Option 3: Don't get the game. It is after all a luxury, not a necessity.

After all, if you people truly think you're actually being "rational," games wouldn't exist to buy anyways.

One of the many reasons I'm not a big fan of many current DRM strategies.

Well aside from the glaringly obvious fact that assuming no-one has any emotion is ridiculously implausible, this STILL wouldn't be correct, because 'emotional' reasons are only a few of many as to why you might want to pay for a computer game instead of getting the pirate version for free, as I've already covered. Hence you are still incorrect to say this means people who pay for a game are behaving irrationally.

I'll spell it out to you again: A rational individual will choose the option that gives them the most utility. Not money, utility (go look it up if you still don't understand, I expect wiki and/or some basic dictionaries or basic economics summaries will give you an overview). Utility covers money, but it also covers all the non-monetary issues, such as risk aversion, 'emotional' ones (e.g. your morals), etc.

Perhaps you'd care to explain how I am acting rationally if I choose to spend several hours (which if I was working instead would yield me an income higher than the cost of the game) to get a pirate version which in turn ends up messing up my computer+causing an expensive amount of damage to it, and also has problems with the game itself, along with denying me access to official patches that would fix the game? If you could equate everything monetarily, you're effectively saying that it could be rational for me to pay $300 for something worth just $60 (the inferior/pirated game) to me, instead of paying $60 for something worth $70 (the normal game) to me, to give a few figures for example.

I'm not trying to burst your bubble here but even when a pirated version of a game has a virus or trojan, the community makes it known and it's always at your own risk to download things from torrent sites or even warez sits(the former being much safer). If you don't know how to prevent possible infections then you most certainly shouldn't try to pirate anything. It is also pretty rare you will find a pirated copy of a game that doesn't work properly.



Official patches are readily available also. The only thing you can almost never get around is serial numbers to play online, unless you have experience with making keygens. Also I have no idea how any virus could possibly cause your computer $300 in damage unless you have an extremely expensive hard drive. I suppose if you don't know how to repair the damage and go to the Geek Squad,(who actually charge money to install Linux on your computer and not just for labor lol) you may end up paying out the ass for things that don't need to be fixed.

This is utilitarianism, and it's debatable as to whether it is the best rational philosophy. I would say, however, that it's a lot better than the "pure selfishness" philosophies that have been presented thus far.

I would agree that a lot of the philosophies being touted here are questionable reasoning. There is nothing irrational about doing something that would benefit a larger society or group instead of the individual.

Have you just taken a class in Economics or are you maybe a first year Economics undergraduate?


The reason I ask is your understanding of the rational model is extremely basic. Speaking as a Economics graduate I can assure you that price is not the only factor that a theoretical 'rational man' considers. No one with a Economics or statistical background would make this mistake and debate on a single dimensional train of thought.

Indeed if you are a first year undergraduate they often offer you the street light problem (everyone benefits no one wants to pay) or the Prisoners dilemma problem to highlight basic assumptions then proceed to disabuse you of them. I suggest pay attention in your proceeding classes.

I see your knowledge of the world rivals your knowledge of Economics.

Your clearly trying to goad people, or your simply not bright enough to see beyond your own prejudices. I hope for your sake its the former.

AFAIK, most debates dwell on a single dimensional train of thought, including the whole piracy/anti-piracy debate. Too bad, but most debates become too difficult for people to follow and engage in, if they get complex with many arguments.


That is comparing apples and oranges. More interesting would be to compare the US internet infrastructure to say, the European Union, Japan or South Korea (the latter two not being entirely fair, since they are not comparable to the US in terms of size and distribution of people.).

For those who want a laugh, check out the thread on the Ubisoft forums. Ubisoft released a patch, which was in fact, a no-cd crack by Reloaded

Ubisoft forums

Since Sly has agreed that he is saying pretty well anyone who pays for a PC game is acting irrationally, it means that even if only a small number of pirate games can cause problems when obtaining them, and only for a minority of people, the fact that it is a possibility means that such a situation can't be discounted. For the actual calculation itself you'd be weighing up what you perceive the probability of being affected by problems as a result of the pirate copy, and the expected damage caused, but in the case I was given it was fair to assume that this had already happened (since I was looking to provide an example of a contradiction of what Sly was saying).


It is entirely possible for a $300 figure to be achieved, or one much higher than that, as you alluded to yourself; Since we are talking about anyone who plays a PC game here, assuming that they all have a certain degree of knowledge regarding use of computers is unreasonable, and it follows that there will be at least some people who might call in a professional to deal with any problems caused (resulting in a very expensive bill). You also have the situation where important documents might be compromised/damaged that are contained on the computer, and the cost of losing these could be vastly above the $300 figure. You also have plenty of other costs encorporated in that figure, such as the effort cost to obtaining the pirated version.

Ultimately the figures were to just give an(other) example of how it can be perfectly rational to pay for a game that others are getting for free.

Just because you don't think you can see any effects of paying or not on a company doesn't mean there are none. Even a small percentage of pirates actually buying the product would allow the company to hire more workers, work on more projects at once, get them done faster or better, etc.

An "I can get something for nothing as long as it doesn't completely destroy the people selling it" attitude is not only irrational for anyone considering more than their own immediate personal gain, it's extremely selfish and immoral. If everyone has that attitude, nobody will pay for anything and everyone loses. It's akin to seeing someone dying in the street, but figuring 'hey, someone else will surely help them'. The inevitable result is that nobody does anything until it's too late.

I wasn't really trying to invalidate your argument I was just stating, that if you do if fact pirate things you should have a thorough understanding of computers.



This is the real problem nowadays, there is no effort. All you need to do is go to one of the many torrent sites and start downloading to your hearts content. Then it's safe to assume any Joe Schmoe with the rudimentary knowledge of using a bittorrent client can get nearly anything he wants and therefor making your point totally valid that he probably could easily get a virus and quite possibly lose hundreds of theoretical dollars through documents and such. Which only compounds the point I'm trying to make. If you don't know jack about computers don't try to pirate things.




Everyone take note of what kryo just said here, any sale is a good sale. Pirate or not, hes doing the right thing. In my case I DID pirate Sins of a Solar Empire, mainly cause I'd never heard of it and wanted to give it a try.(advertising) But after liking it so much and hearing about Stardocks stance on the whole piracy issue I felt I had to give them the money they rightfully deserve. For treating everyone as a customer and not a criminal.

If people do not have a clue about how to use a computer and how the darn things works, then most of the times, they will be better of by just paying for stuff which someone with more expertise says they need. They'll most likely be suckered into purchasing stuff they don't need as well, but that is how the system works.

The downside is of course, that paying for something, doesn't guarantee you anything in the software world. You may still end up paying $300 for repairs, because a purchased piece of software screws up your system or just stops working after a while. The EULA usually states that that is your problem.


This is 2008, we're not exactly living in an enlightened age of altruism and morality. Hell, we're not even moving in that direction, rather the opposite.


You do know those things actually happen a lot (e.g. people not doing anything, thinking someone else will) and there are quite a lot of documented cases and studies about that behavior.

Yes, I agree with this completely. But people often have selfish and myopic strategies that only make sense because each person realizes that the other is another selfish creature.

Say you and your friend are both charged with murder. The police separate you into two differnt rooms and give you seperate interrogations. You think you two can both get off with 10 years each for a lesser charge if you both deny it. But if only one of you rats out the other, the police promise that person gets off scott free and the other goes to jail for life. Finally, if you both plead guilty and rat each other out, the police will give you both 25 years, the minimum sentence. What do you do?

You should both deny it. You could both be out in 10 years and on the streets causing new trouble. But if both of you are smart, you both rat each other out, even though that makes no sense. You do it because you don't know if the other person is going to cheat you.

That was just a sample. Here's another one closer to home:

You are playing a game with 30 other people. It costs $50 to play. For every dollar that plays, the house returns the money and 25cents. But each player can choose to withhold his money. If he does so, that player splits the pot equally with all the other players. What do you do?

If everyone plays, then everyone makes $12.50. But if I don't play, I get almost that much, plus a lot more because I didn't invest $50 in the first place. What should I do?

See, that's how humans think. We are all out for ourselves, and we suspect the same of others. In an ideal world, everyone would buy the game and further the industry. But the problem with that is the temptation to steal. The best decison to make would be to steal everytime. You get almost everything you would have gotten, and you get what you get for free.

The reason that doesn't happen is that humans and many other animals have evolved emotions like remorse and anger.

I couldn't have put it better myself. Your insights into the psychology of the pirate are truly inspirational.

Working from your examples, the pirates are right in not handing over money for items with hidden contracts designed to give the companies the legal right to defraud them. After all, you can't trust thieves and murderers, it's just not logical!

Perhaps if you identified less with thieves and murderers and more with decent human beings, you'd have better luck?

Sorry Stardock, just couldn't resist. No slight intended as your EULA's are the second nicest in the industry.

. . . all the more reason to stand up for morality and altruism. Isn't it time we started moving in the right direction, and started encouraging people to act morally?



Of course, just because a company treats you like a criminal does not mean you have to act like one and prove them right. You're only adding more fuel to the fire that way.