A short bit on piracy.

MM said there is no reason to backup games, and these days, more than ever, it\'s almost entirely true.

Even if you:
A) Don\'t take care of your belongings, letting them be destroyed.
or
Take good care of your belongings, and have something accidentally destroyed,
there is a simple fact that negates using backups or mods.  99% of the companies out there will be happy to REPLACE your scratched/broken cd if you send them a self addressed, stamped cd holder with the broken CD in it.  

In the last 10 years, I\'ve only lost one CD (computer game), when my old CD drive crapped out and warped it with heat.  I wrote an email to the company (3D0 in this case), and told me that almost all gaming companies have a simmilar policy.  He said they would be happy to replace it, and I sent it in, got a new one back less than 2 weeks later.  You send them a disk, they send you a disk (a few may charge two to five bucks, but hey, it\'s prolly your fault).

****************************************
For those who don\'t even bother saying it\'s for backup/replacement purposes:
Piracy may seem like an attractive thing to do, it\'s cheap, fairly easy, and you could have 10 games for the price of one.  The problem with piracy, and really any crime, is that as soon as you have more than a very small percentage of people doing it, it really can screw up the rest of society.  If you have 1% of people shoplifting items, it will cause a minor problem, inconvenience.  10% of people doing it, and suddenly, prices in stores are going to go up waaaay more than 10% (cover costs, new security, less service for more floorwalkers), and you will end up getting watched all the time.  

It\'s the same with video game piracy.  I know it\'s attractive to people with limited incomes, but rather than hurting the video game community, the future games, and the game companies (cause if they start devoting more money to security features, that\'s less they\'re devoting to games and gameplay, and if some go out of business, the whole community suffers), simply be happy with that two game PS2 library.  
You will find you will only end up playing 2-3 games out of the twenty you could burn anyways.

Originally posted by FatalXception
there is a simple fact that negates using backups or mods.  99% of the companies out there will be happy to REPLACE your scratched/broken cd if you send them a self addressed, stamped cd holder with the broken CD in it.  

Thats funny, b/c NEVER have I been given a replacement cd or game that was destroyed one way or another.

Have you ever tried corresponding with the company?  I\'ve found that most people and companies out there are happy and willing to do small, reasonable things to keep paying customers happy.  This is just one example.  

Try this.  
Write support (or phone).
Get to a person (no auto-emal/phone FAQ).
Explain politely what happened, and ask what their policy is on replacements.
If they for some reason say no replacements, politely list some of their products you have bought, and list some of their future products you will no longer purchase.  Do it politely, however, but make it clear that they should value your business, and your friends business.  If they still say no, well, then I\'d consider following through on not buying their stuff, but I don\'t think that\'ll happen.  The 3D0 guy was more than happy to help me out, and he told me that most gaming companies will replace broken/damaged disks.  

Probably 80% of game company consumers become loyal \'fan-base\' buyers (for me, 3D0 for heroes games, Blizzard for everything, Square for RPGs).  Companies just can\'t afford to alienate a 2-to-4-game-a-year customer by not replacing a 2 dollar piece of plastic.

What about games that are no longer sold or supported by their parent company? How else are you supposed to get a game replaced if the company who made it won\'t sell it anymore/went out of buisness/got bought out? And if noone is making money off of said game which is out of production, then what\'s the harm in copying it? It\'s not like anyone is loosing money.

I dare any one of you to go out and buy a copy of Escape from Castle Wolfenstein. (The 2D Amiga predecessor to Wolf 3D) There are SOME cases where, although not legal because of intellectual copyrights, making backups and pirating isn\'t such a bad thing.

That\'s why I said \'almost entirely\' true.  However, I think you can agree, that you didn\'t need to make a backup of castle wolfenstien.  If you took care of it, you still have it (I still have all my old sierra --- quest, prince of persia I and II, lode runner, etc. floppies).  If you don\'t still have it, but you suddenly get a hankering to play those 10 year old games, you can find a copy on the net (maybe even abandoneware by now), and since you bought it once, that\'s ok.  We are talking about backing up current games, most definitely not abandoneware.

But make a \'backup\' of say, FFX?  GT3?  MGS2?  I don\'t think so.  These companies are around, strong, and will still have plenty of replacement cds to send out.

If you get a hankering to play FFX in ten years or so, I\'m sure your computer of that time will be up to emulating the PS2.

My ttt cd was scratched to hell and the Game Doctor only made it worse.  I took it to a trade-in shop that has a professional disc resurfacing machine and it looked & worked just as good as new.  Only $3 too.

Originally posted by FatalXception
Have you ever tried corresponding with the company?  I\'ve found that most people and companies out there are happy and willing to do small, reasonable things to keep paying customers happy.  This is just one example.  

Try this.  
Write support (or phone).
Get to a person (no auto-emal/phone FAQ).
Explain politely what happened, and ask what their policy is on replacements.

Of course, otherwise I wouldnt have bothered to post. Im always quite polite when addressing situations like that in life, even when Im pissed off, I still give the other guy the benefit of the doubt untill he proves to be an arse.

I agree w/ fatal xception here, as well as with the policy of the boards here...piracy is wrong, I haven\'t ever done it, and there really is no excuse for "making a backup copy" of any PS2 game, or for that matter, any game.  Just take care of your stuff...you get done playing, put the CD/DVD back in the box...how freakin\' hard is that?  The rest of the argument is sound too...the companies put a lot of money into games now, and if you rip them off, then there won\'t be any good games later.  So stop pirating stuff.

BUT, one thing I really have to ask...again, I\'m not condoning piracy at all...

Lots of people get their threads locked and get banned here for asking questions about how to pirate their games, and that\'s just fine by me.  However, they always get banned with a response like "If you read the sticky post at the top of the forum, you swine, you would know not to ask these questions, etc."  

The problem is that the new members FAQ doesn\'t say anything about piracy...it says "no warez or porn will be tolerated, and will result in a banning"...and I may be showing my net-illiteracy here, but I don\'t know what warez is.  Those of us who have been surfing the forum here for a while, like myself, know that this is the practice here, but it isn\'t written down, unless I missed it.  Some people come here after being at IGN or somewhere, where this kind of stuff is just fine...shouldn\'t you guys make it more clear in the FAQ though?  Just wondering is all...

im not suprised that IGN condones piracy threads in thier forums
those pricks do anything for ad money

anyways, somewhere in the posts above someone said the magic phrase

"take care of yer stuff"

that about sums it all up
only children leave stuff lying around to be damaged

Sorry mm, you can take care of all your stuff, BUT $hit happens...
It´s our (in Germany) given right to make one copy of any CD, DVD, Tape or whatever media and that is OK !!!
Me too don´t like guys who sell copied CD at the backjard or somewhere else... This issue is as old as the Tape !
Nobody can tell how much money is lost due to copies and nobody can tell that he/she doesn´t have a copy of something...
So don´t "throw the first stone" !!!
I truly belive, that there are less than 5% that only owns copies, most of them own copys and originals.
I don´t like expensive originals and I don´t like copies, but what I fear more is some big company which´s telling me what to do with my own stuff !!!

I know FatalX, but that\'s all that I was saying. As long as the software isn\'t sold or supported any longer then I don\'t see the harm in freely downloading it.. even if you never previously owned it. Noone is loosing money on the deal. Really, how much is it going to hurt the games industry if I download my copy of Skate or Die, Test Drive, or Conquests of Camelot instead of sitting on my thumbs wishing I could play it?  If they want to sell old programs again... fine.. that\'s the POINT. To get these old games and programs out in the community again... weither sold or illegally. I would gladly pay 15 a month for free access to a central server from which I could download games.. then have that money split up between the companies who co-own that server and games.

"If you took care of it, you still have it (I still have all my old sierra --- quest, prince of persia I and II, lode runner, etc. floppies)." - FatalX

No matter how good of care you take, over time the likeliness of accidents destroying your software increases. Every single copy of Quest for Glory that I have is downloaded except QFG5. I also own the original disks to each copy. But many of those disks are corrupted because of time... and many don\'t even have hardware which reads them anymore. (5 1/4) Sure CD\'s won\'t degrade the way floppys will.. but what happens when there comes a time that CD\'s & DVD\'s are obsolete and noone uses the media anymore? When you have no drive to access the media.. how can you play it? Luckily, my 386\'s old 5 1/4 is still in top shape, and is hooked up to my current PC.. many people who want to play old games & software don\'t have that luxury though.

I\'m just trying to play devil\'s advocate here. I think piracy.. under the right conditions.. is a good thing because it gives people access to games and media they would otherwise could not enjoy. However, there is no excuse for pirating software that is still widely sold and supported by their parent company. That certainly includes PSX, N64, Dreamcast, NGC, Xbox, and the PS2 in that list.

moot point, the eye

what are you going to do with that "backup" of yer game, look it at?

you need a chip of some sort in yer console to play it, which voids the warranty, AND leads to piracy

if someone puts a chip in thier console to play thier "legal" backup, whats going to stop them from playing other "illegal" backups

thats right, nothing

again, theres NO practical reason to make a backup of a game
if you damage it due to carelessness, suck it up and go buy another one

I seriously doubt anyone is not guilty of some kind of piracy, at some point in their life.

music? or gaming?

i got no beef with music pirating
TOO many times i bought a bands 16$ CD just to realize the ONLY good song was the one on the radio  

too many crappy CD\'s out there we got tricked into buying

how many games u get "tricked" into buying?

Originally posted by mm
music? or gaming?

i got no beef with music pirating
TOO many times i bought a bands 16$ CD just to realize the ONLY good song was the one on the radio  

too many crappy CD\'s out there we got tricked into buying

how many games u get "tricked" into buying?

I call that double standard. And in yer own words, moot point mm. Either you\'re 100% against all piracy or you\'re not. It looks like you aren\'t so all your arguments are BS to me.

I agree 100% with the Eye. I should have the right to whatever I ****ing want with my own things no matter what.

Chips don\'t play pirated games, people do.