So with the recent news of the Wii U's supposed hacking, I thought I would ask the question presented in the headline while providing my own thoughts on the matter.
Piracy is something I think almost any big gamer is guilty of at one point or another and whether they know it or not. Downloading a free game or perhaps playing a copy that friend made for you, for instance. The use of ROMs, ISOs and other files that infringe copyrights is pretty prevalent in today's gaming industry which has lead to a restructuring of how developers handle it.
Ubisoft took the DRM route on the PC, forcing players to be online even when playing a single player game. EA tried the same approach more recently with SimCity, ultimately ending with disastrous results.
And finally, the granddaddy of these arguments; the PSN hack attack. Needless to say, this was an attack on the company of Sony itself as oppose to anyone else. I remember after the network had been cracked, there were reports of hundreds of thousands worth of PSN games being stolen. After having filed a lawsuit against a hacker who had broken into the PS3's supposedly unbreakable infrastructure, Sony received DDoS attacks from an online group that gad broken off of their original ties with Anonymous. This resulted in the personal information of many users being stolen as well as the entire Playstation Network being shut down. Unfortunately for me, this happened the very day I had picked up my copy of Portal 2 on the system, preventing me from linking my PSN account to my Steam account and even from getting my free copy on Steam.
On a side note, much of the media pointed many fingers at Sony. I felt that too much of the blame was aimed at Sony and not nearly enough at the hackers who had perpetrated the issue. It was a mess and Sony's handling of it was obviously not perfect, but they certainly handled it much better than other corporations have; and fans received free games as a result. Doesn't fix it, but it's better than nothing.
So we have the obvious drawbacks to hacking and piracy. But what are the positives?
Like with any medium, piracy can lead to one thing in particular; notoriety. As with band demo tapes getting passed around, a game that gets widely downloaded can become more and more popular as the years go by. The Mother series is a pretty good example of this.
Hacking on the other hand can also lead to breaking region locks as well as conveniences like the Homebrew channel for the Wii. While people could use this to effectively download and steal Wii games, the channel brought upon many neat features like DVD playback and game modding communities, particularly for the Smash Bros. series.
Where I stand on it is obviously not going to turn many heads, but I think hacking/piracy is acceptable under particular circumstances. For starters, I don't approve of stealing games that are currently on the market in some way. If there is a game you want to play and you can buy it legally (whether for its console or on an emulator), then I feel that's what gamers should do. If it's a rare game that cannot be bought in a legal manner, then it's hard to say that it's a bad thing to download since there's no money being made from the title.
For another, modding can lead to some cool things. But considering where hackers took the PS3 and in some regard the Wii, it's obvious that people with the ability to crack all of these codes cannot always be trusted. I think the Homebrew channel was a plus for the console as oppose to a negative, but leading to the theft of games like on the PSN (and obviously later the hack attack) really makes the line between acceptable and unacceptable a lot thinner.
Enough gabbing out of me. What's your take?
The friendly folks over at Razer recently sent us their full size Kishi Ultra mobile gaming controller, and this thing didn't disappoint.
VGChartz's Mark Nielsen: "Upon finally finishing Devil May Cry 5 recently - after it spent several years on my “I’ll play that soon” list - I considered giving it a fittingly-named Late Look article. However, considering that this was indeed the final piece I was missing in the DMC puzzle, I decided to instead take this opportunity to take a look back at the entirety of this genre-defining series and rank the entries. What also made this a particularly tempting notion was that while most high-profile series have developed fairly evenly over time, with a few bumps on the road, the history of Devil May Cry has, at least in my eyes, been an absolute roller coaster, with everything from total disasters to action game gold."
3,1,4,5 to me, never played 2. 5 gameplay is amazing but level design was really disappointing to me, just a bunch of plain arenas, the story felt like a worse written rehash of the 3rd and the charater models looked weird ( specially the ladies ). Another problem with 5 was that there was not enough content for 3 charaters so I could never really familiarize with any of them
2.
Dmc.
4.
5.
1.
3.
God DMC2 was an awful game.
And in case this isn't obvious it goes worst to best
Order changes depending on your focus. I tend to focus on gameplay/fun factor, so...
5, 3, 1, 4, 2.
I really didn't like 4 but commend Dante's weapon diversity. The retreading of old ground was pretty unacceptable to me.
But even then... Still more enjoyable than 2 for me
TSA go hands on with the beta for Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road, but how is the game transitioning to the post-stylus era?
Piracy and hacking are against federal laws in my country and breaking those laws are not acceptable. There is no room for leniency or debate on that part. In my opinion, the bottom line is that the law is against it and that is the final word.
No!
Especially not if it effects developers 99%(shitty ripoff games on phones and clones) of them work very hard on their games, in crush time they work probably 14-16 hours daily to finish the game we love. So i think they deserve the money even if you pick it up from a DD sale,bargain bin or just wait till it ends up on PS+. Dont go pirating it and saying well it doesnt matter i was never gonna buy it anyway cause that is BS.
Yes!
Just go to India, South Korea, Thailand, China, Brazil, Spain, South Africa and even Canada.
You can fight it but it will always be there. Our world is full of piracy even licensed products we use today got their ideas from someone or somewhere very little of what we do or use today is original.
Life it not fair "deal with it"
I have never seen the hacking and pirating of games as a good thing. I believe that such instances of causing copyright infringement lead to companies enforcing certain practices (like DRM) on legitimate paying customers as harmful to both business and the industry. While it may be a good thing that gamers can get their hands on older, harder to find games like Chrono Trigger, the long term damage on modern hacking and pirating stings more.
It is with cases like Diablo III and Sim City that have caused gamers to go into an uproar over these practices. Companies reinforce that it is to protect their product. I don't blame someone for wanting to protect their investment, but others may not see it that way. The problem, however, is answered as to how and why the company went to this conclusion in the first place. They wanted to avoid piracy and hackers taking advantage in making money off of their games and abusing the system.
Look at the online communities of the Call of Duty games. There is a plethora of Youtube videos showing many gamers (some of them kids) using hacks online and making a profit off of it. Do they get in trouble for it? Nope. But the companies would instead enforce DRM or online passes to get by these people.
It is because of people slipping through the cracks and abusing a product that result in companies wanting more protection regardless of how it affects paying customers. So, in short, I do not think that hacking and pirating is a good thing for the industry and business in the present day, but I begrudgingly admit that it could open doors for older and hard to find games to be played. However, if that were the case, you would think that companies would release these games again on PSN, E-Shop, and the Marketplace.
Does anyone recall when ANTI-GREED, ANTI CONSUMER-THEFT developer Notch (Minecraft) told everyone to pirate his game if they could not afford it?
Think deeply, beyond the small cube your thought process is trapped in.
There's a teensy weensy chance you might figure it out(though I seriously doubt it).
Why would he do this? Doesn't he realize he could have 37 more houses, 18 more yachts, 12 more Ferrari's and months more of coke/whores..
Doesn't he want to be like all the other corporate heads?