Minecraft Maker: Piracy is Not Theft

Soooo It's ok to pirate a copy of Minecraft or any other games released by 'Notch'?

Thanks!

I sort of agree with him. The game and movie industries love to think that every copy someone makes of their products is a lost sale, but in reality not everyone who copies a game would have bought it if they hadn't been able to copy it.

Absolutely it's not theft. And the figures of supposed sales lost are total bullshit. Potential sales are not sales.

People who pirate (as I used to) rarely play, let alone finish, the games they download. I'd I guarantee almost all would never have bought the game in the first place.

If I ever did happen to put a lot of time in a game I didn't pay for, I would go out and buy it. This is actually how I discovered MGS on the PS1, and I've bought every MGS since. I still do this with some DS games. Play a game on the R4, if it's good, buy it.
Also, this is how I discovered Mario64, quite late. I hadn't played much on the N64, I installed the emulator, played Mario64. So blown away, I bought the console and the game a week later.

Of course this is just my experience, but I'm sure I'm not alone in this. I think piracy negative effects are of little consequence to a games sales, and may even help them.

Actually, I think used game sales probably take more of a bite out of publishers pockets.

I've often bought 2nd hand games. Played them. Then sold them for about the same price a few weeks later (even more sometimes). I feel more bad for doing that than for piracy.

I've had a similar experience with piracy to ohms, when I was (a lot) younger I had a Acorn electron and then an Atari ST, both of which I had plenty of pirated games for but as I was so young I just saw them as free games.

When I started college and got my first PC, I started to swap games with friends as money was tight and there is no way I'd have been able to buy all the games I played. However considering these games were things like Doom, Sim City and GTA, all of which I have purchased sequels to since.

Nowadays I buy all my games new, even if I have to wait for the price to come down

The worst kind of piracy in my mind is when people sell pirated games as this is money that should be going to the dev's and this is a lost sale in my mind.

I know 2 people that download pirated games, one of them has a family of 3 and only one income, they can't afford to buy all their games new, although they still buy some so they download some.
The other believe it or not is a girl who isn't into gaming that much and just plays every now and then so doesn't want to pay for something she hardly uses.

I'm not saying either of these guys is doing the right thing but it's a lot better than we're being led to believe by most of the publishers.

Nope it's not theft. It's copyright infringement. They just want us to think it's theft. Doesn't make it right.

A big problem is he cost cost of games, it seems we all have had experiences pirating in the past, and I am pretty sure it would of boiled down to the cost of games as the first reason why we did it, I know that I found a lot of great games through piracy I would of never played or tried but I also know I pirated games that I would of bought if I could afford too.

It in no way justifies what I did, its illegal, and immoral, and I think what this guy is saying is just a play with grey areas, personally you are taking something without consent so that's theft? right? if I Steal a car surely there are more in the world? unless I take Doc Browns DeLorean, but if i travel in time to a point before i travel in time and get that DeLorean and then take both to a point in time before that Delorean left and so on i am in fact creating DeLoreans! err what was my point?

Anyhoo theft of tangible vs non tangible is still theft just its called copyright theft, and I think the crime is distribution or duplication not actually owning pirated material.

actually pretty sure "copyright theft" is something completely separate...but yeah, thats the "company line" we've been hearing from the content producers forever...

also, "of" is not and never will be an auxiliary verb..."have" or "'ve" is what you're looking for...

Utter bullshit. If you don't pay for something then you shouldn't be able to play it. It's not rocket science.

Just because digital media allows for infinite copies, it doesn't mean a free-for-all for thieves. The developers need to revenue from each sale to keep paying the bills and wages. If you take it for free, you're putting real people's livelihoods at stake.

The argument that people who steal wouldn't have paid anyway is ludicrous. It's like giving a free pardon to burglars. I find it appalling that some people can happily announce they're criminally robbing from decent hard working folks on forums like this without any comeback and in some cases applause.

Shame on you all.

I think "You couldn't make it up!" is also missing from your post.

No one is condoning taking money form developers. If someone downloads a game just because they can and never plays it, that is not a lost sale.
If it's all about stealing from devs then you should never ever buy a used game, which most definitely IS a lost sale to them.

This reminds me of when Crysis was released actually. They blamed poor sales on piracy, which was nonsense. The devs went around boasting for months about how the PC hadn't been invented yet that could run their game in full detail. When it came out, despite the good reviews, I for one completely ignored the game, as I know I didn't have a hope of playing it.

Ultimately, most of these problems will be 'mostly' solved by digital distribution, online updates and verification, etc. My copy of StarCraft II is most likely never going to get eBayed as it's tied into my Battlenet account. Same goes for anything bought on Steam. It is inevitable.

@ ohms

An unpaid-for download is a lost sale, played or not.

Agree that trade-ins only benefit the shop selling them, but they are a recycled sale, not a lost one.

Not that this is good for developers either of course, and I'm sure there will be a parade of dickhead who think "copying bought software and giving it to your mates is OK" will be along shortly.

@Spoon, I don't think anyone here is saying that it's ok to copy games and that it doesn't hurt development, what they are saying is that not everybody who does copy a game would have bought it if they didn't. Therefore 100,000 people with illegal copies does not mean 100,000 lost sales. It may be 100,000 potential lost sales, but in reality it would not be that figure.

You realize that's like saying the person who steals fruit from the greengrocer is OK because he never intended to buy any in the first place and anyway, he probably won't eat it?

It's a ridiculous argument. You can't argue "no intent of use" in cases of theft.

Hey SpoonMaster,

Your last point seems to be a little of the mark, what you said would be true if we had been talking of stealing boxed games from shops, however we aren't.

The closest thing I can come up with using your example would be:

If a person walked into greengrocer cloned a piece of fruit then walked out and threw it away, that wouldn't be a lost sale.

People are saying that they are doing this to see if they like the fruit, then going back and buying more if they liked it.

Again, as previously stated by everyone else, this doesn't justify that persons actions, just that some good could come from it, if at a later date that person went back and bought a palette load of that fruit.

In my mind the worst situation would be if that person then sold that cloned fruit in front of the greengrocer's for half the price! That would be a genuine lost sale!

However cloning the greengrocers fruit in the first is still wrong!

@Spoon. I'm not saying it's ok to copy a game at all. It is theft. It is wrong.

I'm say it's not OK for publishers to claim that every copy someone makes of their game is a lost sale. That's nonsense.

I don't want to get into an argument here, I think we all broadly agree.

I think my point is best described by this bit of whimsy - Just because it doesn't exist, that doesn't mean it's not real.

i think that amy 1 how says that they have never used a pirated game is a lier i all so think that i will get bigger with the fact that people buy download games. and most people want to try a game before they give £40 out on some thing that they are not going to enjoy. i think if every game had a good demo people would go and buy the game i want to get bulletstome on pc but im not going to pay £29.99 before iv played a little of it and yes i could go get the demo on my ps3 or 360 but it might not play the same as the pc version.
i also do not mind older gen stuff being coped as you do not buy new they are all ways second hand there for the developers are not making any money from them its people on e??y am??on making the money i would buy from town stores to keep them alive but they were the 1s the stopped selling them.