Hiya! It’s shadowhunter!!! I have not written a blog in a long time, and after reading DeltaBurnt’s blog, I had a similar question of my own. Even though this is an obvious answer to some, to folk like me, it seems a bit more annoying to comprehend. The question is, why is piracy so bad?
What made piracy such a bad issue? I know that there are folks who use the power of their flashcart in order to play backups of their DS Games which they bought in the stores for wack prices like $40. Come on. Why would the game prices be so high? If they were reasonable games, like Pokemon, Mario or Kingdom Hearts, why not? It’s a good source of revenue. But for the stupid shovelware titles like the Imagine series, what kind of person except for a really young audience would pay 30 bucks for something that won’t last too long? That’s where the piracy issue arises for me. Can’t people just use a flashcart to test games before they buy them in the store? Let’s look at things from another angle. If the teams who make Imagine hadn’t made it such a stupid game, why would people still buy/pirate? Uh oh… I just went off my own topic… But why is piracy considered so harsh? It shouldn’t be so bad. Because of it, people have been buying Nintendo DS systems all over the place. If people did not buy systems, then I can understand, but Nintendo is acting like they did not earn squat. Who knows, for say every 3 games pirated, a DS is bought. If 99 games are sold, then that means Nintendo can earn $5610 from the DS purchases. (These are not exact figures) We know that the games take years to make, but if they considered bringing the prices of the games down, maybe piracy won’t be a major issue nowadays.
Piracy is bad, because the game publishers don’t make as much as they would have.
IF it was just a matter of playing backups or trying out a game, I do not think Nintendo would be so strict concerning flashcarts. IF you were only going to TRY it, and delete it afterwards, there’s no harm done.
However, who’s to say that you will delete it?
Nintendo can’t control whether you keep it or delete it, and so it chooses the easiest way out, which is to punish everyone. Even the people using flashcarts for non-illegal purposes.
I’ll have to agree that games are expensive now. Of course you wouldn’t pay $30 for an Imagine! title.
But you wouldn’t play it on a flashcart either, would you?
By the way, I’m do use roms. T___T
No offense shadowhunter, but that is a rather shallow way of looking at it, pretty much the usual blabber from piracy forums, blaming the price for everything.
You can look at it from the front, from the sides, piracy is stealing, simple as that. You wouldn’t go and hot-wire a Ferrari and say that it is because it is too expensive.
Games are priced rather fair in my opinion. Imagine games are usually found at the discount bin for $4.99-$9.99, seems like a good price. The Legend of Zelda retails for $39.99, considering the game should last at least a good 10 hours, you are getting a good bang for your buck. Considering those engines cost money to develop, there are workers to feed, marketing, etc, the price of games seem completely reasonable to me. Yes it is a little higher than I hope, but really the days of $69.99 titles are starting to disappear, Nintendo DS games are at the highest $45.
I see the predicament, video gaming is aimed at an audience that has no money, yet it is a business nonetheless. And as such they too work hard for their money, they need to make a living. I would be frustrated on their end too. Now I know this is a little hypocritical considering I own a website that talks about flash carts, but to be fair, I did buy quite a few Nintendo DS games in the past, I bought Luminous Arc 2 just recently, and I buy computer games. This doesn’t quite justify the fact that I pirate, but at least it makes me feel a little less guilty.
Stealing removes the original, piracy makes a copy. Just thought I’d point that out.
Well if we just buy the nintendo DS just because of piracy then nintendo will get money for all the Nintendo DS’s they sold thats true. But what about the other companies that actually made the game like Square Enix.
Heh, I realized afterwards it was a one-sided fight. I just needed to kill some time with a random thought because I have a school holiday tomorrow 🙂 and I just sat at my keyboard all day…
Lol, I love the title!
I completely agree with the price being so high but there’s other reasons. While 3rd Party shovelware probably isn’t worth 30 dollars it’s the piracy that makes the company even less able to make quality games.
While right now the current amount of piracy is probably only hurting the very small 3rd party game developers it still hurts. I do agree with the fact that Nintendo shouldn’t be all worried because they’re barely loosing any money from piracy. If anything they gain money from the consoles bought.
Good post, coulda been longer though 😛
this is the rabble from a day’s worth of insanity with only your mind to talk to… 🙁
Piracy is = to Plagiarism… Copying others work with out permission and Either selling them or illegally distributing it.
AFAIK Burning of CD Roms are not illegal unless you sold the copy or shared it with others
Piracy isn’t exactly the same as plagiarism. Because in Piracy you just download, enjoy, then delete. There’s very little cases of plagiarism where you download it and sell it.
I mean seriously selling used games is more plagiarism than piracy is. Atleast in piracy you don’t make a profit.
Used games must die!
and used games don’t work a lot of times for me…
How is selling used games piracy? Its not plagiarism at all since you did buy the game then you sold it.
Reselling copyrighted products without permission is copyright infringement and it considered plagiarism.
Anyways either the gaming developers don’t care or they have to give places like gamestop permission.
Still used games actually pose more a threat to game developers than piracy does.
It really depends, there are a lot of DS/PC games I want to try, but not sure if I will like. I can use my r4 to test them, if I like it, ill buy it. I will probably end up buying SS/HG, because I love the genre, but I didn’t pay for Platinum, its just a ripoff of pearl/diamond… Same for PC, i got RE5 free, but I like it, so I will probably buy it.
You also have to take into account, not all pirated games would have generated the revenue in the first place. Many of the games I try, I wouldn’t try in the first place if they costed me money. For instance I never would have even considered trying a game like cooking mama, but because I was given the chance to do so free, I found it intriguing, now if I never had the option, I never would have given the game a second look, and they wouldn’t have made that money in the first place.