Torrents, Is it ever OK

NickJames

Join Date 03/2006

Torrents, Is it ever OK

I have 2 pirated PC games installed right now. The first is F1 Challenge 99-02, The second is System Shock 2. I`ve searched every retail store availible for them. Don`t have them, They are old. I`ve looked online, Amazon doesn`t have them. Ebay does, But 100+ dollar`s apiece. I can`t afford that. I pirated them, Is that wrong? I`m a big F1 fan, I used to have F1 2002, I moved and the game disc disappeared. I look around on a alot of game forum`s, System Shock 2 is alway`s held up as a high point. I really wanted to try it. I pirated it, It was a great game. It makes my skin crawl to do this. What I`m asking is, Is it ever OK to do this?

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I try to support developer`s I like. System Shock 2 came from Looking Glass studio`s and Irrational game`s. I have bought Deus EX 1 and 2, Swat 4 and the expansion. I also bought Bioshock. I think I`m going to buy Freedom Force and the Thief collection as well on Amazon.

F1 challenge was develpoed by Image Space Inc. I did own F1 2002 and I also bought Rfactor.

I wish the publisher`s would make these old game`s available via download. I have no problem paying for them, It`s just the Ebay collector price I can`t handle.

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As long as you're downloading games made by GPG, then torrents are okay. I'm totally suffering now for caring and buying their games

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EviliroN

Join Date 04/2008

+20

what do you mean about that from GPG?

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see now, I was coming to defend torrenting. I can't really defend pirating, and the original post only addresses pirating games. I mean, I have opinions about torrent pirating of course (like pirating games that can't be purchased I feel is justified, some goes for hard to find music and movies, because in these cases it isn't that the person doesn't want to give the original owner credit, its that they can't) but I feel they are biased and not right to be in a discossion topic like this one.

I feel that torrents as a whole are good (I personally have very few torrents that are illegal, and those I have because I can't purchase the licenced product yet or don't believe that the people who would get the money if I bought it deserve that money because they are not the original creators)

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I think people will stop pirating games when games installed files are going to be like 20 GB. Unless the internet companies provided faster internet services at a cheaper price. It will be insane to be able to pirate anything like 20 GB especially there are limits to bandwidth usage, and extra charges for going over the limit. I download stuff, but just not games, but rather, i download academic books when i need it for academic research purposes, plus it will take forever for interlibrary loan to get the damn book.

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...or don't believe that the people who would get the money if I bought it deserve that money because they are not the original creators

This is exactly how i feel about the whole piracy/torrent/drm/cd/etc distribution *method(s)*... unless, we (as USERS) have a point of reference where we can safely assume the money we spend (or not, btw) goes straight into the pockets of people who deserve it -- i really can't see how else products can be sustainable from design (more like thinking about coding it) to final end storage by installation on hard drives.

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CobraA1

Join Date 09/2006

+26

I think people will stop pirating games when games installed files are going to be like 20 GB.

Heh, games are getting there!

WoW is ~14 GB, and GRID comes to about 10 GB installed. With realism and huge worlds being demanded more for games, I imagine it'll happen soon.

Interestingly enough WoW uses bittorrent to download updates.

I've been pretty skeptical of the technology of bittorrent, though. It hates firewalls, and finding good peers is problematic. The protocol is also inherently biased against asymmetric connections. In any case, it seems that I rarely get my entire bandwidth from a bittorrent connection. In the time it takes to find a few good peers with bittorrent, I can have a pretty good size portion of a direct download already downloaded.

Frankly, 10 Mb/s is 10 Mb/s whether it's from 20 sources or 1 source. And in all honesty, 20 sources is actually less efficient because of overhead.

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i think this may be moveing a bit off topic but now movies are being released as torrents. blank was released as a torrent and dvd you can buy the dvd in stores or you can get the torrent, they work this by giveing you a link to their site where you can make a donation to them depending on how good you found the movie.

just pointing out that there are diffenrt ways to use the tech which gives everybody what they want.

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EviliroN

Join Date 04/2008

+20

well, i have to say that there can be a difference between torrents and piracy.

e.g.

I have cable, and pay for it, but with my odd work schedule, i do not get to watch the 1 or 2 shows I like. thus I can hop on easytv and DL a torrent. NP for me, I technically paid for the content I am DLing and this way I don't have to waste money on a DVR

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There are two cases in which I've done it, Starcraft and NWN: Hordes of the Underdark. Both of which were/are games I bought, but the disks went missing or got too scratched up, respectively. I wish I had held on to my original SC CD key now that they have their digitial backup service :/

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