Warez seen good for developers?

I can't recall the countless amount of articles that I have read both online and in magazines concerning the proflific warez scene that exisits on the internet. I find it ironic that publisher wish to portray themselves as the victims of a vicious and illegal black market trade that eats at their profits and destroys future investment and gaming creativity. Surley it is the pure greed of developers and desire for low investment and high returns that has created a vacumn in which the warez culture can grow and develop. Many of us who have been online for many years will have noticed that prior to broadband rips of full product titles where often sub standard with much of the extra media content removed to keep the file size down enough for it to be reasonable to download. However the more recent availability of wider band internet has meant that the rip copies are now obselete and cloning of full tiltes is now common place.

It could be argued that file sharing cloned copies of full games 'hurts' the industry and negates any future development rendering the market stagnant. However it should be noted that there is somewhat of a dispute as to what constiutes a 'fair price' for a game, to my mind £34.99 in a store for a PC title in my opinion is overpriced, apart from the rare title most games appear untested and substandard with poor graphics and stability issues. However it is the multiplayer element of titles that appeals to the internet community and this cannot usually be played using a clone copy of the game.

This in turn encourages to purchase a retail copy of the full game thus increasing the sales of the publisher. As single player experiences in games appear to becoming shorter and shorter it is the multiplayer element that provides the longevity of any title and almost justifies the heavy price tag demanded by publishers. So it could be argued that if a title is good enough the warez seen works in the favour of publishers by restricting the most important element of any game and that is multiplayer.

hehehe, i dunno where you dl your stuff that you get only half the goods becasue of file size.
Activision actually wants to raise the prices of games for around 5-8 bucks more(dunno where I've read it, but it was recently)
Only problem is that they have to get the other puplishers to get on the acoupleofbucksmore train....
As for me I pay for a game when I consider it to be worth the doe.


PS: found the article...

But what constitues a game worthy of your money? thats the point, my argument is that there are so many substandard titles around that does nothing to promote the PC as a gaming platform

well, what's worth paying for always depends on each personal view.
I say we should warez everyting that VALVE, Codemasters and EA makes. the rest we have to recouncle by release

and in case you missed the Price Hike article...

Codemasters?

I can see (and ofcourse, extremely hate) EA but Codemasters?

yeah, CodeMasters....i hate comps that brings out minor updates as full price games.

What exactly is your point? That developers are greedy for wanting to make a profit, and that the ones who steal from them are in some way making a statement? That when a game doesn't fall within what YOU consider an acceptable price range, you feel you are justified in stealing it?

I find it curious that you want to portray developers and publishers as greedy SOBs for wanting to make a profit based on a product that they have spent time and money on, while ignoring the fact that the "warez culture" is stealing something that they don't NEED but WANT. They just don't want to pay for it, and the reason they don't want to pay for it is not because they lack the money, but because they can get it for free by stealing it. But it's the devs and publishers who are the greedy ones? Riiiiight.

If a game is not worth a purchase than it's not worth to be played....but sinse I do plenty of worthless deeds in my life I might as well.........

I think £34.99 is pretty cheap for a game you can play FOREVER, if you wish. I don't think its so black and white, I would be interested in seeing how high the profit margins are for these games. I would say it isn't crazily high. And obviously there is a good demand for these games at the chosen, becuase the market would simply cave in.

You are just cheap tbh.

I'll disagree with you Sarafan. Look a few years back, hl for example. How long did it take for you to finish it? And later DoD,CS,TF and other came along. of coure they were aimed at keeping the sales high (which they did very well). And now? Look at hl2 (not trying to revive that thread), you gotta pay 80 bucks UP FRONT for hl2+CS+DoD?....
Well...
And now what games require more than 25-30 hours of gameplay from an experienced gamer? What about replayability, I had loads of fun just playing that game again on higher diff back then, and now? Most are one time, and those not aimed at mp usually don't last long online.
Game devs have to do more to keep up with the times, but they don't even try to make the games so long/deep.