Piracy - Were you responsible?

[Rob 1]

I wish they would have halved the price of new games, £25 for a new game was too much, so there's no surprise illegal copies spread like wildfire.

If they'd have been a £10 each, I'd have brought more than twice the amount, by the time the came out as a budget it was too late.

Commodore should have done more to prevent it, at least as a Playstation owner you had to get it chipped or had a piece of hard ware to allow you to do it.

I wonder how the game development might have improved if there was less piracy involved?

[Apollo]

I must admit: 98% of my almost countless disks were pirated games. Copying stuff was so easy those days. There were at least 2-3 boys in the neighbourhood having pirated games. When I grew older in the 90s I felt guilty for the demise of my beloved Amiga. Being a member of the Demo-Scene from '89-'94 I had so many great memories with this computer and I did "my best" to disallow this system a future.

I put a fair amount of money into hardware but almost none went into games/applications (and had almost no luck with my bought games like Barbarian/Psygnosis or Amiga Karate). I'm still proud of my bought copy of Maxon Cinema.

[moijk]

Being a young boy without any allowance back then made new stuff only appear around xmas and birthdays.

The stores had very limited selection and the prices were out of range.

So I would say my collection were 50% pirated, 30% coverdisks and 20% originals. If a magazine said "full version", and it was a piece of software I was interested in - I bought it. However, the complete lack of manual made using it rather difficult. My AMOS skills never peaked, to say the least.

However, when traveling far I came across stores with budget titles which was more in my range. But frankly they was quite annoying at times. It was a car game which relied on a city map - which didn't come with my budget release (was either not with or not supplied from the store). So I had to map it out myself which was pretty futile since it was hard to judge distances. Could have been such a fun game if I just had that damn map.

So I doubt I would have bought more if I didn't pirate. Because if I had money, they'll would be used on Amiga-related stuff like magazines, peripherals or original games anyways.

[s2325]

Source of most pirated games in Poland:

[Zoltar]

Just about everybody I knew locally, that had an Amiga or ST had copied games making up their entire collections. I'm amazed the game companies actually made any money at all.

SJ

[JonSick]

I did and didn't.

My problem was, I'm not a gamer. I'm useless at them, always have been. So if I can't put God-mode on, I lose interest really very quickly. Example, I've never been able to get the trainers for Crysis 2 working for me. Thus, despite trying for at least 45 minutes to get anywhere, I got frustrated and gave up.

Mainly as I have a lot going on. I'm studying, I do music and enjoy programming and, when it comes to games, I enjoy the storyline and the semantics of it, like the sound effects, the visuals, I guess more the arty side, rather than trying to beat a robot with missiles.

So even with the Amiga days, my #1 motivation was simply the cracktro trainers!

However, games like Worms, Monkey Island where cheating wasn't necessary, I did own the originals of. I think I had about 140 boxed games and I only know that simply as I ebayed them a few years ago. Still though, I did have four large disk boxes of copies.

Being a musician and developer, I am very much against piracy. Mainly due to my own experience, I've seen the damage it actually DOES cause first-hand! Such is the case of a local band to me who, despite selling out most of their gigs and shifting about 8,000 of their independent disk, the fact that their second album was just torrented like buggery and thus they couldn't show viable financial evidence to an interested label (a massive break for them), their contract fell through and so did the band.

But anyway... yes I did and no I absolutely do not anymore!

[mmace]

I was 13 when we got the Amiga, I had no money so just about everything was pirated, as I got older, the Amiga started dying, I ended up buying everythign to support the last developers, I spent hundreds if not thousands on DTP, word processors, games etc. I eve bought stuff I didn't want to play, like Myst and Quake, just because they still developed them for a dying platform and I wanted to show support for them. I do the same now with anyone that released apps/games on Android over iOS

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by mmace

I was 13 when we got the Amiga, I had no money so just about everything was pirated, as I got older, the Amiga started dying, I ended up buying everythign to support the last developers, I spent hundreds if not thousands on DTP, word processors, games etc. I eve bought stuff I didn't want to play, like Myst and Quake, just because they still developed them for a dying platform and I wanted to show support for them. I do the same now with anyone that released apps/games on Android over iOS

Lol I've done the same. Now I'm left with items that need shifting. Credit where credit is due. I know I'd be just as annoyed as the funny comments left by developers for those who crack their games.

[imigger]

I was 1 that pirated on a large scale ,im very well known for supplying the Swindon crew amiga games .
but what goes around comes around im also a musician and when mp3.com started I have my own songs on there and when it shut somebody stole 1 of my tracks it got into the top 10 , and the disc I had the proof on lost its data back then it didn't last long on them gold crap cd,s and 1 times burners lol, so basically I made a lot of money but I also lost a huge record deal oops.

let that be a lesson too you all .

[Mark Wright]

A few random thoughts and memories, so please forgive the tedious waffle :-)

I wonder if this sort of person still exists (I guess they must)...

Did you ever encounter someone (probably a school colleague) who was thought of as a "computer wizzkid" by friends and/or family, all because their claims of being able to "crack" games was taken at face value? And all the while, they were labouring under the misapprehension that having the ability to use Marauder to copy an already deprotected disk made them some kind of futuristic hacker? And they were happy to bask in their ignorant friends' moronic glory? Grr.

It used to infuriate me, when little Johhny's mum was so proud that her supposed wunderkind's apparent high-tech skills had saved her £24.99 through his (and *his alone*) liberating of Rolling Thunder (or what-not). Knowing better, I can remember bristling at overheard conversations of schooltits claiming to have "stayed up all night to rip off a game" - meaning, you know no better so what's the harm of me claiming all the credit for furnishing you with this copy of a copy that took all of three minutes on X-Copy (brrrrrr!). Grr.

Anyway.

Greedy schoolyard swapping and the bizarre associated grabs for glory always annoyed me as I was never really a gamer during my Amiga years. Actually, what led me to getting my first A500 in late 1988 was my astonishment at, and fascination with, all of the cracker intros and demos I'd seen courtesy of my best mate (who had an ST through most of 1987 and got an Amiga at some point during mid 1988). I had detected the existence of a subculture at work, and I was hooked!

Of course, the only way to get my fix (at least initially) of these baffling and bewitching displays of anarchic art was to trawl for cracked games - anywhere and everywhere, by any means necessary! Before long, PD companies started advertising collections of demos in magazines - many of the disks containing executables and bootblocks pulled directly from cracked games - but that was a time-consuming, costly and above all lame means of feeding my addiction.

So, the upshot: I had POSSO boxes filled with "games" - based purely on inconsequential things like the fact I admired the cracker intro; I enjoyed the high-score music; I thought the copper list of a particular sky-scape was well-defined; I was curious what would be the "next big thing" and so on. I rarely ventured past the title screen of 99% of all of my "pirated" games.

In time, I found my way into several groups of "dubious repute" (mostly on the demo side) but having a constant flow of "new stuff" meant my collection quickly snowballed.

I suppose, all told, the "street value" of the nefarious disks in my posession might have been in the thousands of pounds, and should FAST or whoever have come calling, it would've been hard for me to deny that they were mine. Thing is, I'd never have bought the legit version of a single *one* of those titles (scrawled in permanent marker). I'd have bulk-erased the lot in the blink of an eye, with no regrets. In financial terms, to me, they were *worthless*. Indeed, 99% of the disks (and labels) were probably on their sixth or seventh use, old items of passing interest ruthlessly desecrated to make way for new.

After all that, I'm not sure what point I'm making - I know I was far from alone in having easily-accessible yet technically illegal (and barely used items) in my posession back then, but I wonder what the divide was? For every game cracked and spread, I imagine the pirated shelf-life for a poor title would have been measured in minutes, compared to the weeks of shelf-life before the bad magazine reviews hit the news-stands. So, maybe the point I'm making is - does any of this matter anyway?!

:-)

[lilalurl]

Originally Posted by Mark Wright

I wonder if this sort of person still exists (I guess they must)...

[...]

It used to infuriate me, when little Johhny's mum was so proud that her supposed wunderkind's apparent high-tech skills had saved her £24.99 through his (and *his alone*) liberating of Rolling Thunder (or what-not). Knowing better, I can remember bristling at overheard conversations of schooltits claiming to have "stayed up all night to rip off a game" - meaning, you know no better so what's the harm of me claiming all the credit for furnishing you with this copy of a copy that took all of three minutes on X-Copy (brrrrrr!). Grr.

Such parents should be jailed. You can still hear such speeches nowadays. Perhaps less about computers and more about smartphones. Obviously, when the kid spend 10 hours-a-day on his phone and most of his friends do the same, he will probably be better that the average guy (although if you take them out of there usual applications they are a bit clueless from what I witnessed).


As in most domains I guess that people with enough knowledge will know the limits of their skills and knowledge and therefore have a natural form of humility. The braggarts on the other hand...

[Nostromo]

I used to purchase copied games from Germany, from a guy called Kevin Marquardt who was part of Fairlight (I guess), as he responded after I sent a letter to a PO Box on some cracktro. I think this went on for a few years, he would send me lists, then I would send him German marks well hidden inside an envelope

Those were the days... Needless to say many floppies arrived with bad sectors so I had to send them back

Originally Posted by lilalurl

Such parents should be jailed. You can still hear such speeches nowadays. Perhaps less about computers and more about smartphones. Obviously, when the kid spend 10 hours-a-day on his phone and most of his friends do the same, he will probably be better that the average guy (although if you take them out of there usual applications they are a bit clueless from what I witnessed).


As in most domains I guess that people with enough knowledge will know the limits of their skills and knowledge and therefore have a natural form of humility. The braggarts on the other hand...

Heh, a few days ago, while watching my son at footie I overheard two mothers talking about the DS, PSP and Vita. One was saying how "she got screwed over" when her sibling accidentally upgraded the DS's firmware and here R4 card stopped working. Then the other one warned her not to buy a Vita because you will have to BUY games for it, but if you buy a PSP on ebay it will come preloaded with hundred games.

[danwood]

I think i have already posted in this thread :P

I have always been a gamer ever since i was a kid. I never pirated and i only had a few pirated copies of games which people gave me.

I used to do my paper round and when i got older some of my wages every 2 weeks /once a month i would buy a new game from the shops. I did that until amiga games stopped being stocked in the shops in my town in 1999.

i still have all my games though some of the boxes have been disposed of to save space.

i got this laptop in 2007. until then my amiga 1200 was in everyday use :P

Originally Posted by Gordon

I have never bought a copy EVER but have made copies of games that friends had bought, for my own personal use.

me too i remember buying Capitol Punishment after reading the review in Amiga Plus mag. some games what my mates had i would copy.I also bought Monkey Island new because you needed the code disc and without it the game was useless

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by hardsequencer

me too i remember buying Capitol Punishment after reading the review in Amiga Plus mag. some games what my mates had i would copy.I also bought Monkey Island new because you needed the code disc and without it the game was useless

I had a cracked version on Monkey Island but I had no idea how to play it so I used discs for my Deluxe Paint work! Needless to say when I was a little older I bought the same game (including the special edition versions) and completed it... now it's one of my favourite games of all time!

[Devlin]

I had a lot of pirated games but about equally as many originals. I never pirated myself, apart from a few failed attempts to copy certain games.

[mrbob2]

I got most of my pirated games from school. When i left i had no choice but to buy them which wasnt a big deal, sensible world of soccer, captital punishment, breathless, alien breed 3d II mortal kombat 2, all were great games and i was happy to have the originals.

The thing is with piracy as its hard to say if it really has an effect, for example.

There is 1 game i would like to own. So on my mind im thinking of maybe one day buying it, or maybe not.

My friend gives me a games list and i see he has 20 games i dont have. So i give him 20 blank disks and say copy all 20.

Out of these games, 19 im not bothered about and 1 is great. So if it wasnt for my friend with the list, i would only have purchased that 1 good game i originally wanted.

So the game company has "potentially" missed 1 sale.

Yeah of course, 1 sale X 100000 people is a lot of "missed money" but thats the way of the world.

There has always been piracy, for me with the spectrum ever since twin tape decks were available but you cant say, if every purchased speccy games and there was no pircacy the spectrum would still be going today.

Ironically, 99% of my spectrum games were originals. At £1.99, even in 1984, that was cheap.

The average wage per hour was around £3 in the 80s. So you could buy 1 game out of the £30 a day wages quite easily.

Nowadays we get around £7 an hour, earn £40 a day and the average game price (playstation 4) is £48!

[Mrs Beanbag]

Yeah most of the stuff I had was pirated, I'm not proud of that and I won't try to justify it.

I used to go to "computer club" every Saturday with my dad and my brother and it was just 20 Amigas and Atari STs in a room running X-copy. Nobody there was interested in anything else. I didn't get any pocket money so the only way to legitimately get software was to wait for birthdays and Christmas, and my dad wasn't very discerning, he'd buy pretty much any rubbish based on what it said on the box, or a budget title picked seemingly at random, or something out of the bargain bin at Macro.

I had AMOS and AMOS 3D and AMOSPro originals, for which I needed the manual anyway for them to be any use (my dad understood that although he got into trouble with my mum for buying me AMOSPro when it wasn't my birthday!)

[pottyboy]

Most of our games were pirated. Quite often my dad would come home with a bunch of floppies with games on, or he would borrow some games off his mates at work and copy them using good ol' X-Copy!

Me and my brother were quite young then, and therefore couldn't afford to buy many Amiga games.

Saying that, we did have quite a lot of originals too. In fact, there's a few of them that make me feel glad we never pirated them. Disposable Hero is one of my favourite shoot'em-ups ever, and Aladdin is a great port of the already excellent megadrive original. Shame the Amiga port of Lion King (which I also own an original copy of) was crap.

So all in all, I'd say almost half and half, but not quite.

[AquilaFelice]

When I was young (13 in 1989) a decent PC game would cost me a years worth of allowance money. I researched games weeks in advance before buying one. Bought F-19, Battle of Britain, Silent Service 2, Loom and Leisure Suits Larry boxed games in that era. These are still standing proudly on my shelf and get some playtime every year.

But those days most of my games and apps were acquired at computer clubs or traded with friends at game parties (later LAN parties).

But now I use Steam, Spotify, Netflix and other legal means to feed my data addictions I even started buying old Boxed Amiga games via eBay... My wife thinks I am nuts