Don't bother mate he is narcissistic his mind is made up there is no middle ground for him. Even when you show good manners and attempt to step down he still comes back at you.

For the record I sit on the fence here I don't pirate, but then I almost never pay full price for a game, according to StingingVelvet I'm a bad person because I'm not REALLY supporting the game industry, yeah steam has those sales to shoot themselves in the foot.

StingingVelvet your right nobody needs games but people do need food therefore we should all stop buying games and pass the proceeds to the third world, well? you up for a REAL non virtual put your money where your mouth is cause?

You must have missed the hundreds of articles talking about the lack of non-Sony PSP games due to piracy on the platform. One just came out recently where the PSP God of War devs talked about piracy making a non-God of War game on PSP a pointless exercise.
I enjoy debating, and if I make a good point and someone says "oh well nevermind" I consider that lame. He said "agree to disagree" because he had no retort.

Where did I say bad person? Stop putting words in my mouth. All I said was if people support PC gaming I have no issue with them, whether they pirate, crack or piss on their games I don't give a shit, just support the industry. Buying a game 2 years late for $5 is not supporting the industry, sorry if that upsets you but it's a fact.

That's such a reach it made me chuckle... it has nothing to do with other people, or with altruism. The only point is that framing piracy to test a game as a need because of return policies or high prices is self-deception, that is not why people do it because if those were their sole issues they could just not buy the games and never have a problem, they don't need the games, they can not buy them and avoid those risks. Instead people selfishly demand that they get new games to play, them pirate them if buying the game is risky or too expensive, which is BS.
Video games are not part of your "needs hierarchy" dude, that's the whole point. You do not need video games, and if you take them anyway without paying for the luxury it just makes you selfish. I mean, not to be harsh, but that's the end point of it.

I thought the PSP was known for being able to hack it to play roms and stuff? Sorry, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm just confused. I know a lot of the gamers I know have bricked their PSP's. (bricked? Is that the right word?)

I already showed you why pirating games can be viewed as something other than selfish desire, rather, a logical step in the consumer's research.

Is not being responded to a sign of winning the debate/point?

You are aware that you contradicted yourself there about 3 times, aren't you?

And stop putting words in people's mouths. No-one said they *needed* to get the game, they say they *need* to pirate it so they can test/try it out because there is no other acceptable way (like blindly buying them).

It's definitely supporting the industry. Folks tend to factor in that resale value when they buy games. I 'd be surprised if companies could get as much money for games as they do it they couldn't be resold. That's the real reason why so many games on Steam end up going for less than what would be the normal retail price.

It's one of the reasons why I don't think that digital distribution is going to be the way of the future the way that some folks do. For me it doesn't make much of a difference as I don't sell my games, but I don't buy them early on typically either. I usually wait until they come down in price. Though I do make exceptions from time to time for things like Fallout New Vegas.

EDIT: This thread has turned into something that's interesting in the time since I last read anything in it. Nice going guys.

I've been gaming since the 80s and this is the same argument that was used back then. Also, there is no music, tape cassettes killed it in the 80s.

Piracy is merely an excuse for bad company behavior 90% of the time. Also video game sales gross more than Hollywood, don't buy the BS that the industry is about to die (though I believe in a way it needs to die and be reborn - but I'm crazy, Crazy Dave style crazy).
The PSP has issues because of Sony. The DS has more piracy than any current gen platform and is making a freaking killing IN ALL markets. Not only that it supports a ton of 3rd party development. They didn't even have any copy protection until the third rev of the DS, the DSi.
No one is obligated to "support" anything for anything's sake purely. If that 5 bucks is all a game is worth to a person then great. If the industry is incapable of producing anything that individual wants to shell out full price for then the industry is not terribly valuable to that person. Besides, it's not like the industry makes nothing on a 5 dollar video game, they either made their investment back by then or they never will, the buck they get from the 5 dollar purchase should be 100% profit if they didn't release a game nobody wanted.

I just don't understand why initially it was "Pirates are bad guys and hurting the industry," to "Second hand buyers are bad guys and hurting the industry," to "Anyone who doesn't buy at full price on release day is bad and hurting the industry."

I really think you and I like a different industry, man. The industry I liked is full of passionate people who had morals and loved their audience, I mean really loved them by going above and beyond. I don't see that much today and consequently I don't have much love to "return" to the industry that doesn't do that (save the ones who do, I love you guys, GOG, Spiderweb Software, and a few others!).

If all the big studios, I mean all of them, closed up shop tomorrow and we had no Christmas releases I don't think I'd shed a single tear. It would actually make room for a chance, even a chance, for those passionate people to come back and take the reins.

Well, it's epidemic enough that Ready At Dawn (of God of War fame) seems set to abandon it.

I read that article and all it sounded like to me was "We aren't making as much profit as we could so we are going to abandon all those people that pay for/like our games on that platform". The reason cited wasn't even "We are making a loss" where no longer making games for that platform would make sense..

Who won't care? Pirates.
Who will lose out/be upset? The people who paid for the games.

Pirates will care if the games they want aren't available on platforms that are easy to crack.

EDIT: Upon consideration, this is a moronic thing to say. There are no major platforms which haven't been cracked (to my knowledge). Still, it requires them to buy diverse hardware, I guess. At least the hardware vendors don't suffer due to piracy!

So far as I'm aware, the PS3 is still pretty much pirating free.

You'd be wrong, Sony's been suing a lot of folks over circumvention lately. You can't play online, but crackers have had "backup" copies working for a couple of months.

It's actually taken off a bit over the last several months. Sony basically started a cat and mouse game when they removed the OtherOS functionality, and since then the hardware hackers have been quite busy, with the pirates co-opting their discoveries for their own purposes.

The platform did hold out for ages, though. I can't help but notice that the console only got hacked after linux support was removed. I guess it goes to show that it's mostly the homebrew people who make the progress - not warez people.