I don’t pirate games/music/movies…
The definition of stealing isn’t nearly as clear-cut as you make it out to be when we’re talking about unauthorized copying. Handwaving about “rationalizations” and “sugar coatings” doesn’t mean that those arguments are intrinsically invalid. With piracy(or copyright infringement, to be specific), nobody’s property is lost. There is nothing stolen. That’s why the legal system calls it copy protection instead of theft and why it’s a civil crime and not a criminal one. In America, at least.
As a content producer, I don’t have any serious problem with piracy. It’s a fact of life today and the tables aren’t going to turn to the legitimate user’s favor by treating the pirates like thieves. Work hard, be creative and give the pirates a reason to become customers. If you do all you can and they still won’t cough over the cash, they probably wouldn’t have bought your product anyway. No loss.
Exactly. And if there were no more torrenting, you would probably get the same amount of sales. I mean, who would torrent a program when you have the money for it? That would be stupid! But the kids who don’t have the money for it, would not even have the program. They won’t even be able to buy it. So, IMO little harm done.
You can tell the people who can be trusted with your code or prerelease versions or not pretty quickly when intellectual property comes up in a conversation.
On a side note, Def Mech, your Mars game looks pretty cool. I hope it’s going to be free, because if it is not, you won’t obviously won’t mind if one were to make it into free software.
If what you’re referring to is what I think it is, it isn’t my game. I was commenting on how I wanted to see more since they don’t seem to post often. If it was my game, though, I wouldn’t get upset if you admitted to downloading it for free. I’m not sure how that translates into trusted agreements or NDAs and contracts…
I’d prefer if you paid me for the copies of the software I’ve worked on if you can manage(and if you actually have a need for it). I understand if you can’t, though.
I think this is a good business attitude, people that can’t or don’t buy it wouldn’t buy it any way. If you are a good sport and don’t freak out about that, you might have a future potential customer instead, and you could get their respect making your brand look better.
In the worst possible scenario, this non paying consumer might spread the word about how your software works or how cool it is. So it´s always better to face it like a free publicity. Many brands spends thousands and thousands of dollars to look good. Why look like a prick over a pirated license that you can’t charge anyway?
A lot of people ignore free alternatives to software and can afford to pay it, but they don’t. So why would you be upset?
You can’t quite make it that black and white.
Here’s an example: Lets say I’m never, ever going to buy Modern Warfare 2. However, a friend says it’s good and I should download it to try it. If I do illegally download it, have a stolen $60 from Activision? I was never going to pay the money, and they didn’t actually lose anything tangible.
I don’t fully agree with my argument, but it is one of the counter arguments out there.
EDIT: Side note, looking at the features Unity Pro offers, they seem kinda cool (dynamic shadows!) but nothing really jumps out at me as completely essential. If I was an indie designer who used Unity to make profitable games, then yes, I would buy it, but if you just want to get started and make some neat games there isn’t anything really necessary.
Iron, you may or may not mean to do it, but you cover how you can make games for free, but some compromise is needed.
Hell, for the licensing costs, I would be willing to buy a copy of pro for somebody willing to sell the rights to a pretty good game with code made in Indie. There’s an incubation offer for Pro.
EDIT:
I hate spammers.
CreativeCoding, that image is completely unnecessary. Instead of posting big, unhelpful images, try contacting a moderator about the problem. That may accomplish something besides cluttering the thread.
Your right.
How do I contact a mod or admin? Will I have to PM him?
There needs to be a report post feature…
@creativeCoding - My appologies, I did not intend to imply that you pirate anything. I was responding to the general message of the thread.
That’s not entirely true… In addition to the civil remedies, the US Copyright Act provides for criminal prosecution in some cases of willful copyright infringement.
I personally tend to agree, anyone who will take a thing, was likely never a customer in the first place. It has, however, long been a dysfunctional issue for the entertainment industry as a whole. I personally only invest in “reasonable” countermeasures, where reasonable is some point before it actually affects “real” customers. I’m not going to get to the place some in the games industry have landed (waves at giant game publisher(s) who will remain un-named 
), treating everyone like a criminal first. I won’t support products obtained this way, but how does it help if I use a 2048 bit (or higher) block-cipher encryption algorithm (or better… quantium encryption :twisted: ) in and on my game to prevent anyone from copying my game if it will never perform?
Now, who does it hurt? Us. At least anyone who would like to earn a living on game development. True, EA and Activision can affort to let the fringe slip through the cracks… but indie developers kind of live on the fringe market, don’t we? 
As an aside, might I say Unity is being exceptionally open in allowing this topic in their forums… Try this in some other company forums and … well … they will not be this understanding.
Cheers,
Galen
I was actually expecting to get a polite “we appreciate the civil discussion, but we’re not comfortable going further down this road” message before the thread got locked. I figured all the Unity folks were too busy with that huge looming deadline and it would only be a matter of time That said, I do appreciate the freedom. One of the other message boards I post on, which is far less civil and composed, has a zero tolerance policy on discussion of piracy which gets frustrating some times.
This forum is really quite good. There was a little problem when Unity first became free, but I think a lot of those people adapted to the climate here or left after realizing even the best tools must be accompanied by much effort.
Well, there is one fact. Piracy can never truly get stopped. They may make harder to crack keycode algorithm, but the programmers will still find a way. We live in a generation of very smart people and very smart kids. People will find a way to get a hand on what they want.
I have a day job, which pays more than I’ll ever make out of game development, so I pay for everything. Not everyone is so fortunate. I have a lot of sympathy for students and unemployed people, who do not have that option.
In the case of someone who seriously intends to make money from creating games, however, it would be a low act (and stupid) to use unregistered copies of software to do so.
The way I see it the more crime will just become as complex as the medium it exists. Considering the amount of registered users unity has though I wouldn’t be to worried. If someone truly likes the software that they are using common sense would be to purchase it in order to enhance the experience even further. But then again common sense isn’t common.
I’m surprised this hasn’t come up yet so…
A few years ago Crytek was accused of using mostly pirated software (I think this was after FarCry but before Crysis). The allegations turned out not to be true but it did raise an interesting question.
What are the rights on a game made with pirated software? Who owns the IP, code, assets and whatnot?
I’ve never seen an answer and I’m sure it would have to be decided in the courts as I’m not sure legislation covers this. Dunno, could be wrong though, not a lawyer and my small amount of law knowledge is specific to labour law.
That, my friend, is where the problem with pirating lies.