News - Game Pirates check your post! UK publishers sending out 25,000 letters demandi

[Saracen]

there are special programs that hide teh stuff you are downloading ie peerguardian.

hackers will find a way to distrubute there cracked games one way or the otehr without getting detected. piracy will always win mate. take for example rapidshare. there are TONS of illegal content in rapidshare links. just type in crysis rapidhsare in google and you will see loads of links for teh ful game JUST like that.

i believe that downloading from such host websites is NOT illegal no matter whats inside the content has its up to the host website to make sure its legit stuff contained in the file.

If all goes well and they somehow stopped people downloading illegal files. that said person can always pop down to there local market and just buy cracked game for £5. there is always a way and the only thing u can do is slow it down A BIT.

Maybe so. But none of that affects companies taking firm action against people if and where they do have evidence. It certainly isn't a basis for them not doing so, because that same logic would suggest that because the police can't catch and/or prosecute all burglars, they shouldn't bother trying to catch any.

I don't think anyone's suggested that they think these letters, or any court cases that follow, are going to magically make all piracy cease. But it may slow it down, and even if it doesn't, it'll at least generate some return for the companies that are losing out. And if it means that some pirates are paying compensation on behalf of others, oh well, crap happens. :d

[beanbandit]

I'd like to hear how some of these people respond to these letters. Will they just pay it to get them off their backs or will they take a stand.

Taking a stand cost one woman £16K.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7568642.stm

I know what i'd rather pay.

[dangel]

I know what i'd rather pay.

Exactly.

[looney]

£300 is excessive imo, but they should be targetting the uploaders rather then downloaders, cos the uploaders are the ones who are giving it, its abit like drugs, as long as you have drug dealers you'll have drug addicts and users.

[Rosaline]

£300 is excessive imo, but they should be targetting the uploaders rather then downloaders, cos the uploaders are the ones who are giving it, its abit like drugs, as long as you have drug dealers you'll have drug addicts and users.

As has been said before, however, if you are downloading via BitTorrent (which is the most common distribution method), you are uploading.

Having worked on a computer helpdesk, I am quite aware that this fact is not known to most people. To them it is a free game, and for a small percentage, the fact that it could be illegal doesn't even occur (most do realise when it comes to games, but a lot of people watched streamed TV online without realising this).

The comparison to drugs isn't fair at all on anyone. You are not addicted to new games, and as such do not have to turn to the dealer for your next fix. Also there is the greater discussion regarding the legal status of drugs that is not appropriate to go into here.

Downloading pirated anything is legally dubious and morally wrong, however it does have to be said that from a consumerist social ethics point of view it has its uses as a tool to fight with for better practices. However, that entire argument is completely moot in many of the key cases that are being brought forth!

Consider Dream Pinball 3D. It retails at €19.99 for the PC. For a highly professional and polished product, that price is spot on the sweet spot for casual type games. It's not over priced, and is made by a generally competent and professional studio (so I will assume of reasonable quality). Frankly, aside from avoiding certain rootkit-as-DRM products, the only issue I have ever had with DRM has been some additional seeking around a DVD, and smaller companies are unlikely to use harsh DRM. Yet over the same period they had 800 sales, 12,000 copies were downloaded! That's 15 pirated copies for each legitimate one. They were punished simply for existing, it seems.

Small or independent game developers are put under a huge burden because of illegal game sharing. To only get revenues 7% of what is possible is frankly crippling. To be fair, each download is not a lost sale, however if only 10% of illegal downloaders would have purchased, that would still have almost tripled their takings. The cost of developing even a small game are extremely high, and margins run tight unless you have access to major advertising muscle. Several game studios have specifically cited piracy for their collapse, and it drives independent developers to give up (despite being a major source of innovation within the industry).

The true cost to a company of piracy is not the simple unit cost of each copy downloaded. Gamers are often social, and talk to others about what they play and how they act. If a gamer is known to download games and enjoys a new pirated release, they create an atmosphere that downloading a game is always acceptable. By downloading a game that has been released fairly, you are saying to the developers "screw you!", insulting their hard work and effort, and telling them that they do not deserve to be rewarded for their input. You also reduce the unit sales of the game, lowing the ability of the developers to get further work based on the true strength of their release. If a pirated game has bugs and those who downloaded it illegally complain, there is no way to tell if they are legitimate claimants or not, and so the total buzz has to be listened to and patches produced which may not address the concerns of paid customers first and foremost (whilst all bugs should be fixed, good business sense is quite clear on this one).

I have heard similar stories from other small developers, and quite frankly it enrages me that people can so brutally destroy someone's livelihoods and abuse their trust in such a manner. So much of the downloading of games isn't aimed at the man, but rather directly targets the small independent who simply cannot cope with such loses, and often work to make their product as free from consumerist complaints as possible.

A settlement, an agreement between two or more parties (not a fine in any shape or form, then), of only £300 is quite fair in my opinion.

[Hicks12]

Im sorry if this has been already said but i dont have time to read through all the pages . As far as i remember it is OK to download a game and have it for 24hours then delete, i know this was the case for roms of old games but not 100% in this area. For me i like to play the game for a few hours and see if i like it, if game developers actually tried to make a decent timed demo or a longer one then it could help. Pricing of PC games isnt to bad its just certain games like COD4 which is still £35 at game(completely rip off imo). In some cases people would download a game to see if its good and if it is then they sometimes buy the cd key from some online thing(can you?, maybe ebay), this i think is acceptable because alot of games are just a waste of money and so if a demo was out then it would make potential customers go away and force the developers to make a good game. I think that £300 is excessive amount, one of my friends downlaods games but only plays them on lan, most of the time if its a good game he will buy it(he likes cod4, he got it lol) so i guess its up to the market to stop being flooded with games that are worthless and pathetic. Piracy is never going to stop because if it did then who would stop developers increasing the price to say 360/ps3 prices of £45 a game, i think thats the reason why crysis warhead is only £15 at play simply because their game got pirated so much due to the system requirements(amazing game imo) but having a lower price is down to piracy so in reality piracy CAN be a good thing if its not on a huge scale.


PS: i DONT think piracy is good but thats my opinion.

[Rob_B]

24hour rule is utter b******s...

Regarding peerguardian & similar products what if someone using it happened to at some point be 'using' the same IP as I had been using that day/week/month whether past or future (say I turned my router off as I don't have a static IP)
How can anyone prove who had that IP at that time as the majority of broadband providers don't offer fixed on the 'standard' tariffs?..

[kalniel]

How can anyone prove who had that IP at that time as the majority of broadband providers don't offer fixed on the 'standard' tariffs?..

The same way they prove that you downloaded X gb and thus need throttling.. Getting who has which IP at any given time is one of the simpler things they can do.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

why dont they start issuing demo's for pc games? for instance i just found out that the pc has the beijing olympcs. now im hapy to pay for it but i dont know it i will like it because there is NO DEMO for me to try which is a load of bollox. having demo's and even trials for mmo type games is a must imo and could help cut down on piracy too. maybe not much but still would help. pc needs demo's more then console users has we get the chance to actualy test the game out to see if it will run well on our systems too.

[mediaboy]

now im hapy to pay for it..... because there is NO DEMO for me to try

Isn't that enough said?

[Andy3536]

Whats worrying is for so long now this hole thing has gone on without anyone doing anything to stop it. No all of a sudden they are trying to go in with 2 feet with court orders and large fines for what people have done in the past where as what they should have done is said on the first day of the following month any illegal downloads will be be given a fine of X amount and anyone uploading will be given a fine of Y amount for each item.

It would still stop 90% of it. And lets face it the only reason people did this before is they knew no 0one would ever try and catch them.

How things have changed.


I expect most accused of downloading a game though will buy a copy if it looks like charges will be filled.
Of corse if you've uploaded though your still well

[Jay]

I can hand on heart say I have NEVER downloaded a game from a P2P site etc but I can see why people would do it.

It's still no excuse, if you MUST download it due to DRM etc then buy a proper copy and use the downloaded version, is still not legal but you have been as honest as you can in this situation.

I wanted bio-shock but never bought it due to the copy protection methods, this didn't mean I thought I could download it. I just never played it.

I still think its wrong that an ISP can give out info without any sort of warrant being issued for that info. I could prove that an IP has tried to hack my network, could I request all his details?

It also makes me wonder, did they host the torrent?

The same way they prove that you downloaded X gb and thus need throttling.. Getting who has which IP at any given time is one of the simpler things they can do.

Not on cable its not, the system isn't fool proof and they can not 100% say that that IP is being used by that person at this address.

What a scam this could be, spyware that downloads your game (that is so poor no one would bother buying) and then you charge the poor user £300.

[chuckskull]

It's not just cable either, an external IP address can be used by many computers. This is what your router does.

I've personally never tried it, but getting into the average wireless router is not hard for someone with even basic computer knowledge and google. Especially since a lot of ISP boxes are shipped without any wireless security turned on and most people wouldn't even know where to start with or even that they need wireless security.

[Steven W]

£300 is excessive imo, but they should be targetting the uploaders rather then downloaders, cos the uploaders are the ones who are giving it, its abit like drugs, as long as you have drug dealers you'll have drug addicts and users.

That's it go for the crack peddlers and leave the casual marijuana smokers alone. Start at the top and the rest will crumble.

[chuckskull]

I dont think £300 is particularly unfair, it's meant to be a deterrent. If they sued for just the retail cost(even with a highly unlikely near 100% success rate) piracy just becomes a chance to get a free game, and if you get caught you've lost nothing but the money you would of paid anyway.

[Saracen]

.....

I still think its wrong that an ISP can give out info without any sort of warrant being issued for that info. I could prove that an IP has tried to hack my network, could I request all his details? ....

Which ISPs have done that?

According to that Times article, the companies went to the High Court and got court orders for the names and addresses. If so, the ISPs had no choice.