Buying the most expensive hardware, downloading games and movies

[William Gaatjes]

I just do not get it.
I know some people who have monitors costing more than or close to 1000$, owning 1080 or 1080ti cards.
Expensive Intel boards and cpu.
Yet they will download all movies and only play either cracked games or buy the cheapest cd keys out there that either must be illegal or the reseller needs to laundry money...

When the subjects comes up, all i hear is that good hardware is supposed to be expensive. And that is everybodies prerogative to buy or not, not being the issue. While at the same time when the subject of buying software or buying movies comes up they look at me like i am crazy.

That is so strange.

 

[Newbian]

It's a lot easier to get cheap games like that then it is for hardware unless it "fell off a truck".

You can't download monitors unless 3d printers start getting a lot better.

 

[William Gaatjes]

It's a lot easier to get cheap games like that then it is for hardware unless it "fell off a truck".

You can't download monitors unless 3d printers start getting a lot better.

I understand that.
But i find it hypocritical when people say that good hardware needs to be expensive and pay for it without blinking an eye while at the same time either pirating software and movies or waiting until the game costs nothing anymore.

 

[snoopy7548]

There's no quality loss when you're cheaping out and downloading movies or games, plus it's easy. You can't say the same when cheaping out on hardware.

I used to pirate PC games when I was a teen, but these days I buy them on Steam. The convenience and low prices (especially during a sale) outweigh the alternative. These days there's no reason to pay the full $60 for a PC game. When they slowly got rid of the boxed games with actual instruction manuals, but kept the prices the same, that's when I gave up on buying physical copies. You can't really argue that a download key should cost the same as a boxed game sitting on a retail shelf, hence why I wait for Steam sales or the prices to come down.

One of the reasons why people cheap out on movies and games is simply the convenience factor. I've read time and time again about how DRM in games has caused problems for paying customers, while the pirates have absolutely no issues. See the latest Assassin's Creed game. Yeah, if it weren't for pirates we wouldn't "need" DRM... but software pirates have been around forever. I remember my brother having a couple of cases of 3.5" floppy disks for his Commodore Amiga or 64, all games copied from his friends. Piracy isn't going away, but the industry largely refuses to adapt in a way that benefits paying customers.

For movies, at some point you get sick of buying the same thing over and over again. If you like to have a large collection, are you going to really keep shelling out the money for the same movie for each new format? Bought a VHS of Terminator 2, then the DVD when it came out, then the Blu-Ray when it came out, then the... Rinse and repeat for most of your collection.

The honest cost of software will far exceed your hardware costs.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

I understand that.
But i find it hypocritical when people say that good hardware needs to be expensive and pay for it without blinking an eye while at the same time either pirating software and movies or waiting until the game costs nothing anymore.

No more hypocritical than subcontractors that knowing hire illegals to do the labor in the housing construction world and claim to 'have to' because their competitors are doing it. And then this gets worse when commercial construction companies do it and threaten to file suit against municipalities if they are forced to prove their illegals are not illegals.

There is no logic or rationale in what people of this ilk do.

 

[Ns1]

Paging red squirrel to tell us all how media companies deserve it because IP law is bad.

 

[William Gaatjes]

There's no quality loss when you're cheaping out and downloading movies or games, plus it's easy. You can't say the same when cheaping out on hardware.

I used to pirate PC games when I was a teen, but these days I buy them on Steam. The convenience and low prices (especially during a sale) outweigh the alternative. These days there's no reason to pay the full $60 for a PC game. When they slowly got rid of the boxed games with actual instruction manuals, but kept the prices the same, that's when I gave up on buying physical copies. You can't really argue that a download key should cost the same as a boxed game sitting on a retail shelf, hence why I wait for Steam sales or the prices to come down.

One of the reasons why people cheap out on movies and games is simply the convenience factor. I've read time and time again about how DRM in games has caused problems for paying customers, while the pirates have absolutely no issues. See the latest Assassin's Creed game. Yeah, if it weren't for pirates we wouldn't "need" DRM... but software pirates have been around forever. I remember my brother having a couple of cases of 3.5" floppy disks for his Commodore Amiga or 64, all games copied from his friends. Piracy isn't going away, but the industry largely refuses to adapt in a way that benefits paying customers.

For movies, at some point you get sick of buying the same thing over and over again. If you like to have a large collection, are you going to really keep shelling out the money for the same movie for each new format? Bought a VHS of Terminator 2, then the DVD when it came out, then the Blu-Ray when it came out, then the... Rinse and repeat for most of your collection.

The honest cost of software will far exceed your hardware costs.

I can relate to waiting for a new game to come down in price a bit. There is nothing wrong with that. I do so often myself.

But some cd key resellers have such low prices that i wonder if either steam is robbing their steam customers or the reseller need to laundry money.
I do agree i find it strange that games get more and more expensive. Then again, for the artistic part of the game like the graphics it is really not that easy to make automated software.
It is waiting for software that automates as much as possible through procedural generation of textures for trees and houses, roads.

Old games with DRM issues, i can understand that people would go for a pirate copy if they bought the game before but it no longer works because for example the drm program is not functioning properly or crashing because of a newer OS.
Then again, some old games are drm free available for a low price. I hope that trend continues for all old games.
When it comes to movies and DRM, i agree that the studio's have done their best to annoy paying customers as much as possible.
I still buy dvd once in a while. I am happy with it. But there will be a time that dvd players are non existant.
For that time comes i will have converted all my dvd collection to files on a proper mass storage.

edit:
It is just when i mention buying software, people look at me like i am bananas. At the same time they brag they just bought real expensive computerhardware.

 

[William Gaatjes]

No more hypocritical than subcontractors that knowing hire illegals to do the labor in the housing construction world and claim to 'have to' because their competitors are doing it. And then this gets worse when commercial construction companies do it and threaten to file suit against municipalities if they are forced to prove their illegals are not illegals.

There is no logic or rationale in what people of this ilk do.

That happened here too. Crooks are they. The real reality is that an illegal cannot complain anywhere when the labor circumstances are really bad. Not using proper safety or either toxic environments, insane hours, very low pay, no insurance. Ideal victims, cause they are willing to do everything. It is really exploitation.
The illegals are not the only illegals.

 

[Charmonium]

Hardware directly affects the user experience in terms of quality and most importantly, speed. When you cheap out on software and content, that's much more transient. How many movies have you ever watched more than a few times? If you do that, then sure, it makes sense to buy the BD with all of the extras but for most people games and video are consumables. It's like wanting to dine a 5 star restaurant every night as opposed to being satisfied with a burger and fries. Most people are happy with a burger and fries.

 

[madoka]

I can relate to waiting for a new game to come down in price a bit. There is nothing wrong with that. I do so often myself.

Me too.

I spend over $10K every year on computers. Yet I've been patiently waiting months for Black Friday in the hopes of saving $5 off the Necromancer upgrade for Diablo 3.

 

[lxskllr]

I use old hardware, and my software is libre and gratis, but I make donations to devs around this time of year. Where do I fit in your scheme?

 

[Red Squirrel]

That's because they spent all their money on hardware.

TBH I do it mostly for the convenience. I like having a non DRM file on hand that will work on almost anything and without needing an internet connection. At least for movies. I have a full cable package so I could in theory wait for it to air and PVR it. I plan to cancel that and get Netflix though. For software/games, a lot of them offer a paid download option now days so it's just as convenient to pay for it and at least I know it's coming straight from the source. If software prices are decently competitive then it makes less sense pirating. Ask a grand for a piece of software and it's guaranteed people will pirate it. I've gone open source now for most stuff though. For indie software/games I definitely rather pay as it supports the author.

I used to pirate everything but now that I think about it, my windows/gaming machine is pretty much all legit. I even paid for Windows 7. Don't play many games but the games I do play I bought.

 

[snoopy7548]

I think one way to reign in piracy is for these organizations to just offer what pirates want. You go on a torrent site, you have tens of thousands of movies, all encoded at 1080p and 720p, with direct BR rips and alternate audio tracks. No ads, no unskippable previews, no DRM. You don't have to hunt around or sign up for ten different streaming services. It's all just there. And you can even use Kodi as a frontend and make your digital collection look beautiful.

If there was a streaming service that offered (true) 1080p and higher video quality for a massive back catalog that never removed films or forced you through ads for $20/month, I'm sure many pirates would glady stop pirating and use it.

And often times, the only ways to watch some old and hard to find movies are either paying a ridiculous amount of money on eBay or pirating.

Movies are one thing, but how about TV shows? Where in the world are you going to find legit old Iron Chef (the one where they all speak Japanese) episodes besides pirate sites? For regular people, that show is dead and gone forever, among countless others.

EDIT: I guess part of my point is, piracy isn't only about "stealing" content. It's an extremely reliable and proven method of archiving media. I think this applies moreso to games, of which there are some extremely rare ones and ones that would simply be lost to time without piracy.

 

[brianmanahan]

yeah, it's lame

 

[William Gaatjes]

I use old hardware, and my software is libre and gratis, but I make donations to devs around this time of year. Where do I fit in your scheme?

You are a fine example, sir.

 

[urvile]

Since netflix became available in aus. I barely torrent anything. Unless it's a good TV show like the expanse or game of thrones. Because netflix here will run a year behind and the major pay TV channel has the exclusive rights for game of thrones in australia.

I am not paying a monthly subscription for one TV show. Then there is the convenience of digital. I have it all stored on a server and then it can be streamed to any device in the house. Another PC, media player, tablet etc. I never download games or software. I always pay for that. One of the reasons is you don't really know what surprises you are getting when you torrent software.

Also and this is very important torrenting is not piracy. It is copyright infringement. At least in australia. Piracy is a criminal offence. Copyright infringement is not.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

That happened here too. Crooks are they. The real reality is that an illegal cannot complain anywhere when the labor circumstances are really bad. Not using proper safety or either toxic environments, insane hours, very low pay, no insurance. Ideal victims, cause they are willing to do everything. It is really exploitation.
The illegals are not the only illegals.

I agree. The subcontractors were all illegally operated businesses. This is right up there with tax evasion, IMO.