Why do you pirate games?

by the looks of things demos could fix 39% of piracy. assuming the stats here are anything to go by

I don't pirate indie games. I try to support the indie devs, since I'm trying to become one. It's really sad that indie games have high piracy. It's almost disgusting...

I won't lie, I have pirated a game before, namely SPORE, but that was because I didn't have an internet connection on my PC at the time, and I kinda have a grudge against EA. I would never pirate an indie game.

Honestly the only way to completely stop piracy is top make all games free or to stop making games. The point here is trying to find out how to decrease it.

Unfortunately that's all I have to say about this.

Australian Classification Board makes me do it!!! i don't wanna!! *cries*
But never would i pirate an indie game!

never download any indie or small companys game, i think how would i feel if some1 would do that to me....

avoiding DRM is not a valid excuse for pirating games. I buy games then use no-cd exes for avoiding DRM without pirating the game.

People pirate a lot especially if they live in countries where the price of games is outrageously high (in Kenya, I've seen psp games over £100) In fact, in some countries you can't buy some games at all. I know you're all going to say that you can download them legally but, speaking for myself, steam is a real pain and credit card transactions online are difficult with a weedy internet connection so half the time you end up paying for the game twice.

But also, I think a major cause is that people want to get round the age rating, I know several people who pirate because they can't legally buy the game at their age

The above reasons aren't about indie games though. I never even knew that people do pirate indie games until I saw this poll

Pirating is... practically like stealing. I honesty don't see a difference. Seriously, think about it. A game is a product, right? A product of hard work. Making games is not easy, making good games is even harder. It takes time, from months to years.

Building a new car takes time, building a good car is hard too. Takes months to years from concept to final setup.

Now if someone would just walk in and take the cars from you, how different is that from taking games away with no compensation to the developer?

Or any other product, really.

It's pathetic that people consider games less of a product, yet they are so attached to them that they can't stop gaming. Sad.

What's even more sad, that a lot of people that pirate don't even realize they are ruining the possibility of someone to live, to build a family, to continue making great games...

I only "pirate" games I already own, or pretty rare games otherwise impossible to find. I actually have bought several games and haven't played them yet due to lack of time.

With Incognito Episodes we let people play half of each episode as shareware and give away the full version. Serial number unlocks to full version. Using this method we have actually had decent conversion rates - sure there is piracy we can see it on the server logs plain as day.

Full version as a demo basically, if you don't like what you see then just uninstall it and move on. If you like it can pick up where you left off without having to start a new game and can activate each key 10 times on Windows or Mac it doesn't matter.

My point if anything is that DRM is used to prevent casual copying and nothing more. We even have plans to remove it when we are finished with the game and release the "final patch" so to speak. Pirates have money to - give them a chance to spend it. The people who are never going to pay never will anyway so don't lose sleep over it.

Pirating an Indie is just sad. It's like paying 1 dollar for the Humble Indie Bundles. Someone doing that doesn't give a crap about devs.

Speaking further -- I agree demos should be expanded. Heavenly Sword's demo is shorter than the time it takes me to heat something in a toaster oven. Some demos are very good examples of how to give someone a taste of the game, however (specifically: InFamous, Vanquish Challenge Mode, Lego Star Wars III, Mass Effect 2, Age of Empires III).

Frankly, I intend to make more than one demo for my game.

I live in Brazil and buy a game is not that think... we have a "bit" high taxes, that make games unbuyable. A game that cost $49, in brasil cost about 4 times it. We have 160% of tax (yes 160%). Do the math, very expensive.

It's easier.

Most of the time I buy my games. On the seldom occasion that I do pirate a game, it's because I'm a poor student and I like to see if it's worth the cost to buy it now or get it later when it goes down in price. Sometimes, it's because it's an extremely old game and finding it is like finding a needle in a hay stack.

I think the last indie game I pirated was Terraria. And that was a year ago. I liked the game so much that I bought it right away from Steam.

Also, Steam is what PREVENTS me from pirating. It's seriously so convienient to have ALL of my games in one place, with information about the game, a nice banner to go along with it, and the amount of playtime I put into a game. The ability to download something again if I need to at no extra charge is nice too. And with the constant sales Steam has on everything, pirating is something that shouldn't really have to be done unless buying said game is still a gamble.

Too much effort goes into pirating games too. You have to download it from some sketchy site, search ALL over the place for a stupid crack to run it, and then mount the disc so it thinks you have a physical disc in the drive. It's just too much, it's worth it to buy it just so you don't have to go through all that trouble. Doing all that is worse than dealing with DRM itself.

I don't pirate games but if its heavy DRM i usually crack them.

I run linux, I like to test if WINE will run the game if it's PC only.

I think kids pirate games because their parents won't buy the games they want. They become sneaky and get all those games they secretly want... like Barbie Horse Adventure.

I only buy those games which multiplayer I cannot get access to otherwise, like Battlefield 3 for example. Apart from that I pirate everything, I'd rather spend my money on actual things I can use like clothes or food then giving my money away. It's ok though you guys can cover for me, that's my motto, Don't worry there are always people who will take morality into consideration.

I think a legit reason to pirate something would be to see if it would run on your computer, like say you want to play BioShock Infinite, so you buy it but then you find out it runs on your computer for about 3 fps there is no worse feeling, trust me i know.
Or, if you own the game on another console and one of your friends has it on a different console such as PC you've already paid for the game, you shouldn't have to pay more just to play with a few of your friends