Hah. Not even a month ago I illegally downloaded a game, and bought it yesterday because I had enjoyed it and wanted to support the developer. Guess they counted that as a loss?😕
Naw. They look up the retail price of a AAA game and then multiply it by all the downloads on the site
It is like when they bust you for growing pot the cops weigh the entire tree with the dirt on the roots for the weight of the drugs. Every part of the tree is equally illegal, even though stems and sticks are worthless and good manicure is worth more than shitty, seedy buds. Nope. Weigh the whole tree and multiply it by some bullshit street price they made up and high five each other for keeping a million dollars of drugs off the streets.
I’ve been gaming for 35 years. I’ve known dozens of people who pirate games IRL. Online, I’ve probably known hundreds. Literally zero of them ever purchased a legitimate copy of a game after pirating it.
I think the “try before I buy” justification for piracy is completely dishonest and disingenuous. I have far more respect for people who simply admit that they want to play games without paying for them. Because that’s at least believable.
Nah, I've known at least 1 or 2 who do it, and done it myself a few times. It's definitely a rarity because more often when I'm on the fence enough to do that, I get it and realize "yeah, this is why I had my doubts". Then a portion of games I ever seek out are ones I technically already own on some defunct platform.
Hell, just last week I tried a leaked dev DRM-less copy of dragon's dogma 2, and thought "this is alright" and bought it. Then had to refund it because the actual release version was unstable garbage that crashed constantly, compared to a rock steady pirate version.
I wonder how much this behavior is influenced by the complete absence of demos and rentals in the industry now. I never bought every game I rented from Blockbuster, but I've definitely played a few demos to death and then bought the fully game when I finally found it, but sometimes that 900 seconds of the original GTA was all the experience I needed.
I do also know a few guys who will use the 2 hour steam refund window as a demo system, but honestly I'm usually happier to seek out a pirate copy rather than waste a real person's time at customer support for something I can just as easily do independently.
Plus I think the more you do treat Steam's refunds like that the more strict they get about what they'll let you do, understandably so, and I'd rather not strain their hospitality. Same reason I always get my refunds as steam credit, rather than real money. It's objectively worse for me in the short term, but they've generally been good enough to me as a customer than I'd rather do that than make them eat extra bank charges for an almost negligible inconvenience.
I don't believe you or anyone else who has said that they do this. It's not even a plausible lie. It's just another "you just lost a customer" gambit from someone who never was one.
Yeah, because the fact that I downloaded an Ogre Battle 64 ROM, a game I still own for the N64, because I'd rather play it via emulator is totally a lost sale and not a bullshit justification to destroy game preservation efforts in the face of the Stop Killing Games movement.
"3.2 million downloads" ... "caused the estimated loss of 170 million"
170 million / 3.2 million dowloads = $53.12
Oh please... only a tiny fraction of software pirates would have purchased the game, and only a tiny fraction of those at full price, and a chunk of those are going to purchase the game on some steam sale in the future anyway.
Your looking at a dollar of losses for each download at best.
only a tiny fraction of software pirates would have purchased the game
This is the big one I've always tried to point out. There's no reason to think someone who downloaded a free game would have also purchased the game if the free download wasn't available. That's basic economics.
The biggest one was a Nintendo Switch site, seems like. An article I found.
The action shut down NSW2U.com along with Game-2u.com, Bigngame.com, and ps4pkg.com. These platforms previously hosted thousands of pirated game downloads before federal agents seized their domains.
NSW2U.com operated as a central hub for Nintendo Switch game piracy.
The world is going to hell in a hand basket. What does the FBI do? Simp for some shitty corporations in the video games industry. God forbid, some broke teens get their hands on a video game for free or cheap.
Honestly there's plenty of normal countries it's more sensible to host in too. Anywhere that's even approaching a piracy grey area that has a .com domain is crazy to me.
The .to domain used to be very popular, but it seems like maybe it's not so popular now. Some of the sites I used to use have .to domain and they are dead now. For gaming sharing, I've found that .ir, .ru and .su sites seems to last a long time.
The feds and big corpos just don’t learn: pirating games are just a symptom of a sick industry. Either it’s a service problem, a product problem, or a cost problem. The big corpos are sick with all three.
How do they estimate loss from downloads? Where do those estimates come from? Surely the FBI isn't acting as a mouthpiece for corporations here.
Amount of downloads times base software cost. It's something stupid like that.
Hah. Not even a month ago I illegally downloaded a game, and bought it yesterday because I had enjoyed it and wanted to support the developer. Guess they counted that as a loss?😕
How much you wanna bet they count downloading SNES and N64 roms as someone not paying for a Nintendo Switch Online subscription?
Naw. They look up the retail price of a AAA game and then multiply it by all the downloads on the site
It is like when they bust you for growing pot the cops weigh the entire tree with the dirt on the roots for the weight of the drugs. Every part of the tree is equally illegal, even though stems and sticks are worthless and good manicure is worth more than shitty, seedy buds. Nope. Weigh the whole tree and multiply it by some bullshit street price they made up and high five each other for keeping a million dollars of drugs off the streets.
I’ve been gaming for 35 years. I’ve known dozens of people who pirate games IRL. Online, I’ve probably known hundreds. Literally zero of them ever purchased a legitimate copy of a game after pirating it.
I think the “try before I buy” justification for piracy is completely dishonest and disingenuous. I have far more respect for people who simply admit that they want to play games without paying for them. Because that’s at least believable.
Nah, I've known at least 1 or 2 who do it, and done it myself a few times. It's definitely a rarity because more often when I'm on the fence enough to do that, I get it and realize "yeah, this is why I had my doubts". Then a portion of games I ever seek out are ones I technically already own on some defunct platform.
Hell, just last week I tried a leaked dev DRM-less copy of dragon's dogma 2, and thought "this is alright" and bought it. Then had to refund it because the actual release version was unstable garbage that crashed constantly, compared to a rock steady pirate version.
I wonder how much this behavior is influenced by the complete absence of demos and rentals in the industry now. I never bought every game I rented from Blockbuster, but I've definitely played a few demos to death and then bought the fully game when I finally found it, but sometimes that 900 seconds of the original GTA was all the experience I needed.
I do also know a few guys who will use the 2 hour steam refund window as a demo system, but honestly I'm usually happier to seek out a pirate copy rather than waste a real person's time at customer support for something I can just as easily do independently.
Plus I think the more you do treat Steam's refunds like that the more strict they get about what they'll let you do, understandably so, and I'd rather not strain their hospitality. Same reason I always get my refunds as steam credit, rather than real money. It's objectively worse for me in the short term, but they've generally been good enough to me as a customer than I'd rather do that than make them eat extra bank charges for an almost negligible inconvenience.
If games have been made with ESG money then we already paid for it.
Where are you from?
I don't believe you or anyone else who has said that they do this. It's not even a plausible lie. It's just another "you just lost a customer" gambit from someone who never was one.
The only games I bought in the past 10 years are because I liked what I torrented and wanted to support the devs of woke-free products.
Feel free to believe whatever you want.
Yep ran the numbers before reading the comments and commented.
They are literally just assuming the (previous to this year standard new game cost) fifty bucks plus tax for every game ($53.12). It is nonsense.
Yeah, because the fact that I downloaded an Ogre Battle 64 ROM, a game I still own for the N64, because I'd rather play it via emulator is totally a lost sale and not a bullshit justification to destroy game preservation efforts in the face of the Stop Killing Games movement.
The FBI is seeding most of them.
And big corpos seed the others.
Same place where the gorillion AssCreed Shadows came from
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but...
I think the RIAA claimed that every pirated mp3 was worth like $100k per standard commercial use licensing fees or something.
It was each download=cost of a whole album and came out to more money than was in circulation in the world at the time iircDisregard. That was people trolling about what they'd do. They did get told to gtfo and come back with a realistic number by a judge though.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/1541572/riaa-request-for-trillions-in-limewire-copyright-case-is-absurd-judge-says.html
I'm not a big fan of the government.
"3.2 million downloads" ... "caused the estimated loss of 170 million"
170 million / 3.2 million dowloads = $53.12
Oh please... only a tiny fraction of software pirates would have purchased the game, and only a tiny fraction of those at full price, and a chunk of those are going to purchase the game on some steam sale in the future anyway.
Your looking at a dollar of losses for each download at best.
This is the big one I've always tried to point out. There's no reason to think someone who downloaded a free game would have also purchased the game if the free download wasn't available. That's basic economics.
Free isn't enough to get me to install Origin. The amount of humble bundle unredeemed games I could theoretically own is a testament to that fact.
If buying isn't owning, pirating isn't stealing
Which ones did they get? ROM distributors or currently produced games?
The biggest one was a Nintendo Switch site, seems like. An article I found.
Were they actually marketplaces, as stated by the FBI, or were they free downloads?
The FBI lied as usual. The games were freely distributed.
And you can still find Switch games roms on a bazillion other websites.
Nintendo Switch, that makes sense. You’re walking an extremely thin line doing that.
I wonder if this is part of trade deal negotiation.
The world is going to hell in a hand basket. What does the FBI do? Simp for some shitty corporations in the video games industry. God forbid, some broke teens get their hands on a video game for free or cheap.
I wonder if it was part of a trade deal with Japan or something.
Another group of Trump's donors come a knocking
Zognald is a globalist scum pedo
These websites need to be hosted in Iran or Russia.
Honestly there's plenty of normal countries it's more sensible to host in too. Anywhere that's even approaching a piracy grey area that has a .com domain is crazy to me.
The .to domain used to be very popular, but it seems like maybe it's not so popular now. Some of the sites I used to use have .to domain and they are dead now. For gaming sharing, I've found that .ir, .ru and .su sites seems to last a long time.
The feds and big corpos just don’t learn: pirating games are just a symptom of a sick industry. Either it’s a service problem, a product problem, or a cost problem. The big corpos are sick with all three.
Waste of time
Oh good, none of my good sites were affected.