Did you buy Spore after pirating the leaked version? in Off Topic

ID:48707
 
Sep 28 2008, 9:59 pm

Poll: Did you buy Spore after pirating the leaked version

Yes - I only did it to play it early 9% (2)
Yes - It was an excellent game that deserved my money 9% (2)
Yes - I always buy what I pirate 0% (0)
No - The game wasn't as good as I expected 36% (8)
No - Other things came up that needed my money more 0% (0)
No - I'd already beaten the game so there was no point 0% (0)
No - I never buy what I pirate 31% (7)
I waited until Spore was released to play it 13% (3)

Login to vote.

I'm just curious. I'm always running into this 'I'm only doing it to test the game out' argument. The thing of it is when prompted on specific games there is always a 'oh, that one had [random flaw]... which meant it wasn't worth buying'.
I'm always curious as to how many games over the years, pirated or purchased, make that 'I'd go out and buy it after playing it' cut.

Please be completely honest. Thanks.
#1 Sep 28 2008, 10:14 pm
My excuse for not buying the game isn't up there... because i don't have the net at home i would rather pirate it ARRRR for the single player mode, but otherwise yes i would of bought it.
#2 Sep 29 2008, 2:00 am
I didn't buy it after pirating. I played until I grew legs and moved further away from the water. It has since been uninstalled to free up some hard drive space for more useful things.
#3 Sep 29 2008, 4:27 am
I'll be honest, I was 100% sure I was going to buy it until I played the pirated version. After playing it, it wasn't that great in my opinion. However, I haven't touched the pirated version anymore either for the same reason.
#4 Sep 29 2008, 5:56 am
I played the pirated version pre-release, and went on to buy the full version the day of release. I found it to be great fun and well worth my money.

I do tend to buy games I really like, I'm just tired of paying $50 for a game I can't stand to play for more than 5 hours.
#5 Sep 29 2008, 12:59 pm
I'm sorry. :(
#6 Sep 29 2008, 2:04 pm
I never buy what I pirate, and personally I'm sick of the lame explanations of my fellow pirates.

People will always try and rationalize their actions. I make myself feel better about pirating because I'm in college and can barely afford food right now, never mind music and movies and games and applications.

I mean, come on, the full master collection of Adobe CS3 is like 2500 dollars, Windows Vista Ultimate released at $400, people are still trying to sell music for a dollar per track, and video games cost fifty bucks a pop.

Steam recently had an awesome package deal on Rockstar games, you got like GTAIII, GTA:VC, GTA:SA, Manhunt I, Max Payne I and II, and more, all for like 25 or 30 bucks, that's the kind of thing I'd go for if I didn't already own most of those games.

I do try and go (at least somewhat) legit when I can. For example, some of you in the US (and maybe elsewhere?) may have come across a "Redbox", DVD rentals for a dollar per night. What most Redbox users don't realize is that there are databases online with promo codes for free one night rentals. With this method, I'm going through a legal channel while still saving a ton of money.
#7 Sep 29 2008, 3:14 pm
Airjoe wrote:
I never buy what I pirate, and personally I'm sick of the lame explanations of my fellow pirates.

People will always try and rationalize their actions. I make myself feel better about pirating because I'm in college and can barely afford food right now, never mind music and movies and games and applications.

I mean, come on, the full master collection of Adobe CS3 is like 2500 dollars, Windows Vista Ultimate released at $400, people are still trying to sell music for a dollar per track, and video games cost fifty bucks a pop.

Steam recently had an awesome package deal on Rockstar games, you got like GTAIII, GTA:VC, GTA:SA, Manhunt I, Max Payne I and II, and more, all for like 25 or 30 bucks, that's the kind of thing I'd go for if I didn't already own most of those games.

I do try and go (at least somewhat) legit when I can. For example, some of you in the US (and maybe elsewhere?) may have come across a "Redbox", DVD rentals for a dollar per night. What most Redbox users don't realize is that there are databases online with promo codes for free one night rentals. With this method, I'm going through a legal channel while still saving a ton of money.

Personally, I'd rather not pirate games. Think of all the work put into them by the staff, and they aren't exactly making millions off it; the company that published it is. Some things are too much, like the adobe programs, but others are actually a decent price!
#8 Sep 29 2008, 10:11 pm
Just on the subject of pirating games this is a very nice read.

http://draginol.joeuser.com/article/303512/Piracy_PC_Gaming

I agree with it from a business standpoint but I really hate that this is the road we're heading down.
The games I like will eventually stop getting made for the PC because gamers like me are tech savvy enough to download an ISO and a crack so they can play for free.

They can increase/decrease anti-piracy measures all they want, its not going to turn that around.
#9 Sep 29 2008, 10:24 pm
I never pirate. I want to support the creators and see new work done by them.

I mean, come on, the full master collection of Adobe CS3 is like 2500 dollars, Windows Vista Ultimate released at $400, people are still trying to sell music for a dollar per track, and video games cost fifty bucks a pop.

The only thing I agree on with that is Vista. Microsoft charges that much simply because they can.

As for Adobe, there are plenty of free alternatives to their software. Adobe software is the top of its industry and is built for professionals and businesses. Why should you get the proprietary software like Photoshop, Flash, 3DS Max, Maya, etc. for free when there are free alternatives that come close like GIMP and Blender3D?

Musicians don't get paid the bulk of their profits, and producers aren't going to cut their own profits to help them out.

Most video games lose money. 50 bucks a game is only for newer games, and is about where it should be.
#10 Sep 29 2008, 10:47 pm
Kunark wrote:
Adobe software is the top of its industry and is built for professionals and businesses.

Yeah. I'm not going to say Adobe is cheap, but there is a lot too it. The Adobe package we have in the office is huge.

Money issues aside something like GIMP is generally better suited to the casual user anyway, and they appreciate your support even if it is just adding one more person to their user base.
#11 Sep 29 2008, 10:58 pm (Edited on Sep 29 2008, 11:05 pm)
Kunark wrote:
The only thing I agree on with that is Vista. Microsoft charges that much simply because they can.

As for Adobe, there are plenty of free alternatives to their software. Adobe software is the top of its industry and is built for professionals and businesses. Why should you get the proprietary software like Photoshop, Flash, 3DS Max, Maya, etc. for free when there are free alternatives that come close like GIMP and Blender3D?

GIMP doesn't even come close to Photoshop. You're absolutely right, Photoshop is the best, but that doesn't mean I'm going to go out and pay seven hundred dollars (or more!) for a single program.

It's also damn near impossible to find a program to create flash 'apps' in other than Adobe's own Flash, and if you do, they don't have near the functionality. Again, Adobe can go <expletive deleted> if they think I'm going to pay seven hundred dollars for one application. That's almost as much as I spent on my freaking car. And not only this, but they release new versions so frequently it's nuts. Adobe CS4 is ready for release, and you can hear some users on sites like digg saying they haven't even paid off CS3 yet! Hopefully sales don't go so well and they'll learn a freaking lesson.

I'm not saying I should get them for free (though, as I said before, unless these things were ridiculously cheap I just can't pay for any software at this point so I will continue to steal them), but the prices companies think they can charge is absolutely ridiculous. Check out the top 100 applications on the pirate bay. Notice anything about the ones at the top of the list? Adobe CS3, Windows OS's, Microsoft Office, Rosetta Stone, Nero, Visual Studio... the majority of these programs cost hundreds of dollars!

At least companies like Autodesk give their software to students for free. Adobe says they give student discounts and the prices are still insane.

Musicians don't get paid the bulk of their profits, and producers aren't going to cut their own profits to help them out.

Sounds like the industry needs to change then. Thankfully, bands like Radiohead and NIN realize this.

Most video games lose money. 50 bucks a game is only for newer games, and is about where it should be.

I find this hard to believe, do you have a source to back that up? And I highly disagree that fifty dollars is where it should be. You can get brand new DVDs for 10 bucks, video games shouldn't be five times as expensive, especially when the consoles cost hundreds of dollars as well. I still don't have a next gen console, and probably won't for a few years until both the cost of the consoles and the games come waaaaay down.




I just can't wait for the textbook revolt, when we can get college textbooks as easily as applications, music, and movies.
#12 Sep 29 2008, 11:10 pm
DarkView wrote:
Yeah. I'm not going to say Adobe is cheap, but there is a lot too it. The Adobe package we have in the office is huge.

You're absolutely right here, and I commend Adobe for creating such an awesome program. But seven hundred dollars?

Money issues aside something like GIMP is generally better suited to the casual user anyway...

The thing is, I'm not the casual user. I'm trying to make a little extra money with this software so that I can eat. I'm glad there exists a program that can make graphic design so easy, but it's just too cost prohibitive. You're right though, GIMP does do the job for the casual user. But to compare it to photoshop is nuts.

When I graduate college and have a career and income, and if Adobe drops their price about $450, I'll buy Photoshop. Until then, I'll use my ThePirateBay discount coupons.

#13 Sep 30 2008, 1:46 am
How about 'No because it didn't run, at least I avoided wasting $50'? In all fairness, I'm on Linux so with new releases I am largely at the mercy of whatever Wine happens to have implemented, so testing pirated versions is generally a good idea. In this particular case, I never got to actually see my creature (I added parts by sound and didn't take them away, must've been pretty freaky looking), the game would crash at the end of each stage, thus meaning I didn't actually get the benefit thingy for completing the previous stage, re-draw didn't clear the back-buffer so the entire game blurred as it drew new content on top of old.

I'm inclined to say I do very much appreciate pirated versions from that respect, otherwise a good 70% of new game purchases would be entirely useless for me. It just saves the buying and returning hassle, considering the high likelihood. I did the same with C&C 3 and that worked, so I made a purchase there. Interestingly I HAD to crack my legal copy, because of DRM.

I know some people pirated it after generally being less than impressed with SecureROM, although yeah commonly people did state a "try before you buy" reason.
#14 Sep 30 2008, 3:16 am
I pirated it and didn't buy it, and I'm not going to buy it, but my reason isn't up there - SecuROM. As Stephen has alluded to, some people are less than impressed by the copy protection. I am one of them. I consider SecuROM to be malware, and I don't want it on my system.

I would buy-then-pirate it, but that rewards EA for embedding a virus in their software (And it is a virus - it is difficult to remove, attempts to prevent you removing it, embeds itself in the operating system, attempts to hide itself, and reduces the functionality of your computer. About the only thing it doesn't do is spread.) - because EA gets the bulk of the money from my purchase of Spore.

Spore probably isn't of a quality that justifies the $100 price tag, anyway. It's clearly been released unfinished. Cell and creature stage are quite fun, but tribal stage is reasonably boring, and by civ stage there's absolutely no depth. Space stage feels more like a mockup than the actual game - the sandbox is surprisingly shallow, and having to grind to pay for more of your sandbox gets old, fast. More to the point, fucking pirate raids, biodisasters, and cheating AI in wars. Irritating. There are mods that ameliorate this to some extent (Indeed, the first Spore mod reduced the frequency of pirate raids and biodisasters), but it's still irritating beyond compare, and the patch hasn't fixed it at all.

Spore is, in fact, the only PC game I've ever pirated, believe it or not.

I have some SNES/GBA/64 ROMs on my system, but those are obsolete systems, you can't buy games easily any more, and a significant quantity of them aren't available in Australia anyway. Also, I actually own some of the games I have ROMs of - for example, Super Smash Bros. and Donkey Kong Country.

I have pirated some DS games - I've also bought some of the games I've pirated (and vice-versa - for cheats, or the opposite version of Pokemon, etc. etc.).
#15 Sep 30 2008, 4:56 pm
I like the idea of rewarding the creators of spore (not EA; Will and other creators) because I want to show them their efforts weren't in vain. They may not have come out with the greatest game on the planet, but they made the greatest dynamics system ever created, and I'd like to see it used elsewhere.

That said, I haven't even played it yet :P
#16 Sep 30 2008, 6:11 pm
@Jp: You're in Melbourne right? Check out Dungeon Crawl. Its in the middle of the city. Great game store. They stock as much of what is, or was, good as possible.

The guy who runs the place really knows his stuff. You mention ObscureTitleX and he'll tell you about a similar game that's so obscure you'd never even heard about it, and that game will blow your mind.

Also, it doesn't hurt that it isn't on street level.
#17 Sep 30 2008, 8:00 pm
@Jp: You're in Melbourne right? Check out Dungeon Crawl. Its in the middle of the city. Great game store. They stock as much of what is, or was, good as possible.

Adelaide, I'm afraid. We have awesome stores too, though. :P

I like the idea of rewarding the creators of spore (not EA; Will and other creators) because I want to show them their efforts weren't in vain. They may not have come out with the greatest game on the planet, but they made the greatest dynamics system ever created, and I'd like to see it used elsewhere.

I'd like to reward Will and Maxis for their work - Spore does break a whole lot of new ground, and while it's unfinished, it's the unfinished version of an amazingly good game. And the editors are cool.

Unfortunately, there's no way I can do that without rewarding EA.
#18 Nov 7 2008, 9:38 am
I fall into a different category here. I payed for the game (due to an error with Direct2Drive), then torrented it a week before the game came out. Then, I fixed the issue with Direct2Drive and downloaded the legitimate copy.

I was quite disappointed with the game, but it did give me a few weeks of fun. It was worth the money I payed, and saved me a bunch of money I would have inevitably spent getting drunk instead.

I did the same with Fallout 3 and Fable 2. I did the same for Oblivion, the original Fable, and numerous other games.

I'll pay for games I deem worthy of my money, otherwise, I don't bother. I'm not going to pay for something that simply is not entertaining to me, or the information for was misleading.

I pirated Space Force: Rogue Universe and did not pay. It was not worth the money, as the game was frustrating, limited, and all the press on it was lies.