Paradox Believe Great Games Fight Piracy

I brought two copies of the game without much hesitation. My mind never even registered the possibility of piracy. A great game, a good service provider, and a fantastic operating system make me want to pay for the titles which looks good. Back in the days, with a not so good operating system, mass produced game titles, DRM and weird CD requirements made me really want to pirate everything. I never was much of a pirate, but I did download quite a few no CD fixes and of course immediately felt somewhat like pirate. When a developer puts in the extra effort of bringing a game to Linux, it just make the game so much more valuable!

When I switched to Linux in 2005, I never looked back except to play a windows game or two. With everything available for linux as cheap, donation ware, or free there is no reason to steal games.

Also good prices fight piracy. For example, I wont buy this game at full price, but once it goes on sale I might buy it, instead of pirating it

I may have pirated games in the past *cough* or not *cough*.
I played these titles ( namely "Portal 1" & " Orcs Must Die!" ) for a few minutes and then bought them, simply because they were so damn good :D
I was 15 then and still on Windows (heh). I haven't pirated ever since. I noticed that developers should be supported, not taken out.
I have a few friends that still pirate games that do not have demo's in order to judge if they want to buy the game or not...

A really nice view on the matter, Paradox has there. I'm totally broke at the moment, but that game sure looks fun. I'll buy it as soon as my wallet is re-filled :)

Between 2002 and 2011, up to 2008 mainly on Windows, I pirate many (Windows-)games for two simple reasons both already announced previous: The "better-demo"-aspect and the "drm-treatment"-aspect.
Well, since I switched to Linux and having these good articles here on GOL I buy those games.

Some examples:
"better-demo": As I loved TES: Oblivion, I download Skyrim on release and I was really glad I didn't bought it. After a few hours (~5h) I deleted it and never played it again. As I said because of the GOL-articles I don't need any demo.
"drm-treatment": My personal favorite is and was GTA 4 (on win): Pirate version: Extract, double-click on exe-file and have fun. Steam version: Click on Start, register here and there, install this social crap and that. After many installs and accept/ignore buttons I could finally play.

A pirated copy is not necessarily a lost sale. In fact, probably only a fraction of the people who pirate it would pay for it.So, a pirated copy is maybe 1/20 of a lost sale if you must look at it that way.

The key to combating piracy is to make the legitimate source a better, more convenient experience.

It's almost impossible to 'pirate' Linux game. I've tried, but I've found only not working Dead Island and Borderlands (both). But I don't regret those ~20 games I brought on Steam for Linux. :)

I stopped pirating games when I switched to linux long ago and there werent any games to pirate lol. Then when the games started coming I was older and had a job. Now I buy all my software not just games. I even buy every app on my phone that I like.

Quoting: Hamish

Quoting: StyromaniacThat is wrong to me as well as Ubisoft forcing Uplay onto Steam customers.

I always love this argument. Pot calling the kettle much?

Don't get me wrong, I certainly agree that Uplay deserves a far blacker reputation than Steam, but I always love it when denizens of one potentially walled garden complain about the need to frequent another due to a game they want being locked into another service.

It's because all I want is Steam. Forcing me to install another games manager is not what I want. If I had a reason to stick with Uplay, I'd say the same for Steam.

I love Paradox's view on the topic and the philosophy they've employed. I believe it was Valve's Gabe Newell that referred to piracy as a "service problem". As far as music and movies are concerned, the easier it is to purchase these things in a preferred format the easier it is to use the official channels rather than having to go through 'alternate' routes. I used to buy DVDs like crazy whenever they dropped below the $6 threshold despite the fact they were packaged in such a way to seemingly deter the buyer from actually opening them. THEN a friend started lending me his pirated flicks and suddenly all annoyances were gone! I didn't have to search high and low for particular films and there was no over zealous wrapping to remove. For television I now have Netflix and Hulu with no need for cable or satellite.

With games...Steam sales and Humble Bundles make games extremely affordable now so long as one has the patience to wait for the temporary or permanent price reductions. I have more games in my Steam library and Humble Bundles than I have time to play. When I started PC gaming in the days of the Commodore 64 it was much harder to acquire games so pirated copies passed around on floppies was commonplace. For every game I purchased back then I was lent 2 that were pirated. Currently I have zero pirated games thanks to the ease of which I can come into possession of the 'real' thing thanks to digital distributions services such as Steam.