Lol, no wonder. Shame on pirates. Perhaps ban v2? @ Snaggleteeth: Just remember what goes round comes around. That's karma for you. If piracy is indeed as righteous as you make out to be, then you'll surely live a better life, as you seem to do piracy a lot. If you're wrong...
That's HILARIOUS! Hodapp with the mighty ban hammer making TA a safer place for people with intelligence.
The sad part is he's been back nearly 7 times now just to argue the point that piracy isn't stealing. Whatever helps you sleep at night I suppose...
Can't you permanently ban him by blocking his ip or something? or do you secretly love him for always spicing up piracy threads?
I guess the one problem I have is that this idea seems to imply that only one game is pirated. It seems to me that all games on the top 100 list get pirated. If anything that visibility makes them more likely to be pirated. If piracy ended today I don't think that the make up of the top 100 list would change. It would just make the sales barrier higher. Am I wrong in thinking that?
Check again. You can start here or here. This is antithetical to the purpose of your anti-piracy club. It is also a totally non-sensical view, which misrepresents the developer's position. I live in Japan. There is very little crime, however, one night the light on my bicycle was stolen. The next morning I went and bought a new one. I didn't do anything to try and get the light back or file a police report. Why? It wasn't because I didn't value my property, if there was a way to go back stop it from happening I would have done that, it was because I knew I couldn't do anything about it. Should I walk the streets at night for months, hoping to find someone stealing a bicycle light? Or is it more valuable for me to move on and buy a new $10 light? Does it help me in any way to get furious about it? What does anger change? And make no mistake, it's his lack of anger that you are hung up on. I'm not saying that people shouldn't try and find ways avoid piracy or work around piracy, or even stop it (so long as it doesn't negatively effect the consumer's rights), but I am saying that your attitude doesn't have a positive effect on the problem. And that you seem to be actively hurting, rather then supporting, developers.
I pirate from time to time. Not really with apps, but of TV shows on hule or what not. I hate pirating games. In all honesty it ruins gaming for me. When I got my first ds, I had nobgames for about 3 months until I got a job. Within about 6 months I had over 60 payed for games, and loved my ds with a firery passion. Then one day at work my friend showed me his ds, wich all on one card played music, movies, and stored a ton of games. I gave him $100, and two weeks later he handed me an R4, a 2GB minisd card, and a jump drive with something like 600 games. Next thing I know, I had every ds game at my finger tips. In the matter of about 2 months I stopped playing my ds. Somehow, having everything gave me nothing. I had more fun getting new games than playing them. When you spend your money on a game, if it's not that great, you make yourself like it because you spent good money on it. When it is free, you delete and move to the next. Soon, a game had to be 100% perfect IMO to even be playable. When I got my iPhone 3G, my friend jb it so it could be unlocked because I wanted tmobile. He also showed me how to get apps for free. I got somebat first, but soon realized how much better they are paid. They run better, no blacklisting, iTunes tells you when there are updates. I just started paying for apps. It's more rewarding know that you paid for an app, plus it makes it more fun for me when hunting for the next purchase as you have to really research to know what to get. The feeling of getting a new game is more exciting, and if it's kinda boring, you know it is the only new game you're gonna have for a while so better get used to it iPhone games are very convient. More affordable than any other system, and can be obtained at 1AMin the morning while sitting in the livingroom eith your shoes off. I work, and have my bank card verified in iTunes so I have no reason not to just buy a game. And I like it better this way. Makes my collection more valuable to me, and recieve a sense of contentedness from knowing I earned each game I play, and am supporting people who are hopefully making a living off something I would to be doing some day. That is piracy as it effects me. I'm not going to join some anti piracy club, but I'm not going to attempt to justify piracy either.
How pathetic. In a pirate's world we( the paying customer) are immoral if we refuse to buy games from developers who are ambivalent. These apps range from 1-10 dollars. If you would justify this behavior, you will justify anything. Perhaps stealing formula from an infant? Would you take an old man's dentures? Or perhaps your the kind of person who will stick a firecracker up a cat's a*s. Where is the line drawn? I imagine if it's convenient it's all good. If this were food I would listen to your justifications. These are games. How sad, this is greed in it's ugliest form.
If you look at the top grossing list for the holidays in the US, you'll notice the list was totally dominated by publishers and their brands. I believe that brand visibility goes beyond the core audience, and is therefore less influenced by piracy. Therefore, if indeed piracy ended today, you'd see the top 100 list change to be somewhat less dominated by brands, since less-known games with high production values would have a higher rate of making it to the Top Apps.
Are you responding to me? This response is a little childish. Interesting. I'm with you that brand visibility helps sales, but that doesn't seem like it would change how piracy effects all apps making the top 100 list. If piracy ended all sales would likely increase. Do you think that proportionately more pirates would buy from small developers? Or is it that you think that top publishers get pirated less? I think that is the only way that what you are talking about works. Right? Unless far more of the people pirating small dev games are converted to sales, then the list remains the same. Otherwise, then the barrier of entry would be even more difficult to surpass without piracy. If everyone's sales increase by X percent then the sales needed to break on the list increases by X percent.
Who cares? Very good games mostly get the deserved support. Look at Sword Of Fargoal. Swords & Poker, as a new example. Small dev but people love the game. Or Cartoon-Wars Gunner. If it means that stopped piracy won't affect the top 100 lists but devs actually GET the money they deserve for their apps and earn enough to make a living, who will care for lists?
That's exactly my belief: piracy hurts independent games more than branded titles. Whenever a small developer is building awareness of their new game, the only place to do it is on sites like TA. This is where the sales start, and this core crowd determines which games break to the top lists. Branded games are found by casual users via other means (pre-existing brand awareness, paid marketing with publisher resources etc.), but games from small developers depend on visibility on enthusiast sites. I believe that the enthusiast audience consists of proportionally more pirates than the casual audience (this should be self-evident). And I believe much of the core audience has converted to piracy over the year. If these enthusiast sites are the only way to build awareness, and the audience consists mostly of pirates, then we succeed in making thousands of people aware of an upcoming game but get no sales. Isn't that what, Fishlabs for example, has indicated with their numbers? In summary, if a game that's only visible on the enthusiast websites gets pirated at 95% rate on its launch week, what logical conclusion can you draw regarding the audience of the enthusiast websites? The situation isn't helped by sites such as Pocket Gamer running step-by-step instructions on how to jailbreak. It's short-sighted to assume that if you make piracy easier for your audience, the opportunity wouldn't convert a portion of the audience from buyer to pirate.
@Vovin: The same way you ask why should I give extra stuff to users who paid (bribe?) your users ask: Why should I give this dude money? I don't see anything wrong in going an extra mile and making everyone happy. Perhaps this is the key to my success. I have posted a link to a discussion on our forums about this. You can see that it clearly works. It will help you more to consider ideas that work against piracy, instead of justifying why you shouldn't do that. As for your good friend, try and develop an unbiased opinion. I also have good friends who are developers, but whenever they have an issue, I try to give them an objective advice. If it's their fault, I say it out loud. It will help them more than saying: "Don't worry my dear friend. You are the best. It's those pirates". Here is an advice for your good friend (technical one): He should have disabled the hiscore table for pirated copies, with a clear message. That should have converted a decent percentage of copies into sales. Last, but not least. Try not to get MAD. We are technical people and should think and act accordingly. Instead of flaming each other, we should work on technical solutions. I have posted valuable ideas and solution here. Everyone should do that. Everyone should post his/her solution against piracy. And start working up from there. @don_k: I shared an example that worked for me. You can see if that would somehow fit you. If not, use someone else's example. Everyone should post examples and solutions instead of flaming. @Frand: I was in Sweden 2 months ago. It looked to me like you nordic guys are pretty smart ... and make good cheese . You pull random numbers again and start discussing from there. Cost of living in Romania can sometimes exceed the cost of living in Finland. I pay 250 Euros rent (used to be 300). Gas is 1 Euro/liter. I have the same level of life here, like you have in Finland. And you can assume that I pay the same price you pay. When I was in Sweden, prices looked the same for me, like here in Romania. Some things were even cheaper. I need to make the same money you make in Finland to survive. Going a bit off-topic, I will tell you that the average salary figure here is highly biased. Around 40% of the population lives in the countryside from agriculture. It's a 99% percent barter economy which isn't accounted for. So yes, there are people living in the countryside making 200 Euros/month, but they don't spend a dime on anything. They produce all their food, cut down their own forest for firewood, etc. If someone would account what they produce, that average salary figure would skyrocket. A lot of people are considering to leave the country (myself included) for the simple reason that we pay more than people pay in Europe and we get less. The situation is exactly opposite of what you have in Finland. Perhaps you are the one who can make a living on less sales than I do.
thats really true. i have an acekard for my ds and now the only game i play sometimes is gta chinatown wars. i even didnt play final fantasy that much! i know its a legendary game but i just didnt enjoy it that much.i feel really annoyed at that.
