Piracy - Were you responsible?

[Djay]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Interesting..... as that has absolutely nothing to do with me or Fairlight

it wasnt related to fairlight, it was from the thread where you revealed your career change

as you can see in the picture... was from 2003 so it was a long time ago

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Djay

it wasnt related to fairlight, it was from the thread where you revealed your career change

as you can see in the picture... was from 2003 so it was a long time ago

Aha, hahah

[wilshy]

I certainly had a lot of pirate games and very few originals. Like someone said earlier, the cracktros were often part of the experience with some of the classic MODs in the Amiga scene.

The key point here, which still holds true today, is would I have bought all those pirate games? Absolutely not. Would I have bought any of them? Maybe a few but being at school I didn't have any money so I'd have never been able to have bought them. Does that make it that I contributed to the downfall of software devs? Not saying it doesn't but I wouldn't have been able to support them anyway.

Nowadays, I only buy games. iOS games, even when my iPhone was jailbroken I bought any games I liked. I've supported more than anything a lot of the ex-Amiga devs producing games on iOS.

Music, I pretty much buy everything now which is a change from even a few years ago. But I've got about 3000-4000 records from my DJing days so I've spent massive amounts of money on music over the years.

[CritAnime]

when we had the C64 nothing was pirated. Cassets seemed to be cheap enough to buy and my parents would often wait for someone to sell a game off then buy it off them cheap. For the Amiga and PC we would aften do a half and half thing. If we could find the software cheap enough we would buy it legit. Otherwise it would be a trip to the local markets or carboots to see what knockoff's we could find.

Through the Playstation era mine was chipped. So I would often get games pirated, again, off carboot sales. However when I started to work I ended up buying more things legit and legal. Which has been the trend from that point onwards.

[Mark36]

I hold my hands up I did pirate copy games but it was pretty much the norm back in the late 80's especially at school swapping games with your mates. Like everybody else I did read the Zzap reviews and if a game reached 89% or more I would consider buying it.

Even in todays games for the 360 and ps3 I will only part with my cash if its worthy like a AAA title MW3 for example.

[DeafDaz]

Lets be honest, I think the piracy days are dead nowadays. I find myself with loads of legit software for my PS2. I am pretty sure the ADFs are considered pirate, given that I donot own the original games. But everything else PC/PS2 etc. are legit. what do u think?

[CritAnime]

I don't think it's dead. Given the amount of people you see with chipped or modded 360's, PS3's and Wii's. The PC side is still very active and you only have to go to a torrent search engine to see what is been uploaded. For every piece of tech to prevent piracy someone figures out how to get round it within a week.

[DeafDaz]

Yeah I see what u mean. I dont download torrents as I cant figure out how to use it anyway. I would have thoug with the digital age and the web piracy got harder.

[spyros_s]

all of it was copied...nowdays i own some original games though

[CritAnime]

it does get harder for them, speaking as someone who knows someone who downloads lots of pirated stuff, but you find someone comes along with a patch or hack in next to no time. I think as things start moving towards more cloud based solutions, such as onlive, it will eventually get to the point were it will be all but stamped out.

I remember when the dreamcast came out and they said the discs were all but impossible to copy. Then a day later someone worked out how to rip, burn and even made a bootloader for it. made me chuckle and also sad as it pretty much destroyed the system.

[DeafDaz]

and the rage agaisnt the 'system' goes on

[CritAnime]

lol

[arpz]

Had about 2000 disks at the end, knew what was going on but wasn't dialling BBS to get them. When I first got an A500 my Dad took a box of 10 disks to his mates house to get the latest and greatest, few hours of watching O's on X-Copy and they were full. 10 disks was clearly not going to be enough, and from that point we were buying them in 100's.

Fairlight, Skid Row, Crystal, Vision Factory are the names I remember with the most fondness, sometimes used to leave those cracktros playing just for the tunes

[gimbal]

Yeah. I was a kid and I was poor. My parents also didn't have too much spending money in them days with two kids to feed. I'd say 95% of what I had was pirated.

[CritAnime]

I had friends that had hundreds of disks full of stuff. especially on the C64 where it seemed you could fit loads of games on a single floppy.

[Ami_GFX]

I am one of the few who didn't pirate much back in the day, not so much due to high moral standards as lack of interest and opportunity. I was a lone Amigan in Mac and PC land. I bought my Amiga 2500 second hand in 1993 from the original owner and it came with Deluxe Paint IV, Imagine and all the original system software and disks. I found a couple of Amiga BBSs and the owner of one sold me his Digi-view Gold system which was a complete bundle consiting of the Digi-view dongle, Digi-view and Digi-Paint Software, camara and copy stand. From that point on, I used my A2500 as my first digital camara and took studio pictures of anyone and anything that would stand still long enough for the slow digitizer to capture their image. I was around 30 at the time and wasn't that interested in games. I later got legal copies of Photon paint and ImageFX and that was just about all the software I used at the time. These days I have more pirated software--abandonware--than back then but most of my collection consists of second hand legal copies bought on ebay for a fraction of the original cost.

[Vectra]

I didn't actually get an Amiga until quite late so by the time I finally got one I had tons of software to use it with.

I received the Amiga Magic Pack by Amiga Technologies when it came out for my birthday, I wanted an Amiga long before this and as a result I purchased any magazine with a full game or application and scoured my local stores for any sales.

I hit the jackpot when the Amiga became unpopular and I went into my local branch of Electronic Boutique. They had all the Amiga games brand new, boxed and unopened in a bargain bin for £1 each. I bought every single game they had in stock and went home to fire up the Miggy.

I also had a CD ROM on my Amiga and thanks to the magazines and PD compilations I had more software than I could possibly use.

[cosmicfrog]

Originally Posted by arpz

Had about 2000 disks at the end, knew what was going on but wasn't dialling BBS to get them. When I first got an A500 my Dad took a box of 10 disks to his mates house to get the latest and greatest, few hours of watching O's on X-Copy and they were full. 10 disks was clearly not going to be enough, and from that point we were buying them in 100's.

Fairlight, Skid Row, Crystal, Vision Factory are the names I remember with the most fondness, sometimes used to leave those cracktros playing just for the tunes

ahh sounds just like the way I was back when, the ribbiting memories of happy dayz and the boings echoing into the night ...

I think it comes down to money, if you can`t afford to buy the software then you could`t buy it in the first place so you were not depriving them of a sale, if anything you were advertising there product for them so if some one else with the cash saw it and liked it they would probably buy it.

[arpz]

Originally Posted by cosmicfrog

ahh sounds just like the way I was back when, the ribbiting memories of happy dayz and the boings echoing into the night ...

I think it comes down to money, if you can`t afford to buy the software then you could`t buy it in the first place so you were not depriving them of a sale, if anything you were advertising there product for them so if some one else with the cash saw it and liked it they would probably buy it.

For sure, I don't know that we were too poor to buy the software but certainly could never have amassed such a quantity. It was important back then to 'keep quiet' about the copies, apparently. Of course when a friend came round it was obvious, but it wasn't to be talked about in school. Nowadays this is completely different, everyone is pirating it seems, no one bats an eyelid about downloading some camrip or whatever.

Nothing I liked more than waking up in the morning after my Dad had been to the guys house and seeing a stack of disks by the miggy, going through them at a rate of knots trying to play them all briefly before school, that's the only negative thing about the whole experience, my friends can all list a lot of games they've completed... I never beat many games - there were so many that getting stuck on one just prompted loading another

[danwood]

I am one of the few people who rarely used pirate software!
I have about 200 original amiga games about half of them still in their original boxes!

[Photon]

Guilty as charged.

[Obliterator]

I had loads of copied and cracked games for my Amiga back in the late 80s and early 90s most were from mates at school and i did own few original ones i got from the local computer store but not a lot

[Titler]

Half and half for me; partly because my single parent family was dirt poor indeed, and even when I started getting paper-round money in, looking back, the games (and the new generation of music on CD) was so ridiculously expensive the only way I could even open the door to gaming was through second hand computers and consoles... which came with a huge selection of games that other people had copied.

This was how I gamed all the way until 2001, long past the Playstation era I could never hope to join, on a second hand Amiga, and cheap a Sega Master System console because I'd had one at home, and the prices for cartridges were reasonable that late in it's life. But it didn't have to be that way; when I started on the Commodore C-16 a generation earlier, I'd often buy those lovely budget Mastertronic titles at £1.99. Even the most expensive games came in at £7.99 or so... but the 16 bit generation seem to try to get away with nearly tripling the price, and even today, I'd be surprised to pay more than £17.99 for a new PC game from Play.com for instance... consoles of course being another matter.

And that's why I'm not ashamed of the piracy I did do; when removed from restraint, business and the computer gaming business in particular has shown no remorse about gouging the consumer monstrously. Current first gen console prices remain ridiculous, and the amount of shovelware PC manufacturers get away with (It'll be patched after release! Maybe!) is outrageous. People pushing the balance back the other way to the extreme balances out the total experience for the consumer.

Oddly though I don't tend to pirate many new releases on PC today, but that's because I don't need too... there's so much awesome content online and free to download. Music however, I rip that off as much as possible, except in case like bands on Alternative Tentacles and other small networks, who need that money as much as anyone.

[Photon]

Remember that PC numbers are so much greater an audience than Amiga had. So piracy or no, still millions of games per publisher get sold. A big hit on the Amiga could sell perhaps in the tens of thousands. You can't slag off PC games if you don't buy any, though.

I do think PC games are high-budget tech bonanzas with too much money spent on media production and less on creativity and even less on gameplay. Since 2003 the future for mainstream was staked out as "same higher-res 3D crap with different voice actors" on PC, and multiplayer modes to let players provide the incentive to play they couldn't.

This is not to say the Amiga only had unique and lovely games of course Most of them were dogs, in fact. But I do think the rug was pulled out from under the devs who'd spend over a year on an Amiga game with a staff of 5 and who did make some new kinds of games with real depth starting around 1990-1992. Consoles were timed perfectly to kill that momentum. With high prices and super high piracy...

Too high prices is a shame. It's the console game prices that are the real ripoff prices, japs are laughing all the way to the bank since 1985...

[Titler]

Originally Posted by Photon

Remember that PC numbers are so much greater an audience than Amiga had. So piracy or no, still millions of games per publisher get sold. A big hit on the Amiga could sell perhaps in the tens of thousands. You can't slag off PC games if you don't buy any, though.

Of course I can, due to one simple word; "Demos". Any big budget title is likely to give a sampler, and it's rare these days that I see anything new really worth bothering with. I didn't play Duke Nukem Forever. But I DID play the Demo... why do you think I didn't buy it?!

Or you can read up on my travails with the modern version of Speedball 2 here on these forums; thanks to a well known bug, I couldn't even start that game!

But anyway, two more words; Social Networks, which mean that my opportunities to get "buzz", or actual demos, or even discounts on full games from friend recommendations... that's if you can find time amongst all the Zynga time wasters and small community releases (DEFCON: Everybody Dies was the last one I bought I think, although I've been using Crayon Physics alot again recently)... We're drowning in software these days!

Also when I say "Buy games", the PC market itself has moved away from Bricks and Mortar boxed model. A huge chunk of my PC gaming time was spent on MMOs last and this decade; constant new content, social interaction (real life too, for better and worse). And they in turn have moved to the F2P model. Or think about digital distribution; the last full price game I bought was the Valve Complete pack on sale last New Year, for £25, but which gave an ungodly amount of entertainment.

Now add to that modding for even further content; My map for Warhammer: Dawn Of War Dark Crusade back in the day got distributed on a special page for purchasers of the game in Poland, of all places... but I spent 2 months polishing and testing it too. Add in emulation (see here!) and much of the real exciting content comes not from wandering into Game and purchasing Shooter Guy 2011, but from sitting at home and simply letting it come to you...

But anyway, yes the real over charging is on Consoles, and which is why they do their damnedest to lock the user out of accessing the wider benefits of the operating system... lest the plethora of PC benefits become apparent too.

[deicidal]

Seems like we are not the only pirates

http://torrentfreak.com/copyright-co...mpaign-111201/

[dug26]

i know it was wrong but one of the best memories i have of my dad was him taking me to the barrowlands in glasgow one weekend a month and getting all my pocketmoney spent on copied amiga games, the worst of it was when i got home i would find that about 30% of the games i paid a whole 50p a disk for didnt work! the worst one was that fighting game i forget its name now that was on 10 disks and never ran i was gutted! the rest of my games were bought for me so were originals. the only one i actually bought myself was birds of prey and i loved that. My first pirated game was frontier, it took me about 3 weeks to learn how to play it properly lol

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by dug26

i know it was wrong but one of the best memories i have of my dad was him taking me to the barrowlands in glasgow one weekend a month and getting all my pocketmoney spent on copied amiga games, the worst of it was when i got home i would find that about 30% of the games i paid a whole 50p a disk for didnt work! the worst one was that fighting game i forget its name now that was on 10 disks and never ran i was gutted! the rest of my games were bought for me so were originals. the only one i actually bought myself was birds of prey and i loved that. My first pirated game was frontier, it took me about 3 weeks to learn how to play it properly lol

Rise of the Robots? You missed nothing by not being able to 'play' it, it was shite!

http://hol.abime.net/1243

[Photon]

Titler, yep, for sure. I've thought about buying several games on Steam but bailed since they were 59 EUR and didn't have a demo version. Trying games in the computer store was also a very, very good idea but I think it ended because droves of rowdy teenagers would drop by each day after school and play until closing.

[ufo]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Ahem

Major LOL's

[dug26]

lol yea galahad thats the one !

[amiga_Forever]

I'd be smart enough not to admitt it on a forum

[Mnemesi]

I freely copied both in my C64 and Amiga days, and it's continued to this day. I had this compulsive-obsessive curator streak in me, and I liked to collect everything I could and preserve it - I honestly rarely played what I collected, and shared whatever I had on request. I'm very ardent about the evils of charging for someone else's work, but decidedly slack when it comes to my own personal responsibility to support other people's creative endeavors. In my defense, I've always been extremely poor. I'm not sure if my attitude would change if I had disposable income or not, though. I'd like to think it would.

[Pyromania]

I only pirated one title.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRGIww533Y4

[Pyromania]

Originally Posted by deicidal

Seems like we are not the only pirates

http://torrentfreak.com/copyright-co...mpaign-111201/

LOL!

I hope the artist gets compensation for his hard work.

[diablothe2nd]

When my Amiga 600 was presented to me as a gift it came with several disk boxes full of pirated games. I had a few originals that came with the unit... I was fully aware they were illegal also even at the age of 10. The simple matter of not having originals was down to budget. I wish i could have bought them. fact is i received the comic relief version of sleepwalker for a later birthday and only bought one game myself: Worms.

I played the worms demo to death and eagerly awaited it's release. because of my low pocket money at the time (had to sacrifice some so my mum could afford the amiga) it took me 6 months of saving to buy it... but what a joyus day the one and only game i bought myself (aside from the magazine purchases) was probably the best. I played it the most because for one i loved the game, and 2 i had to sacrifice so much to get it, so it was worth more to me. It was that day that i realised how rewarding it is/was to support the developers.

a few years back everything I owned was pirated. but I got a decent paying job, discovered steam, and the rest as they say is history. I do still pirate games to this day, to see if they are worth the money but dont have a demo, but this is rare. I usually wait for steam to put it on sale

the only games i will outright pirate and NEVER pay for on principle are games published by EA after having numerous Origin account hacks and piss poor service from them to resolve.

[Akira]

In Argentina there was no choice: commercial software was NOT available, until well into the 2000s. So it was that or nothing.
The bad thing is that it was full of lamers, all shops distributed the software but not for free, they would charge you for copying the stuff...

The little original software I had came from Germany from family that would bring it over on their visits.

[Patarival]

Same thing here. I really and honestly wasn't even aware that you are supposed to BUY games. You simply coudn't find them anywhere - and I live in Central Europe.

I try to redeem myself now by buying every game I liked.

[moxavius]

Software costs money?

[Photon]

Originally Posted by amiga_Forever

I'd be smart enough not to admitt it on a forum

Haha, omg Pst... they're not watching anymore!