Imagine if everyone had that mentality. As a university student, i'll provide the first analogy that comes to mind. Let's apply your mentality to school. Only one student in any class would ever need to do any work, papers, tests, etc., as it would be perfectly ok for the rest to just copy his, regardless of he wants them to or not. Does the student get a lower grade because everyone else turned in his work? No (we're assuming the instructor is of the same mentality as you). But is it in any way fair for people to be rewarded for someone else"s effort? No way. In this analogy, the students represent the game developers and the instructor represents us, the gamers/consumers. Just as a teachers want original work from each student, so should us gamers want original work from each developer. Similar work covering the same theme is perfectly fine, but literally copy/pasting other people's work/files should never be tolerated by the consumer. Ever. Here's another analogy for you. Do you have a favorite musical artist/group? Imagine they just put out a new album, but they are still on the rise to stardom so not everyone knows who they are. Then CopyPasta Record Inc. comes in and copies the album, but puts different names and faces on the cover and starts selling it as original material. You ok with that? "But Armored Heroes is not a complete copy of Torchlight, so your analogy fails! Ha!" Ok, so simply imagine the CopyPasta album contains all the music from your favorite artist's album, but they scrubbed the vocals and dubbed in their own singer. You think they should be able to get away with selling such an album as original work? "But what about Wierd Al Yankovich? That's exactly what he does! Ha! Failed analogy again!" Wierd Al also pays for the liscence to use other artist's work, and always give credits to the original artist. He doesn't use the music of others and pretend it is his own, original work. In short, you guys who say "what does it matter?" simply aren't putting forth much consideration on the issue at all. If you can't think of any reasons why it matters, then you need to get those gears cranking and squeeze out a little critical thinking. You don't have to be a Runic fan boy to see the problem with what EGLS did. You don't even need to give a flying flip about Runic or Torchlight to see the problem. So falling back on the "you guys are just fan boys hating on this game" makes no impact on the issue at hand whatsoever.
Yes of course I would be pissed. But that's exactly the point, IM NOT RUNIC so honestly what reason do I have to care? I'm a consumer, if Pepsi rips off coke and puts out a copycat soda who cares, I enjoy soda!! I'm aware of the moral wrongness but I'm also putting it into perspective. It's not like we're talking about something drastic or terrible that hurts people. It's an iPhone game... @the poster with the long response and analogys- yes I agree with your points. But also to answer your questions of "if ____ copied ____ wouldn't you care?" the answer is NO!!! If my favorite musician gets copied why would I care??its not my record label! I'm simply trying to listen to music I like! My goal as a gamer is to play fun games. WHAT INVESTMENT DO I HAVE OTHER THAN THAT?! Perspective people, perspective. I it's a fun game, play it. If I stand to lose money in the process, then I'll care. It's not a big enough deal to call me callous or selfish because of this.
this is the problem with our society. We don't care the impact as long as we get what we want. The simple fact is that a company stole someone's work. If WE don't care, then what else is there, really? This might not affect you, it might not affect Runic financially... but it is RIGHT? Their unwillingness to admit fault, their shrugging it off and basically saying that all these things are causing them such horrible hardship... WE the consumer are the ones who can make change, who can put this stuff right. When someone steals from someone else, the easiest solution is to not support them. It's only with that lack of support, that boycotting, that allows us as a society to stand up and believe in something. This might be minimal for a lot of people, but it's down to simple fairness. What this company did was WRONG, plain and simple. They've not admitted even the slightest bit of wrongdoing. We as a people should stand up and say "Fine, if you're going to do that, we'll do this... not support you". So you'll have one less game to play, at least you'll know you stood up for something.
I can't speak for everyone and I don't claim to, but personally I'm against this because it's wrong. And like you said, I don't have anything to lose whether I support EGLS or not. I don't want to encourage this sort of thing to repeat in the future, so I choose to lose nothing by not supporting EGLS.
I def agree, behind every small deal is a bigger picture. It's just part of our society that greed and profit are the dominating reasons behind most if not all decisions. The only positive we can take away is that as consumers we get fun games to play.
I just don't see how a company like this can be trusted to not sell our login info , chat transcripts , gold outside the game, among other things.
Of what value is that to anyone but you? If you said you are afraid that they will sell your email address I would find it that a more reasonable fear, but the fact is that your email address has been sold and resold a thousand times already (and by folks that you would consider the be legitimate).
Lets dont make assumption that one bad act, must be followed by other bad things. A student who cheat during exam or copycat the work of others, doesnt mean he is a murder, drug dealer, etc
Your perspective is simply shortsighted. You think if such practice becomes acceptable by the target consumer, it won't hurt the game industry in the long run? You see how people on these forums alone will hold out buying a game if they think a price drop might happen. Used game trading and piracy already affect the industry as it is, imagine what would happen if any game could be copied and resold as original work. Hypothetically, many people would skip buying the next Call of Duty at full price when they can wait and snag the copy/paste job for half the price, if not free. In the end, it just wouldn't be very profitable to produce an original AAA game, so they would become few and far between. So yeah, the "I don't care as long as it's fun" stance is only good until the gaming industry tanks from the long term consequences of such a mentality. Luckily we have laws in place that prevent such a mentality from affecting the industry too much. Now just for clarity, to make sure we're on the same page, we're not talking about looking at someone's game and making a clone based off of it. We're talking about downloading someone else's game, opening it up, and taking the files out and putting them in your own game and then claiming all the work is original. That's the issue at hand.
Hi I just wanted to say, thanks for the entertainment. I enjoy popping in here to see the stupidity of those who defend EGLS' theft. It's as amusing as it is disconcerting. For all those here who are tired of the entitled ignorance of those who are OK with the theft, come join the Runic Games forums! I tend to find the discussions are better.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=234553237 This game is now on Greenlight trying to make its way on to Steam. From the screenshots in Greenlight, most if not all the stolen assets are still in there.
