can buy a lot more old *stuff* these days on GOG or Steam or whatever, so there's a lot less abandonware than there used to be. Heck, I just rebought Earth 2150, and am loving playing through it again!
If it is abandonware as you describe it (the owning company no longer exists) then it is free and unrestricted to download and you cant get in trouble for it.
Only the person who owns the software can sue you or file a claim against you.
@freemo @AGTMADCAT @darth and this brings the discussion neatly to... Emulator ROMS! Dan dan daaaaaaahhhhnnn!!!
Im the creator of the original distributed network for rom exchange back in the day.
@freemo @AGTMADCAT @darth Nice one, I only recently realised one of the underlying functions of emulators when I started getting into repairing retro hardware. Especially with jamma arcade boards sometimes you need to test the romset in MAME, or at least bitwise compare them to the MAME versions to check for corruption. Some arcade boards have been saved by piecing together the romset from various different machines that way. It's a real essential tool for keeping things alive.
@freemo @davespice @darth Depends on the country, but I'm theory yes! Sometimes a chain of companies bought up the IP or distribution licenses when the company was liquidated, and it becomes more complicated legally. It can be a mess sometimes.
If a company bought it up then that means its not abandonware. Someone owns the rights still and therefore may wish to resell it as a remake in the future.
@freemo I would expect no less based an answer from you.
I know a lot of people who say pirating is bad because people lose jobs because of that, and the company earns significantly less money... The very same people are okay with borrowing and even finding the best 2nd hand deal so they can finish the game fast and sell it for slightly more than they bought it for.
So, although I will always be pro-legal way of doing things, I can't quite wrap my head around my initial question.