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Thoughts on game piracy and emulation [roundtable]
 
This is sort of a heated topic in the game community and while I recall a few posts briefly delving into discussing it, I don't think its ever had its own dedicated thread.

What do you think of game piracy? As defined by downloading a ROM online to play a game instead of purchasing it.

In short, it's always bugged me. Games are entertainment, they're a luxury. You're not exactly Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family. That said, I think a case can be made for exceedingly rare or unlocalized games to live on through emulation. In some cases, this can give a work more publicity than it'd normally get.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to hearing other opinions on this matter.

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07/23/16, 20:44  
 
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@Secret_Tunnel

Those games should be supplied by the class, of course. Again, emulation as preservation for study and history as done by museums and universities is one thing, accessing the entirety of gaming history for your own personal use is another. And for me, as @Hero_Of_Hyrule was getting at, gaming is a marriage of hardware and software. I personally have little to no interest in playing games not on their original hardware or with their original controller.

@Zero

No, poor is still very relative. Ask somebody just outside the poverty line line if they consider themselves poor. That aside, I likely wouldn't call that kid in your example a bad person either, but I sure as heck would still call his actions theft. And how many games, movies and songs can that same kid download before you might consider him a not as great person?
07/25/16, 18:32   
@Koovaps I didn't say people's perceptions of their own wealth isn't relative, I said being poor isn't totally relative. There are people who make 500k a year and think they're struggling... but that doesn't mean they're ACTUALLY struggling the way someone who makes 15k a year is. My point here is that this isn't totally relative, there are actual limits placed on how you can live based on the income that you make.

I'd say that kid could download as much as he or she wants and not be a bad person. But I have a pretty liberal view of what makes someone a bad person, and when it comes to poor people and relatively victimless crimes that aren't done out of malice but out of wanting to be able to partake in things other people get to partake in... not very judgmental there. I'm more judgmental of the wealthy but still greedy for even more wealth Capitalists.

BTW I'm not saying piracy overall is a victimless crime, I'm saying people who literally would not be able to purchase something downloading digital copies is a relatively victimless crime. For someone like me who can and does purchase things to just decide to stop paying for things, then yeah, it's money lost. I probably wouldn't defend anyone on this site pirating just to save money because I think we're mostly all working adults who can afford gaming systems and games here and there. But for someone who can't afford this stuff anyway, no one is really losing anything when they pirate it.

I also never said I wouldn't call it theft, I just think it's mostly irrelevant at that point, and I don't particularly see any reason to brand poor kids as thieves over digital copies of games.

I'd be curious to know if there are stats out there on who pirates based on income levels / etc. I'm not even sure poor people DO pirate the most, though that's what I'd expect to see. I've run into enough safely middle class people who thought I was NUTS because don't I know that you can totally get this thing for your 3DS that lets you play any game you want on it for free so why are you still paying for games?!
07/25/16, 18:51   
Edited: 07/25/16, 18:58
@NoName
@DeputyVanHalen
@nate38
@Secret_Tunnel
@Hero_Of_Hyrule
@X-pert74
@Guillaume

These people already said everything I would say on the subject. Nicely done.
07/25/16, 19:54   
@Zero

I do want to be clear that I'm not necessarily unsympathetic to any of the examples given for why people pirate of emulate games, but I am hyper aware of just how arbitrary most of the reasons given are. It seems to me like most people's comfort level with these issues always go just far enough to justify their own personal use and often not much further than that. I have simply decided that I don't care to define my own, personal, arbitrary line that may or may not be okay with somebody else. So, then, piracy is wrong and shouldn't happen. Simple as that. And I completely acknowledge that I say that from the privilege of somebody that has been fortunate enough to obtain and keep an extensive collection that I couldn't ever possibly play through even if I did have the time.
07/25/16, 20:41   
TriforceBun said:

What do you think of game piracy?

I did it when I was younger. I was wrong then, it's wrong now. Being in a broken, garbage world full of greed and inequality doesn't make it right, it just makes it more easily justifiable. The battle cry of rationalization is stuff like "I have no choice" or "I'm not as bad as some other people" or "If the world was fair I wouldn't have to do this" or any of the other excuses I used then, and others use now. Justification doesn't skew the line of right and wrong, no matter how much we desperately want it to. I was wrong. I did wrong.

The choice, as is always the case, is up to the individual. Good ol' free will; we can see it here doing its job beautifully. In fact, in that regard piracy is absolutely amazing. It is a wonderful, glorious life-lesson-carrier that can teach so much it's unbelievable. It's so easy, and so accepted, so it's a perfect catalyst for smudging the line and showing us what we (individuals) are willing to do when we are certain to get away with smudging the line.

I can't tell you (whomever) it's right or okay, and I'm not going to condemn you (whomever) for it because it's not my job to condemn people. If someone asks (like in this case) I'm happy to share that yes indeed piracy is wrong, regardless of the unctuous rationalizations trying to prop it up. But people don't want to hear that. They want to hear "Go ahead, it's not hurting anyone, and that means it's okay to do." That's sure what I wanted to hear when I did it, and if no one else would tell me I would say it to myself three times a day. Which is great, because I got to see myself fall and do the wrong thing and rationalize it, for many years. So now, when I start down that path again in a number of different areas, I have a very big example of what not to do from my own life to put me back towards the better road.

Zero said:
@Koovaps Poor isn't really *that* relative. There is a reason we have a government-defined poverty rate.

The issue is this method is picking and choosing acceptable government-defined examples. We also have a government-defined policy on Piracy, and you're blowing right past that because you disagree with it, where as you agree with where they put the poverty line. If "poor" is not relative because the government says it is defined, then piracy is not relative, because the government says it is wrong. "This is true because the government says it is, but this other thing the government says is not true because I say so" makes what the government says meaningless, which means their defined poverty line is pointless. You can't use government definitions to prop up one side of your argument while you completely ignore the government definitions you disagree with, ha ha.

Well, I mean, you can. Because this is the internet and all...

Koovaps said:
@Zero

I do want to be clear that I'm not necessarily unsympathetic to any of the examples given for why people pirate of emulate games, but I am hyper aware of just how arbitrary most of the reasons given are. So, then, piracy is wrong and shouldn't happen. Simple as that. And I completely acknowledge that I say that from the privilege of somebody that has been fortunate enough to obtain and keep an extensive collection that I couldn't ever possibly play through even if I did have the time.

Agreed, well said! That and your previous comments about it as well. Kudos.

Koovaps said:
What I don't understand is what in the heck is so terrible about not playing certain games? We live in an age when we have near unlimited options for our media consumption. Find something else to play

I remember when I was young I played outside. Freeze tag, and catch, and made up adventures where we were explorers in the backyard that was actually a rainforest jungle. Didn't even have a phone with Pokemon Go on it!
07/25/16, 22:35   
Edited: 07/26/16, 01:49
I view piracy and emulation as two different things to be honest.

Emulation to me is playing an older game (that may or may not be currently available) illegally on a more accessible system and in a more accessible way. I've done this myself and will most likely do it in the future. Why? Well I did it in the past to explore the past of games more when I didn't necessarily have a way to purchase the games, or they just weren't available. I'll most probably do it in the future though for different reasons. If I ever want to record an old NES game for instance, it's easier to do it on PC than console, as I lack a capture card. This isn't the moral thing to do, but it's something I will most likely do at some point.
Emulation with ROM's also has some interesting things that can be done. Romhacks for instance are something very unique. Spins on old games done by fans, and several of them have a fair amount of care put into them, or at least time. Kaizo Mario may be stupidly hard, but it's well designed and does interesting things with the game that the original developers had no plans for at all and it would be a shame for something like this to have never have happened.

Piracy is an interesting one. I hold the opinion that someone playing your game when they cannot pay for it in any way is not a lost sale. If they can pay for your game, then you have lost that sale. Either way something has been stolen, but only in one case would that person have given you money to play it. If a game also lacks a demo, I am fine with people pirating it. I myself don't even touch a game if I am unsure about it and there is no demo, as I do have ways to pay for games. Haven't pirated a game in years and don't intend to as games are fairly easy to get these days if you have any sort of income. For those young teens out there though? Probably not.
07/25/16, 22:50   
I think that piracy isn't nearly as big an issue as things like used games as far as damage to developers. Maybe that changes on the indy scene but I don't know.

For old games they need to be offered on as many platforms as possible for a low price. Reselling old games once to bring them to modern hardware is fine, anything beyond that though is unacceptable. Nintendo trying to charge $5 per instance of Super Mario Bros and collecting it on each piece of hardware is ridiculous. Stuff like that needs to be crossbuy.
07/25/16, 22:50   
@Stephen Buying SMB on Wii should really give one access to a version on the Wii U and the 3DS as well. If that was the case though, I don't think $5 for an overall charge would be outrageous.
07/25/16, 23:44   
@X-pert74

Why though?

Why should we get three copies for the price of one?

I'm not saying Nintendo can't offer that, but I cannot fathom this mentality that somehow this is owed to us as consumers and anything less is 'unacceptable'.
07/26/16, 00:22   
Edited: 07/26/16, 00:22
@Shadowlink If we won't have the ability to keep our own physical copy of a game to play on whatever system we want, it would at least be nice to not have to buy the same game on multiple systems. It certain provides a greater incentive to buy it digitally in the first place.
07/26/16, 00:36   
@X-pert74

I agree it provides incentive, and I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I'm asking why it *should* be provided. Where does this idea come from, that this is what we are owed or entitled to by purchasing a digital game on one particular platform?

I mean I bought Zelda on my 3DS to play on my 3DS. That's was the deal, and I've gotten what I wanted out of it- The ability to play Zelda on my (current) handheld, without having to go dig out my old GBA and an old cartridge.

And sure it will be nice to be able to carry that forward to the 4DS or NX or whatever. But if it doesn't happen, do I really have any grounds to complain or rail against the unfairness of it all given that no-one ever promised me that I'd be able to do that? And I can't fathom why it would be assumed that would be the case anyway. It takes effort to make sure the games run properly on different types of hardware. People can debate just how much effort is actually involved, but I can guarantee one thing- It's a non-zero amount. So expecting to pay zero dollars for endless copies in perpetuity is a little ridiculous IMO.

I think Nintendo had it right with the Wii to WiiU transition. If you already had the game, you could get it again (with extra features) for a small extra fee as opposed to paying the full download price again. (And even then we had the option of just playing the copy we already had in 'Wii mode" free of charge.) Given the extra effort to program for the WiiU, it's not unreasonable at all.


Regardless, we've gotten off track a bit here. To bring this back to the original topic, whatever your feelings on Nintendo's digital policies, they in no way entitle anyone to pirate games in response.
07/26/16, 00:52   
Edited: 07/26/16, 01:17
Building on the article Guillaume linked to, I think a lot of people in general underestimate how important their happiness and mental health are, and how much something like a fun video game can have a positive impact on their life. Entertainment and new experiences really are almost as important as food and water, and even the most capitalistic of us can probably agree that soup kitchens are a good thing. Unless you're a hardcore Buddhist who meditates for eight hours a day and doesn't own any earthly possessions, I don't think the argument that "you don't need video games" holds up coming from people who love them so much that they'd have an internet discussion about game piracy in the first place. (Not that anyone here is necessarily making that argument, it's just one I see a lot!)

X-pert74 said:
@Stephen Buying SMB on Wii should really give one access to a version on the Wii U and the 3DS as well. If that was the case though, I don't think $5 for an overall charge would be outrageous.

I think that would be really really nice, but I don't see it as being too different from having to buy a movie on VHS, and then DVD, and then Blu-Ray, and then whatever else. Of course, you don't have to upgrade movie hardware as often as often as game hardware, and just because another industry does it doesn't mean that's the way it should be, but I also think that for a classic game like Super Mario Bros., five bucks isn't too much for Nintendo to ask for on any given day.
07/26/16, 01:11   
Shadowlink said:

I mean I bought Zelda on my 3DS to play on my 3DS. That's was the deal, and I've gotten what I wanted out of it- The ability to play Zelda on my (current) handheld, without having to go dig out my old GBA and an old cartridge.

And sure it will be nice to be able to carry that forward to the 4DS or NX or whatever. But if it doesn't happen, do I really have any grounds to complain or rail against the unfairness of it all given that no-one ever promised me that I'd be able to do that? And I can't fathom why it would be assumed that would be the case anyway.

Oh because people are super entitled these days. Think things are somehow owed to them. Anyway, good post, I agree. I also agree it would awesomesauce for Nintendo (or any company) to instigate a "buy it once, buy it forever" policy where games went to each new console/hardware, but you're right, it shouldn't be expected. It's simply cool if it happens, and I would be all for it if it did. :)
07/26/16, 01:48   
@J.K. Riki Oh yeah, the government can definitely define piracy. I never said they can't.

What they can't define is right and wrong. They can say "this is illegal", but that doesn't actually address what we're talking about, which is if it is right or wrong.

Anyway my point wasn't so much that the government can strictly define poverty, because of course being $1 above or $1 below the poverty line is not a significant difference. It was just that poverty isn't truly relative. Especially in America where we don't like having safety nets for the poor.
07/26/16, 02:37   
@Zero

Defining right and wrong is the entire point of the law. What "right" things are illegal? Heck, breaking the law itself is wrong, yes? Otherwise, why even follow the law, if it's just as right to disobey it? Toss it all, we can do whatever we want if law breaking isn't wrong. At some point, you have to decide who you trust to define right and wrong. Someone has to be in charge. If it's every man for himself playing god, I could drive your car into the river and be like "Eh, to me it's not wrong, so whatever." See that's the problem with self-determined right and wrong, and I think showcases Koovaps point of "And as soon as the door is opened to allow some of these excuses, I think it gets difficult to turn around and disallow somebody else's."

As for poverty being relative, it depends 100% on your definition of poverty and also how much perception is taken into account (which, as human beings, is usually "a butt load.") My wife grew up unbelievably poor, for example, but she didn't know it so she lived her life just fine. She thought it was normal. To you, she was poor. To her, she was not. Totally relative. I consider myself uncomfortably wealthy. My bank account has just over $1000 in it, but it's $1000 more than I absolutely require to survive. My one thousand extra dollars means to me I am rich. Unless you ask the government, and then I am extremely poor. Who is correct? Depends who you ask, yes?

And we can follow that farther down the philosophical rabbit hole, too. You could say "Even if you think you're rich with your measly 1000 dollars, you REALLY aren't." Really aren't to whom? You? What difference does it make to me what you think, if my perspective gives my life great joy? And why is your opinion somehow superior there? Because others, or the government, agrees? What if I get more people to agree with me than you, does that change reality, where suddenly my side becomes correct? After all, majority is why the previous side was correct before the switch... And, beautifully, that comes right back around to laws, and how they do or do not determine right/wrong depending entirely on your perspective.

Life is fascinating!
07/26/16, 06:28   
@J.K. Riki

Legality and morality are often conflated but really shouldn't be. It's legal to cheat on a spouse or to pay workers a barely survivable wage and lay them off when times get tough all while cutting yourself bonus after bonus. I don't think you can argue those things are okay just because they are within the confines of the law. Some of the worst things imaginable have been legal at one point like segregation and slavery.

And that's really the crux of it. At one point. Laws are only a set of rules we as a society agree to follow. They are not righteous mandates like thou shalt not kill. Murder is outlawed because most people agree that society is better if we don't kill one another. At one point alcohol was deemed a hazard and now it is embraced. Marijuana looks to be next.

Copyright laws and piracy laws exist to ensure that people get compensated fairly for their work on products that could be reproduced and leave the original creators out in the cold. The problem with these laws and indeed so many others is that they are rooted in the time they were devised and don't account for things like videogames, different rights asserted by corporations, and the internet.

Sure I think most people can agree that copying a game that people just spent years of their life working and is readily available for sale is jerky thing to do. What about when a game has made its money though? What about when a game is unlikely to ever be sold again legally? I love Aladdin on SNES but good luck getting Capcom, Nintendo and Disney all to the table about a game nobody cares about any more. That can happen far sooner as well. You can't buy the Turtles in Time remake any more even though it's a fairly recent game because a license changed hands and it is a digital only game. I will laugh at anyone who tries to tell me the only ethical way to play Goldeneye is with a working N64 and a legitimate copy of the game.

Everyone is going to define what is morally just and it isn't likely to line up with the letter of the law. That doesn't make what they are doing wrong, just illegal.

As for old games, I say go for it. Once a game is 10 years old or more the money has been made the creators aren't depending on it any more. They still get their money from it in other ways like offering it up for sale or for remastering it or from sequels it has spawned.

@X-pert74

That would make the ridiculous price much easier to swallow certainly.

@Secret_Tunnel

You'll notice though that most movies now get sold with multiple formats. Blu rays come with DVDs and digital copies. Digital seems to me to be the endgame though. Maybe I am wrong on that and 4K will really take over but I don't think this upgrade cycle is going to continue the way it has as the technology became better. Nor should it.
07/26/16, 07:46   

@noname
@DeputyVanHalen
@nate38
@Secret_Tunnel
@Hero_Of_Hyrule
@X-pert74
@Guillaume
@Stephen


Pretty much what they said. Though I don't really pirate games anymore, back in the Commodore 64/Amiga days, my friends and I would pirate anything we could get our grubby little paws on. I wasn't poor, I didn't do it to feel like I needed to be part of the crowd, just did it for the challenge. Seriously, most of the games, probably like 98%, I never played, well, would play it long enough just to make sure it worked. I know I probably had close to a thousand games, if not more, across different systems.

Typically, the games I played were the ones I bought and that were bought for me, usually as a gift from a relative, or on the the occasion I just wanted the game and would ask mom if she had the money to buy it for me.

I remember one day my mom asking me if I or my brother ever played any of those games, this was several years later and I wasn't into pirating. I asked why she wanted to know and she mentioned my aunt was asking if we had any old systems, games that we wanted to donate to this family, whose house had burned down and had lost everything. I let them have my C64, Amiga and other hardware, plus all the games. I just kept my NES/SNES and the games for those consoles.

Now see, if I had never pirated all those games, then that poor family and their kids wouldn't have had any games to play. I remember us getting a really nice Thank You card with a letter. I guess their kids were really into the Commodore systems and games, which I'm assuming they lost in the fire.

Only thing I worried about a little later on was, not only would we pirate the games, but we'd rip out all the copyright info, ect, like what company made thd game, developer's name ect. So, instead of saying EA, Broderbund, ect, there would be some made up company's name, plus, for a game like Lode Runner, which if memory serves me right, Doug Smith was the developer, but his name was no longer there, instead, my name was there. Yea, kindof dumb, but I was young and probably figured I would keep the games forever. Well, I didn't worry that much, and considering that was around 35ish years ago, I guess I'm safe. I actually wonder from time to time if all those games are still around, sitting in someone's basement, attic, ect.

I could still pirate games today, if I so desired, just don't care to do so anymore. The way I always look at this stuff, as long as you are not turning around and making a buck off of pirated games, then no harm done, and as many has already pointed out, if someone never could afford to buy the games, then the developer would never be receiving money from that person anyways.

Hey, the worlds a f'cked up place, I don't feel anyone has the right to tell someone else whats right or wrong, especially with something as petty as downloading roms, ect. People need to worry moreso about the nutjobs, psychos, serial killers, terrorists, corrupt governments(like ours), and where this world is heading in the future. All the police just shotting whoever they want, especially the minorities, without proper cause. Thats the shit I worry about.

And you should as well.
07/26/16, 10:14   
Edited: 07/26/16, 10:21
@J.K. Riki I'd say the point of the law is to take a bunch of different people with different beliefs and create a society that can work. I know you don't actually believe the law dictates morality though. For instance, abortion is legal... does that make it right in your eyes? Was it wrong when it was illegal?

Your wife might have been poor but she probably had food on her table. There are limits to how much poverty people can stand and still survive.
07/26/16, 10:22   
I don't feel bad at all about emulation. It's really a matter of convenience and not because I'm a cheapskate. I bought many, many Virtual Console games, and then they told me to buy them again on Wii U and 3DS. Well, I'm not going to do that. I loaded an Nvidia Shield TV up with emulators and roms, and now I have access to all of the best games up to the Sega Dreamcast on one easy to access device (which I always have turned on anyways)... and I play these games with an 8bitdo Bluetooth SNES controller that feels like an exact wireless replica of the SNES controller. They are releasing an N64 controller in a few months. How would any gamer not want to have this in their life?

Now piracy of new games? No, that isn't cool unless you are, like, really poor and just can't afford to support these companies.
07/26/16, 11:44   
Edited: 07/26/16, 11:49
Zero said:
I know you don't actually believe the law dictates morality though. For instance, abortion is legal... does that make it right in your eyes? Was it wrong when it was illegal?

I believe a certain Law dictates morality, yes, but that Law I believe in isn't from mankind. Which is why human crafted legislation doesn't mean much to me and I don't bother with the political angst society is seeped in this summer. Donald Trump, president or not, has no power over the Law I believe in. Washington can make murder legal in their eyes, it wouldn't change the Law I believe in. It would suck to live in that even-more-broken world, but doesn't change the grand scheme. Also if I disagree with the Law that I believe in, I have no power to change it based on my whims (thank goodness, because I'm an idiot who knows next to nothing). When I pick and choose which of the Laws to agree with, I play God and am doing it wrong and circumnavigating exactly what the Law is there to teach me in the first place. And I do that sometimes, and it's wrong when I do and I hate who I am when I see it happen. I certainly understand people picking and choosing government laws from the list and deciding for themselves which they want to follow and which to throw out. Oh I understand that feeling and human desire inside us, definitely.

So anyway, it doesn't really fit 1:1 if you're asking me my opinion on that one. What matters in that case is what the law you believe in is/does/means.

Zero said:

Your wife might have been poor but she probably had food on her table.

"Well, sure she might have been poor, BUT..." exactly proves the relativity of poverty.

Stephen said:

Everyone is going to define what is morally just and it isn't likely to line up with the letter of the law. That doesn't make what they are doing wrong, just illegal.

Which is to say "breaking the law is not wrong," which is not something I can get behind because we agree to not break the law in order to maintain civilization. If you're doing something illegal, you're breaking a law. If you don't believe breaking the law is wrong, the law is meaningless and stupid. Breaking the law must be wrong in order for the law to do its job. If not, the law is just empty noise in an already cacophonous world.
07/26/16, 22:22   
Edited: 07/27/16, 00:31
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