Hi, I'm A Pirate because I don't like spending money on shitty games.
Until the update I played Counter-Strike:Source (Which I paid for) almost exclusively with a group of friends competing in leagues. For the most part I treat gaming as a sport, practicing different aspects of it until I am confident in that skill. For example I have spent hours alone in a server just throwing smokes trying to get that perfect angle down to the pixel.
Just like every sport though, there are times when you just want to just screw around and have some fun. My casual games consist of Warcraft III's (Which I paid for) custom maps or more recently Left 4 Dead (Which I paid for) with my friends.
Going all these years basically playing only these three games has gotten a little long in the tooth and recently I have been looking for other casual games. Since I'm cheap as hell I decided to pirate some games that I have heard over the years for some single player goodness. Please note that I would not have payed money for these games as I would prefer to be bored than purchase a game I know I will not play more than one time through.
The first game I pirated was Farcry 2. The open world and gameplay with the sweet graphics really appealed to me. Might as well give it a go. Upon installing the game, I noticed something was very wrong with the mouse, even in the menus. There seemed to be a minimum speed you had to move the mouse to get it to register moving at all. Once you hit the required threshold acceleration ramped up very fast making the game unplayable. I spent a very long time and multiple reinstalls researching the issue but eventually chocked it up to being a shitty port once I found out retail games have the same problem. Glad I didn't waste my money.
The second game I pirated was Bioshock. I have only heard great things about this game and everyone seems to love it. Mouse acceleration built into the game engine that is impossible to turn off. Glad I didn't waste my money.
The next game I recall pirating was Assasins Creed. Wow, finally a game with no mouse acceleration, this has to be good right? I put the sensitivity slider bar on minimum and adjusted windows sensitivity to no affect. Oh well, Its still playable with the super high sensitivity since I don't have to do any aiming. Played the game for about 10 minutes until the second group of enemies that you kill. Wow game play is stupid (I guess just not my style of game, seems like its going to be a button mashing waste of time). Uninstall. Glad I didn't waste my money.
There have been other games, with other shitty results and I cannot seem to find a game that I actually enjoy playing, much less paying for. Well a few days ago my friend gave me a link to a co-op game we could pirate and play together, Killing Floor. I objected since I really didn't want to waste anymore bandwidth, but he eventually persuaded me to get it. We actually had a fun time playing it. It is definitely a challenge on suicidal mode. I have to say that within one hour my friend and I were once again downloading Killing Floor, but this time the paid version. We each got two guest passes and conveniently sent them out to other friends who then purchased the game.
So I can 100% say for certain that piracy has directly increased the legitimate sales of video games by six. I am sure there are probably more cases out there of piracy hurting sales, but I doubt it is as drastic as publishers make it out to be.
Advocating piracy is not allowed.
Anandtech PC Gaming Moderator
KeithTalent
Until the update I played Counter-Strike:Source (Which I paid for) almost exclusively with a group of friends competing in leagues. For the most part I treat gaming as a sport, practicing different aspects of it until I am confident in that skill. For example I have spent hours alone in a server just throwing smokes trying to get that perfect angle down to the pixel.
Just like every sport though, there are times when you just want to just screw around and have some fun. My casual games consist of Warcraft III's (Which I paid for) custom maps or more recently Left 4 Dead (Which I paid for) with my friends.
Going all these years basically playing only these three games has gotten a little long in the tooth and recently I have been looking for other casual games. Since I'm cheap as hell I decided to pirate some games that I have heard over the years for some single player goodness. Please note that I would not have payed money for these games as I would prefer to be bored than purchase a game I know I will not play more than one time through.
The first game I pirated was Farcry 2. The open world and gameplay with the sweet graphics really appealed to me. Might as well give it a go. Upon installing the game, I noticed something was very wrong with the mouse, even in the menus. There seemed to be a minimum speed you had to move the mouse to get it to register moving at all. Once you hit the required threshold acceleration ramped up very fast making the game unplayable. I spent a very long time and multiple reinstalls researching the issue but eventually chocked it up to being a shitty port once I found out retail games have the same problem. Glad I didn't waste my money.
The second game I pirated was Bioshock. I have only heard great things about this game and everyone seems to love it. Mouse acceleration built into the game engine that is impossible to turn off. Glad I didn't waste my money.
The next game I recall pirating was Assasins Creed. Wow, finally a game with no mouse acceleration, this has to be good right? I put the sensitivity slider bar on minimum and adjusted windows sensitivity to no affect. Oh well, Its still playable with the super high sensitivity since I don't have to do any aiming. Played the game for about 10 minutes until the second group of enemies that you kill. Wow game play is stupid (I guess just not my style of game, seems like its going to be a button mashing waste of time). Uninstall. Glad I didn't waste my money.
There have been other games, with other shitty results and I cannot seem to find a game that I actually enjoy playing, much less paying for. Well a few days ago my friend gave me a link to a co-op game we could pirate and play together, Killing Floor. I objected since I really didn't want to waste anymore bandwidth, but he eventually persuaded me to get it. We actually had a fun time playing it. It is definitely a challenge on suicidal mode. I have to say that within one hour my friend and I were once again downloading Killing Floor, but this time the paid version. We each got two guest passes and conveniently sent them out to other friends who then purchased the game.
So I can 100% say for certain that piracy has directly increased the legitimate sales of video games by six. I am sure there are probably more cases out there of piracy hurting sales, but I doubt it is as drastic as publishers make it out to be.
Advocating piracy is not allowed.
Anandtech PC Gaming Moderator
KeithTalent
Last edited by a moderator:
Facebook
Twitter