nickie on 25/9/2008 at 21:18
Well if it's any help Xenith, I never know what anyone's talking about. And if I'm really teed off, I find that effing says it but doesn't.
@ Neb - my Sold Out copies do need the discs, and yours don't? Strange.
Neb on 25/9/2008 at 21:41
Quote Posted by nickie
@ Neb - my Sold Out copies do need the discs, and yours don't? Strange.
My SoS copy of TMA on its own needs the disk to run, but the double pack with both TDP and TMA on a single DVD disk doesn't.
Is yours the double?
kamyk on 25/9/2008 at 21:44
Umm, I think you are overlooking two serious points here.
The price of games is so high partly because people pirate them so much, and how about the satisfaction of supporting the people who made the game? Do you think LGS would have made Thief2 if no one bought Thief1 cuz it was cheaper to steal it?
Software developers have lives that need paid for too you know. So do musicians, actors, etc, etc. And yes actors and musicians (popular ones) make outrageous money, but you wouldn't be listening to them, or seeing thier movies if they didn't get paid at all. Much less playing games, as the average game programmer gets a hell of a lot less than an actor or band. See, that's thier day job. You know, that thing they do each day that they get out of bed, drink coffee, drudge thru the day, and pay thier bills with.
Now, I'm not on some high horse here. I sometimes do the "try before buy" that was mentioned in a previous post. But if I like the game or cd, I go buy it. Not so I can necessarily have a pretty box or bragging rights, more so the people who made what I am enjoying get paid for thier hard work, and are encouraged to continue to do it. Would you go to work if you didn't get paid? Even if it was something creative, you loved to do? No. because you'd have to get a paying job to survive on.
Speaking from experience here, as I am a starving artist/musician/modder with a day job.
Xenith on 25/9/2008 at 21:58
Quote:
The price of games is so high partly because people pirate them so much
so if everyone started receiving cigars for free from some guy, the prices in stores for all cigars would go way up... yeah...
As for everything else, about developers, sure they should get cash, I wouldn't mind giving them in fact, but not that much for a game, come on. I'm saying again, gaming industry is not as developed here as it is in other countries, that's why the prices are so off. The guys that are making a living selling games should realise they is only this much they can ask for a game until it becomes outrageous.
kamyk on 25/9/2008 at 22:06
Quote Posted by Xenith
so if everyone started receiving cigars for free from some guy, the prices in stores for all cigars would go way up... yeah...
Hmm, if someone gave away hundred of thousands of a
particular brand of cigars/cigarettes?
Tobbaco is a flawed example, as we aren't talking about the impact of say a game or two on the whole gaming industry, and tobbaco isn't something that is unique to each brand. I am a smoker. If I can't get my brand, that doesn't stop me from smoking. It is more like an example of will stealing bananas have an impact on the price of tomatos. No, it won't, but if tons of bananas were stolen, the price of bananas would go up.
We are talking about the impact of stealing a game/music from a specific company/artist on that specific company/artist, and the impact of thousands of games/music being stolen from thousands of companies/artists.
Do I support peer to peer? Yes I do. Do I support widescale theft on a massive scale? No I do not.
Xenith on 25/9/2008 at 22:18
I said it before, I don't support piracy and I know what influences it has, but at the same time from where I'm standing it's a considerable choice and a very charming one.
Bjossi on 25/9/2008 at 22:24
Quote Posted by Bikerdude
The way I see it, if I have paid my hard earned money I will do what I bloody well please with the game. :mad:
Every game I own has a no cd crak installed.. why?
so I DONT have to keep digging out the bloody disc,
so I DONT have to wait for the drive to spin up,
so I DONT have to hear the noise of the drive interfering with my gameplay
and finally so I can keep the disc in mint condition.
biker
135% agreed.
I buy all my games, but I avoid DRM (which stands for 'Disgusting and Ridiculous Malware', by the way) whenever I can. No need to put the CD into the drive to play, unlimited activations on a game with limited activations, better in-game stability and even performance, and I can go on and on.
All of this makes my legal purchase of the games actually worthwhile.
Queue on 26/9/2008 at 13:55
Does the surreality of this strike anyone else: a debate about "stealing" a game based on stealing.
I'm of the mind-set that if any medium is out-of-print, especially if the company or individual that created the property no longer exists, then I see nothing wrong with it immediately becoming part of the public domain. Whether that truly should happen or not is debatable, but public domain has prevented the complete lose of many intellectual properties--like those wonderful Old-Time Radio Shows.
My question is, is Eidos still releasing copies of DP and MA? If not, then where are the stocks of games coming from that are being sold as "ORIGINAL NEW-SEALED" copies on Ebay? If Eidos is not releasing the games, then it would be safe to assume that the copies available are nothing more than left-over stock that has been bought up by clearance companies--thus DP and MA could be considered AbandonWare (which, to me at least, if it's abandoned it should be in the public domain).
van HellSing on 26/9/2008 at 21:31
Wow, it's like every single word of that post is wrong, starting with "EDIOS", whatever that is.
Thief is still being sold. Not the original edition, not by Eidos directly, but companies such as Sold Out Software etc. However, these these companies pay license fees to Eidos, thus those releases are legitimate, and by buying them you do indirectly help Eidos.
Rekrul on 24/12/2008 at 22:32
My copies of Thief Gold and Thief II don't require any "crack" to play entirely from the hard drive. By default they look to the CDs to play the movies, but I just need to copy a few files and edit the config file to change that.
As far as piracy goes, "No-CD" patches aren't legal because they enable people to make working installs of games that they otherwise wouldn't be able to play (because their copied discs would fail the CD check).
The copies of Thief & Thief 2 that the above method works on, have no protection on the CDs, so there's nothing to keep people from just copying the discs with any burning program. Discussing how to run some copies without the CD isn't going to enable any additional piracy of these games because anyone who wants to pirate them from a friend will just copy the discs. And if they can't copy the discs, the file copy and config edit method won't help them make a working pirate copy.
In regard to piracy...
I have a lot of originals that I bought either used or at a local closeout store (back when they actually stocked software that wasn't crap), but I also have some pirated games that were hard to find, or ridiculously expensive (what's The Kilrathi Saga going for these days? $150?)
The thing I really hate is how companies virtually dis-own games after a couple years. I have a copy of Red Faction sitting here that I've been itching to play. Unfortunately, it doesn't work on my system. 1-2 minutes after starting the game, it goes off into limbo and won't respond to the keyboard or mouse buttons (but it does respond to mouse movement!). When I emailed the tech support address, all they could suggest was the standard "Update your drivers..." I know the disc is good because I installed it on someone else's system and it worked perfectly. Net searches only turn up someone else reporting the same problem, but no solutions.
My copy of P.O.D won't run at all. Test Drive 5(?) runs, but all the cars are invisible except for their wheels and the graphics are screwed up. I'll have to spend time playing musical Nvidia drivers to see if an older one fixes that problem. Activision's Spider-Man can't be finished on modern systems without cheating because there's a bug in one of the cutscenes. Activision knew about it, but never released a patch to fix it (or any of the other bugs I encountered)
Look at the Looking Glass games. Sure, some companies are still selling copies of them, but what has Eidos or any other company done to fix the numerous compatibility problems these games have on newer systems? If it wasn't for the dedicated fans that refuse to let these games die, you wouldn't be able to run any of them anymore. If you ask me, Eidos should pay to license all the various fixes and put out updated copies of the games that install these fixes if they're needed. As it is, pretty much anyone who buys a copy of these games today is going to be stuck with a couple of coasters unless they can find their way here. Seriously, the Eidos FAQs for these games should just link to this forum.
Anyway, I guess my point is; Why are people expected to keep supporting the companies by paying for their older games, when they can't be bothered to support those customers by providing real support?
