Aminet 44/Aminet 44 (2001)(GTI - Schatztruhe)[!][Aug 2001].iso/Aminet/demo/mag/GDS-DISC11b.lha/text/USES OF PIRACY

Text File | 1998-10-02 | 13KB | 376 lines

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«c1»
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THE USES OF PIRACY«»
«»«al»
«c3»BY DARKHAWK/IRIS«»
«»«as»
«c5»This is another one of those madly
«c2»provocative «c5»articles, which most Amiga
users will instantly dislike, but I
felt like doing a «c2»reply to Alvin's
«c5»article about piracy in EC 40. That
article was in turn a reply to an
older article of mine about the
subject, published in Phoenix issue 2.
Replies are easy to write, you never
have to think too hard coming up with
a topic then, just continue with an
old one, boring the hell out of any
readers. So that's just what I will do
now. I'll present some quotes from
Alvins text, and then I will write
what I think of those quotes. The
original articles were about «c2»piracy
«c5»and how it is (and is not) hurting the
Amiga. I am in defense of crackers,
making me the villain, while Alvin is
more against them, making him the hero
of this tale.«»
«»
«c4»"It would be a shame if there suddenly
were no new games, would it not?"«»
«»
«c5»Quite loaded question here ofcourse,
the meaning is that you have to agree
with this statement and then go on and
think that piracy is bad because it
prevents new games from emerging.
Well, that is one of the cases in
question, «c2»does piracy infact prevent
new games from emerging? «c5»On the
surface, this seems obvious enough,
most people would think that it does,
but as I wrote in my other article,
piracy is the symptom, not the cause
of the disease, so all these
comparisons between piracy and the
dying software market on the Amiga are
really off mark. What is wrong is the
little userbase we have. Nothing can
be very profitable anymore, piracy or
not. Hardware manufacturers are not
exactly getting rich either, infact
their situation is the same as the
softwaredeveloper situation. Pirates
do not 'crack' hardware and yet
hardware developers are forced to quit
or produce stuff for other markets to
survive. I claim that this situation
is the exact same as the software one,
and that piracy does nothing to make
it worse, although software
developers always seem to think in
those black/white lines. «c2»"Our game did
not sell very well, if all who played
it had bought it, it would have sold
well, therefore pirates are bastards'.
«c5»This is a totally juvenile and lame
way of thinking. Consider what would
have happened if the game hadn't been
cracked? The game would have sold a
few more copies, yes, but only a few.
Some people test games before they buy
too, and others would not have cared
buying the game if they couldn't get
it cracked. Infact that would be the
majority. What makes you think that
people would actually «c2»BUY «c5»a game they
couldn't get their hands on cracked?
Most people would just drop the game
completely then, it is only when a
game is really good that people would
buy it if they couldn't get it
cracked, is that not just plain and
simple? True enough, if «c2»EVERYBODY
«c5»bought the game, then it would be good
for the developers, but why should
people do that if they don't really
like the game? This seems like some
sort of prevailing motion in the Amiga
communities these days. «c2»"Buy the game,
dammit, so that we can get more games
out". «c5»Whether people like or dislike
the game seems to be no factor in
these 'requests'. But more about that
later.«»
«»
«c4»"Game after game (..) have been
cancelled, many due to what
developers thought of as a dying
market".«»
«»
«c5»Yes, true enough, those developers who
were the first to go were the ones
thinking in terms of 'dying markets',
that is, those exclusively money
minded. More Amiga loyal developers
stayed on for a longer amount of time,
but now not many are left it seems,
loyality can only carry one that far
apparently. However, we're no dying
market, we're just a very small one.
Our numbers have stabilized now, and a
really good Amiga game can probably
sell around 2-3000 copies, which would
be a smashing success in Amiga terms,
while in PC terms, a full priced game
which sells under 30000 copies is a
total failure. Piracy does not enter
into the picture here, there are only
a certain amount of people who is
ever going to buy those games. Telling
the casual gamer to purchase games
instead of getting them cracked will
only have very little effect, if they
can't get their hands on some game,
they will not go out and buy it
instead. «c2»One has to have a big market
in order to sell well, that's just how
it is.«»
«»
«c4»"Ethically, piracy is wrong. It is
immoral and illegal"«»
«c5»Yes yes, I don't give much for that
kind of ethics (and statements).
Ethically, it is also wrong and
immoral to charge such huge prices for
games, when the production cost is
only about a tenth of the price, etc.
Always piracy and pirates have been
the scapegoats for all problems, what
they do is immoral and illegal you
say, and still you gladly use their
cracks and promote them. You
self-righteous users who scorn piracy
and still use cracks are the real
hypocrites in this. «c2»Pirates who do it
for fun or money are quite honest
about it, and that's way more
refreshing than this doublemoral many
users dsiplay, slagging off piracy
while still being dependent on it. «c5»But
whatever, I think there's nothing to
be ashamed of in cracking or promoting
the use of cracks, or I wouldn't be
writing this. Whether you would term
that ethically wrong or not does not
concern me in the least.«»
«»
«c4»"However, his statement that 'piracy
is NOT destroying the revenues of
games' is quite invalid, at least for
the Amiga market"«»
«»
«c5»No, it is not. As I have said, it's
only on the surface that it seems like
piracy is hurting small markets, the
problems go deeper than that, and
«c2»piracy is only a symptom, not the
disease. «c5»If you cough a lot, you don't
usually give the patient something
against the cough and think that
solves the problem, do you? It is
wrong to lay the blame for the state
of the Amiga software market on the
door of the crackers. Ok, admittedly,
if some developers quit, stating
piracy as the reason why they do it,
it might certainly seem so, but those
developers are for one whining quite
more than is becoming, and on the
other hand, they can also be blind to
what the real problems are, just like
the general community, and place the
blame on the pirates because that is
the easiest and most convenient thing
to do. «c2»The problem is our small
userbase, «c5»and ofcourse it is easy to
say that piracy damages a lot when we
have that small a userbase, but see
beyond that, the people responsible
for the developers leaving are the
users who do not care to support
them, not the pirates who give the
choice to these users. On first sight,
this might seem like a weak point in
my argumentation, after all, that is
what the armsdealers are saying too,
they only give people the arms, what
they do with them is up to them. True
enough, but in the piracy case, it
would not matter whether they gave
them the cracks or not. If they
didn't, users would look for other
places (like the PC) were they could
get cracks, and just leave. Only if
there was no piracy in the whole
world, on any system, would they be
forced to actually buy the things they
use. This is an impossibility
ofcourse, but it is also undesirable
having no piracy, atleast for me. It
gives you more freedom, legal or not,
and prevents the developers from
controlling everything and setting the
prices (nowadays they have to stop
somewhere or people will just cease
buying their stuff, because they can
get it for free). The size of the
market has nothing to do with the
damage piracy does really, the casual
user, who does not want to buy
original stuff is to blame. If the
pirates who supply the casual user
with the stuff ceased to exist, that
casual user would stop supporting the
market at all, finding another market
where he could be allowed to be
casual. «c2»Thus, piracy HELPS the
community. «c5»I think my reasoing is
quite logical really, and hard to
argue against, but be my guest, do
try.«»
«»
«c4»"Maybe they could have continued to
develope Genetic Species if YOU had
bought the game..."«»
«»
"Stop complaining about poor quality
games when it all comes down to lack
of hardware from your side most of
the time anyway Buy games like
Foundation and all the others out
there"«»
«»
«c5»and«»
«»
«c4»"A program worth using is a program
worth buying. It is time that you
start registering all the unregistered
software you have on your computer,
starting to support the Amiga
commmunity"«»
«»
«c5»As stated earlier, this is some common
motion throughout the Amiga community
these days it seems. You have to
support those developers so that they
can make more games, people say. It
does not matter whether you like the
genre of the game, or indeed, whether
the game is utter crap or not, no you
just have to support them so that they
can make more games for the Amiga, and
so that it will seem like there's
actually some sort of life in the
Amiga. «c2»I say, only buy a game if you
like it, «c5»and not for any other reason,
unless you're very wealthy and do not
mind wasting money. Why support a game
that you do not like at all? It seems
quite absurd, and a desperate thing to
do. If there's not enough money and
talent left on the Amiga to produce a
good game, then so be it. Play on your
PC or buy some ports of good PC games
instead, some developers have seen
that this might be the way to go.
Afterall, PC games are generally
better. I mean, come on, everybody is
saying how good games Napalm and
Foundation are, but that's just
because there is no competition for
those games, if they had been PC
games, they would be quite mediocre
indeed. «c2»Don't glorify things just to
make it seem like things are going
well, be a little more realistic.
«c5»I play games a lot I can safely say,
and Amiga games nowadays are nothing
impressive that I would ever want to
buy. That might change, and I would
like to buy ports of my favourite
games to support that kind of thing,
but why buy crap (more or less, you
get my meaning) games for the Amiga
just to support the making of these
games, and desperately hoping to get
better games later on?«»
«»
«c4»"What are you going to do when there
are noone left? Leave the corpse of
the computer you killed and move on?"«»
«c5»Ehmmm.. Yes? ;) Most casual users have
done that a long time ago ofcourse.
But what «c2»Alvin «c5»implies here is that
you are killing the Amiga by using
cracked stuff. Well, I do not agree
ofcourse, atleast it is not the main
reason why the Amiga is/was dying.
Besides, there's some ambiguity here.
You are killing the Amiga, but you are
also helping it survive by staying, so
you will only help kill it if you
leave it, not before really.«»
«»
«c4»"It is easy to go out and proclaim a
witch-hunt on pirates; that is
probably not going to solve it"«»
«»
«c5»PROBABLY not? «c2»OFCOURSE «c5»it is not going
to stop the problems with developers
quitting, pirates have always been
made the scapegoats for any and all
perceived illnesses of the developers,
ofcourse there's some truth in this,
but reality is ceratinly not that
black and white as I have also written
about previously.«»
«»
And now to my final, provocative
statement. This is all about money to
some extent, developers need/want
money to continue making their
products, and everybody seems to think
that this is the way it should be, so
when some developers whine and moan
about piracy making them loose money
(although that isn't even true),
people feel sympathy for the poor,
hardworking developers. Fine enough,
but why should they get money at all?
Pirates don't usually get money out of
their cracks on the Amiga anymore,
they do it for fun and interest. WE do
not get money out of our scenework
either, I don't get paid per article,
we don't sell this diskmag for money,
we don't charge fees to watch our
demos, and we do not even want to get
money for it, yet we continue
producing our stuff for the enjoyment
of others. «c2»Why do utility/program
developers think that they should get
money for their work when we don't?
«c5»Are they more greedy than us? So, when
I see some developer whining about the
small amount of money he gets from his
work, I usually twist my mouth in a
sarcastic smile. The scene has developed
releases for free for almost 15 years,
never expecting money out of their
work (prizemoney doesn't really count,
does it?), and we have worked hours
upon hours each day without expecting
monetary repayment. So, smalltime
«c2»Amiga developers should just stop
their petty whining about piracy and
lack of money, and do it for free like
we do. «c5»Or what? :)«»
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