"If anything, the lack of supply to those countries because of localizing and region encoding and artificial scarcity is why those countries download so much."

It's not only other countries that are affected by this.  The US is also affected by games not getting distributed here.  Take EA Cricket for example - cricket is one of the most popular sports in the world, with more fans worldwide than any other sport except soccer, yet you can't get EA Cricket in the US, and some stores in England (Amazon.com for example) won't export PC games to the US.  In such a situation, when a game is not available through normal channels) it's no wonder that piracy occurs.

Their methods, haha.

DRM has proven to be more about the second hand market than piracy, and though they try to say otherwise, that is what they are really going after with DRM like SecuROM. These Greedy bastards know they lose more money to the second hand market than piracy.  The thing is, there is nothing they can morally or legally do about it within reason.

If they would fire a few lawyers, they would open up some money, and maybe even more than they make from them.  There is a point where you are protecting your product because you are being ripped off, but there is a point where you are being a greedy bastard.  Spore and other EA DRM is greed bastard.  Now if it was a small company, I could understand where it would be getting ripped off, but I have yet to hear many smaller companies complain.

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As someone working in the industry, I'd like to try and shine a bit of light on some of your points. People don't seem to realize what an enormus problem piracy is, often meaning the difference between a sequal being made or not.

1. DRM - This I agree with you on. While in principle DRM is not a horrible idea, in practice it ends up alienating more customers than preventing pirates. However, if the technology was refined, if the plague of bugs and false positives could be erased, DRM could provide a semi-decent solution to piracy. After all, anti-piracy measures arn't supposed to make it un-crackable (it WILL be cracked eventually), but exist to ensure that games cannot be pirated until a week or two after release.

2. Unavailable due to legality - Again, not much argument from me here. While I would prefer that these people order it online, I understand that with shipping+game cost it is often preferable to just pirate it.

3. Publisher/Developer is a prick - This is no reason to pirate a game. Even if the publisher IS a dick, you only end up hurting developers. If you like the game enough to pirate it, buy it instead! Otherwise that series that you enjoy is gonna stop right there. And lets be honest, you don't really want to "stick it to the man", you want the game for free; this is just a nice "cool" excuse for it.

4. No demo, and want to try it before I buy it - While in theory this is understandable, in practice far too often it is just another excuse to snag a game for free. I've known plenty of players who claim that if they like a game enough they'll buy it...but don't because they already have it for free. If you do try and then buy, kudos to you, but you are the exception, not the norm.

5. Already own it - Again I agree (thats why I like programs such as Steam or Impulse that eliminate this problem), but its impossible to tell such people from legitimate pirates.

6. Where did it go? - See #5.

7. Price - This and your closing are where I strongly disagree with you. Unfortunatly its 3. am here and I need sleep if I want to keep my sanity. I'll post this tommorow whenever I wake up >.<

1. I agree that DRM is bad but if it's a feature that you do not like about the game, and will not play the game with it DO NOT BUY THE GAME. I don't know where this justification of pirating because of DRM comes frome. People steal guns because of the whole registration process that gun-control law makes, but does that make it right? No! It's completly unjustifiable. Don't like it, don't buy it. Like it, but don't like what comes with it? Deal with it.

2. Then you should do something about your government. We don't live in a Nazi Dictatorship (however much that may seem) Organize protests against your government, people don't like the fact you have to play censored versions of games that other people around the world enjoy. It's a democracy, petition, protests, write letters, if you have enough people, the man will budge.

3. THEN DON'T BUY THE GAME!!!11111 Why the hell can no one understand this concept of boycott is better than stealing. With stealing, the publisher only looks as that as a criminal loss and not a real action against anything. Do people steal Nike shoes to make their point about sweat shops in China? No. Why do it for games?

4. A demo is not an obligation the publisher has to make to you. There are other aveneues to discover if you would want to buy a game or not, and that is called reviews, trailers, gameplay footage, and more. Do you sneak into a movie theater to watch the Dark Knight for half an hour before deciding if you wanted to pay for it or not? It makes NO SENSE.

5. I can understand with this one (unlike all the others) but if you lost it, it's generally your fault. Replicating information is a bit tricky because there are an equal amount of ligitimate uses for it, as well as an equal amount of illigedimate uses. Like with the comparason with other people, I guess you can photo copy pages of books, comics, and paintings and I don't think that's illegal to do so. So I guess this OKAY.

6. Yeah, and with digital download being a new and upcomming thing it will generally make this excuse voided. but for now on old games, I don't think the publisher, ESA, will necessarly care since for something thats 8 years old, it's generally at a price of $5 to $10 that the publisher basically forgotten and all those games make up for about 0.1% of their revenue, and don't turn a healthy profit. In somecases I think the developer would be more happy that your playing a game that they made a long time ago like Shogo, Vietcong, or some other game.

7. Can't afford it? Don't buy it. A person who steals a $50 000 Cadilac because he runs on a 1400 month salary is still stealing. Games are a luxary, not a right.

I think it's been attempted actually, don't know if it succeded or not though.

hmm i respect your opinion.. but to say steam is 'a bad system'?

sorry... i disagree. I feel that the fact i can activate once online, then choose to play entirely offline from that point onwards, or remain online and receive free patches / updates / easy friend game find/joining  && not have to use the CD again, etc is entirely worth the burden of activating online once. The benefits (for me) FAR outweigh the negatives. That to me is a good system. Regular DRM doesnt have ANY benefits... hence consumers dont like it.

Oh and point 4... just as a note.. ps3 is region free. I live in the UK and have bought (and currently play) several US games.

And worse yet they just collect the money for the CP owners because all the tunes you can do on a bell are owned by them. =0-o=

Gore,Violence,Sexauilty,Fear,Emotion these are but modes of transportation of story and thought, to take them from society you create a society of children and nannys, since adults are not required.

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