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PirateBay shut down?

Will you miss PB?

  • Sure thing, it's an old pal of mine.

    Votes: 19 20.0%
  • Nah, let it burn.

    Votes: 10 10.5%
  • It was about time, for retirement. There are way better trackers.

    Votes: 8 8.4%
  • Relax, it is going to come back in a few days.

    Votes: 55 57.9%
  • Me? Pirating software?!? No way, officer.

    Votes: 16 16.8%
  • Other

    Votes: 2 2.1%

  • Total voters
    95
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As I said, the example was used earlier and not by me to describe how it could make things legit, you are right with the file sharing and piracy bit but that's my point, they are the same thing in my opinion if the owner has NOT given their permission, I am no expert on the subject and like you I don't use pirate software but simply sharing something that was sourced without permission surely cannot make things legal?

Their copyright claims you cannot lend unless you have permission of the owner to do that. Then sharing becomes illegal. :shadedshu:

Little misunderstanding here. I mean file sharing in general. I'm not talking about spreading movies and warez.

You know, many people scream "piracy" when they hear word torrent. But how many times so many people had situation when they have their legit product keys but lost their media (or can't download it because server is down or overloaded). Let's say copies of untouched iso. You torrent it, check md5 and apply your real key. No hacking, no cracking. Just downloading media that won't work without legit key anyway. Or downloading some demo/shareware/trial version from torrent when all official sources are unavailable. Is it really theft? It won't hurt anyone.
 
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News claims that the .cr domain is not legit ... is it legit and the news a smear attempt, or is it fake?
I think it is not being run by the same people so it is not legit. May be people that are trying to get their traffic in some way or another. :shadedshu:
 

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This history of this is legitimate and this other thing is not legitimate is getting boring and boring and boring.



:slap:
 

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Meh sounded like the same rhetoric you spew.
You're wrong yet again - it's not the first time you've quoted someone else and attributed it to me so something's not working quite right with you, is it? :shadedshu: I didn't even say anything to you, lol.

If you just apologized for your error you wouldn't continue to look so dumb in public, but that's too difficult for you, isn't it? ;)

On top of that, strawman arguments and ad hominem personal attack troll posts like this one don't make your case either and make you look a fool in front of everyone, again.

All you're good at on TPU is derailing a thread with troll insults and sanctimonious garbage which is nothing to be proud of.
 
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Lots of pot and kettle in this thread... :rolleyes:

1. Stay on topic

2. Don't post links

3. Piracy, the act of and/or the discussion into how to partake in it is not advised.

This is your only warning. Any post that doesn't stay on topic or does not adhere to the forum guidelines will be removed and an infraction will be given. This topic comes up from time to time and it's always the same folks that get the conversation shut down. So, either behave or step aside.
Be good.
 
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I get an awful lot of music from bandcamp and mininova, because the music on there is better, is completely legal, and not piled with DRM or dodgy downloaders (and they offer FLAC quality). They use torrents as one of many means of distribution. And I don't mind paying for that service one bit.

TPB was and still is just a body created to flaunt how stupid the legal system is across europe, in that no matter how much time or resources these people pour into cracking down on pirating, some guy is just going to reupload the 78mb file that contains the whole of TPB back on another website. These people are wasting colossal fortunes to bring it down, instead of just muscling out the attractiveness of TPB by offering better solutions for obtaining music, software, games and movies. People don't pirate when netflix is so cheap, when steam sales are so cheap, and when spotify is free.

Will the TPB go back up? Yes. Will these morons ever stop chasing an unobtainable dream of squashing all piracy? Never. They'd rather waste their time fixing a problem they made, when all they have to do is provide reasonable solutions to bring consumers a vastly superior market experience.

Netflix and other TV streaming services solved half of it, Spotify blatantly solved half of it. There are people out there that will literally pay for nothing, and they will stop at nothing to get that for free. It doesn't matter what anybody does to solve that problem, those people will always exist. Some people only turn to piracy when they've been given no alternative (for example, the BBC won't let me pay them to buy a permanent download of one of their TV series or documentaries, so I only have access to it for 30 days according to their terms). Because I work in public sector, I can't just torrent it and solve the problem, but that's the kind of thing that drives people into doing it.

Totally agree, however the reality is people just want free shit. Even if you said 'this game is only one dollar and you get unlimited access and online play, with no hassle!' they'd still probably want it free, despite that version being limited and locked.
And the worst part is this anti-censorship manifesto bullshit, where these freethinking radicals would like you to believe they have any real concern over abuses of freedom and the 'tyrannical vice of copyrights.'

Just more justification for getting free stuff.
 

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I think for me, and it's just a personal opinion, "sharing" is only that if the owner has given their permission to share, Nabarun gave a good example earlier of a newspaper, see the thing is, if Nabaruns neighbour took his paper and did not have his permission to read it then in my eyes it's plain old, plain old ....... theft. Now I am fairly certain that most of the owners of the software or whatever it is being "shared" have not given their permission so however you want to technically explain it the answer is simple, to then try and justify those actions by saying that the owners are Greedy and merely profit focused and therefore lack integrity (or making that assumption) is kind of ironic as I personally find it equally greedy to expect something for nothing in return.
That's a good question. If I buy a newspaper, and then read it, I paid for it. Then, I give it to my ...... Wife, let's say. Is it theft? what about if she gives it back when she's done? so then, how about the digital format of that? I purchase the digital version of "TechPowerUp NewsNow!". Read it, and then loan the reader to my wife. Or give her the digital pdf. Is that theft?
 

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That's a good question. If I buy a newspaper, and then read it, I paid for it. Then, I give it to my ...... Wife, let's say. Is it theft? what about if she gives it back when she's done? so then, how about the digital format of that? I purchase the digital version of "TechPowerUp NewsNow!". Read it, and then loan the reader to my wife. Or give her the digital pdf. Is that theft?
That's another way to think of it, but the problem is that you can give your digital version away, and still keep your version. But that's it... It doesn't get deleted. Nobody is giving their files away, and deleting them off of their machines. One person shares a copy with 50 people then that creates 50 new copies. ;)

EDIT: I'm not saying that's right, but that's another way I've heard it explained.
 

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Is this thing still keep going on and on?

If people download or not download if share or not share if steal or not steal or if they break the laws shouldn't be our problems, each one of us is responsible for own acts.

Live your own life and let others live.
 
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I see it as a simple idea, people will pay for good content, I will go see good movies at the theater despite it costing aroudn $60 to take my kids and buy a few snacks. I will buy good games for full price, I will buy books from google, I will rent redbox movies if I want, I will buy blu-ray movies when they are worth it.


But, is watching Identity Theft in Blu-Ray worth it? Fuck no.
LOTR, Hell yes.
Would I pay full price for a manual I needed one page out of? Nope.
Would I buy a good book to read, yes, have many in digital form and hard copies.

The issues here are the lack of good content, it started around the same time developers decided they could ship games with huge issues to make money NOW, and patch them later, and to whatever workable degree they wanted. Same happened to music, a few good songs on some CD's and then some rambling bullshit songs, recorded as loud as possible so your china made $40 Walmart boom box could blast it out.

Penny pinchers made the world cheap, and when people realized it was cheap they acted accordingly, and now they want to cry about it. F'em. I have multiple CD's of audio that no longer play as DRM servers have been shutdown, music I paid for. I have some Google Video shows that no longer work. People are finding that Blu-Ray players can't play newer disks.

The market will decide, its what we have been told for years, and now that the market is deciding they are tired of being crapped on and people are choosing to sail the high seas to get their content, a lot of it available over the air for free in the first place, they want to take it back. Too late.
 
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I see it as a simple idea, people will pay for good content, I will go see good movies at the theater despite it costing aroudn $60 to take my kids and buy a few snacks. I will buy good games for full price, I will buy books from google, I will rent redbox movies if I want, I will buy blu-ray movies when they are worth it.


But, is watching Identity Theft in Blu-Ray worth it? Fuck no.
LOTR, Hell yes.
Would I pay full price for a manual I needed one page out of? Nope.
Would I buy a good book to read, yes, have many in digital form and hard copies.

OK FINE. I'm a pirate too.
 

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Gaming and Piracy......

Do you remember them good old days where publishers used release demos for their up and coming games? Now all we mainly have (90% of the time) are Alpha's or Beta's that require us to pay to play and while we're at it possibly bug report for the developers.
The industry shouldnt be like this and im a strong advocate against paying just to be able to get into an alpha or beta.... There are quite a few games on steam where developers have charged people to play the alpha then after a year or so completely stopped work on it.... One of these games is RUST. Another game is possibly DAYZ standalone - Bethesda wont pull out of it, but at the same time progress has been rather slow or non-existant even and nobody knows when the game will be released and what sort of state it will be released in when its released, Though with that said Bethesda's games have always been buggy and relied strongly on modding community to get its full potential.

Im all for developers getting paid for their hard work. but given how shitty quite a few triple A titles have been in this past or previous year it doesnt inspire confidence among the community and when people arent confident in the developer then their sales will ultimately suffer and of course piracy will occur.

I use torrents as a way of testing out a game to see if i like it before purchasing it rather than just blindly parting with my money on a promise that may never be fulfilled.

Developers need to get back into the habit of releasing demos, If not then steam should step forward and start offering refunds for games that you didnt like because not all trailer footage represents actual gameplay and that is false advertising.

Its as false as a major triple A release for an Xbone or PS4 being demo'd at a convention on a quad or six core processor with infinite amounts of ram and an uber powerful graphics card.... but wait - its ok. the game is being run in a virtual environment and thus whatever console is being 'emulated' which is complete BS - why such a beast of a machine when you could go for something a little more midrange and match the specs of a console?


In a way, they've done this to themselves all in the name of corporate greed..... Charging more money for less work/game content.
 

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Well said, Freedom. In a word, you've described the creators' hypocrisy.

I've never been a fan of early access, because it was obvious at the outset that a developer could just take your money and run and lo and behold sometimes they do. Nah, show me a finished and polished product that's worth buying and then you'll get my money.

A fine example of a triple A title which ended up being garbage is Aliens: Colonial Marines which has a mere 45% metacritic rating on its Steam store page and got panned by reviewers and gamers everywhere. And yeah, what happened to all those game demos we used to see? Say what you like about EA, but they must be commended on still putting these out, at least on some of the games, such as the FIFA series.

On top of all this, various independent university studies have shown that piracy has very little effect on sales and that the "pirates" are often the most prolific purchasers, or can even be a benefit by growing market penetration. And for anyone who wants to challenge me on this point, no, I don't have the evidence to hand, but googling for it should net some results.

And then these game companies blame the so-called "pirates" when their crap product bombs. Sod off.
 

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it will be back ...
 
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That's a good question. If I buy a newspaper, and then read it, I paid for it. Then, I give it to my ...... Wife, let's say. Is it theft? what about if she gives it back when she's done? so then, how about the digital format of that? I purchase the digital version of "TechPowerUp NewsNow!". Read it, and then loan the reader to my wife. Or give her the digital pdf. Is that theft?
Good question, however I think you will find that the copyright protection placed on a newspaper available for public purchase pales into insignificance in comparison to lets say Microsoft Windows professional edition 8.1.
 
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Gaming and Piracy......

Do you remember them good old days where publishers used release demos for their up and coming games? Now all we mainly have (90% of the time) are Alpha's or Beta's that require us to pay to play and while we're at it possibly bug report for the developers.
The industry shouldnt be like this and im a strong advocate against paying just to be able to get into an alpha or beta.... There are quite a few games on steam where developers have charged people to play the alpha then after a year or so completely stopped work on it.... One of these games is RUST. Another game is possibly DAYZ standalone - Bethesda wont pull out of it, but at the same time progress has been rather slow or non-existant even and nobody knows when the game will be released and what sort of state it will be released in when its released, Though with that said Bethesda's games have always been buggy and relied strongly on modding community to get its full potential.

Im all for developers getting paid for their hard work. but given how shitty quite a few triple A titles have been in this past or previous year it doesnt inspire confidence among the community and when people arent confident in the developer then their sales will ultimately suffer and of course piracy will occur.

I use torrents as a way of testing out a game to see if i like it before purchasing it rather than just blindly parting with my money on a promise that may never be fulfilled.

Developers need to get back into the habit of releasing demos, If not then steam should step forward and start offering refunds for games that you didnt like because not all trailer footage represents actual gameplay and that is false advertising.

Its as false as a major triple A release for an Xbone or PS4 being demo'd at a convention on a quad or six core processor with infinite amounts of ram and an uber powerful graphics card.... but wait - its ok. the game is being run in a virtual environment and thus whatever console is being 'emulated' which is complete BS - why such a beast of a machine when you could go for something a little more midrange and match the specs of a console?


In a way, they've done this to themselves all in the name of corporate greed..... Charging more money for less work/game content.

I've got a problem here. While your sentiment is appreciated, there's a problem with your logic.

Let's agree that there are 3 levels of games; good, mediocre, and bad. Now let's also agree that there are are three levels of demo; the same good, mediocre, and bad. This leads to the conclusion there are a total of nine demo/game combinations that are available to exists. Of the nine, three are immediately counter-productive. Bad demos lead to no positive spin. The mediocre demos also either lead to no influence on sales, or a negative one. Looking at the remaining three options, we've got a mixed bag. A good game and good demo lead to people buying the product. A mediocre game, with a good demo, hurts future sales. Finally, a good demo for a crap game leads to a huge public backlash. Think Aliens: Colonial Marines if you need proof positive of that.

So, put yourself in the developer's shoes. 11% of the time, based upon these rather loosely defined parameters, you've got an up-side. 89% of the time you either hurt sales, damage reputation, or spend resources on creating a demo without getting purchasing payback. What incentive do developers have to put out demos?




Getting off my soap-box, there are exactly two reasons to pirate and used cracked copies of games. Reason 1 is that you've purchased the game, but it doesn't work properly. Reaching an example of this is not difficult, as the shut-down of GFWL has broken plenty of games. Not everybody is Warner Brothers (thanks to them for keeping Batman alive btw). Reason 2 is preservation. If you cannot possibly obtain a legal copy of a game then pirate away. So many games are disappearing due to a lack of interest, and that's a travesty. Sometimes booting up Jazz Jackrabbit is cathartic, and I'd hope to share that experience with other people in a decade. There's currently no way to do this without resorting to "piracy."

While using a pirate copy for a demo sounds reasonable, it seems rather backwards. After 6 months most games are in the $15-30 range. After a year, they can be had with DLC for that much. Waiting 18 months usually yields game of the year variants at the $10 mark. At that point, you're basically getting a game for the price of a movie. Two hours of entertainment, and you've got a better investment than most movies. If you can't stand a game after that, you've got no real reason to moan. If the games industry doesn't want people doing this (they do want you to spend $60 per game), they release demos. Ideally, developers actually use peer-to-peer sharing to distribute their demos freely. I'd be happy to pay $60 for Skyrim from a smaller developer, assuming I could play it first. Of course, that tidal shift in understanding that games don't need to sell in the first two weeks (thanks to the death of the retail requirements) has escaped developers.

Piracy is not a solution, and is not evil. What it is is an outcry for something to service a new market, and it isn't being heeded. Traditional ideas are not bending to new markets, so piracy prevails. If people truly wanted to minimize piracy, because stopping it 100% will never happen, then they'd change the way they service the market. Valve understood this with Steam, but EA and others have not. Gog is tapping the same beautiful understanding of a new market, and providing DRM free games without losing their hats. When the rest of the market evolves we'll see this debate be less obtrusive, but in times of upheaval older systems make their inadequacies known. The only difference is that evolution is happening faster now than ever before. Hopefully one day law and services will match capabilities, but it hasn't ever really happened in my lifetime.
 
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Piracy is not a solution, and is not evil. What it is is an outcry for something to service a new market, and it isn't being heeded. Traditional ideas are not bending to new markets, so piracy prevails. If people truly wanted to minimize piracy, because stopping it 100% will never happen, then they'd change the way they service the market. Valve understood this with Steam, but EA and others have not. Gog is tapping the same beautiful understanding of a new market, and providing DRM free games without losing their hats. When the rest of the market evolves we'll see this debate be less obtrusive, but in times of upheaval older systems make their inadequacies known. The only difference is that evolution is happening faster now than ever before. Hopefully one day law and services will match capabilities, but it hasn't ever really happened in my lifetime.

Steam is the best thing that has happened, it's still not perfect, but a lot better than, say, Origin. I'm somewhat a pirate, mostly because there is content I just can't legitimately get or the pricing is through the roof: a game that costs 60 EUR in Germany can't cost 60 EUR in the Baltics for example. If the pricing would be somewhat justified to fit in with the average income I would buy a ton more games than now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_average_wage

Never really liked the pirate bay, private trackers usually are better :)
 
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If the pricing would be somewhat justified to fit in with the average income I would buy a ton more games than now.
Yes. I agree with this. If the average income in my country is let's say 350 euros and the average income in a richer country is 750 euros then how can they expect me to pay 60 euro's for a game.

I really don't care anymore but this is my logic. I will pirate a game if I really want it and play it until it comes down in price that I can actually afford.
Pirating is wrong and if you do it, you break the law. End of F#$KING STORY
It depends on the country you live in. :D
That is true. In some country's if you download a torrent and set your upload speed to the lowest speed it is legal to download a torrent.
 

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<snip>A good game and good demo lead to people buying the product. A mediocre game, with a good demo, hurts future sales. Finally, a good demo for a crap game leads to a huge public backlash. Think Aliens: Colonial Marines if you need proof positive of that.

1. A good game + good demo = win win situation, it also means the developers put more effort into making game because the demo has to leave a good impression with the to-be consumers/players.

2. A mediocre game + good demo, hurts future sales = not necessarily you're forgetting that there are so many variables when it comes to making a game. Maybe the the guy who came up with the original concept for the game decided to leave halfway through development and the guy they got to replace him didnt have the same vision for the game as the previous guy? or maybe a lot of the original team of developers left the studio or got sacked part-way through and the people they hired to finish the game off were either totally useless or had their own way of coding the game which led to glitches and bugs with the finished title.

Providing the game came for a reputable developer, i wouldnt be so quick to judge their releases.

Long story short - Im subscribed to TotalBiscuit on youtube and he reviews quite a lot of pc ports, More often than not there are studios out there whose sole purpose in life is to port games over to PC - they might make the odd small to medium sized game here and there but their bread and butter is porting.....
Now you will get studios that do a horrendous job porting games over then you will get studios that do a decent job.

Some of the worst ports out there is the studio that does all the Arc System Works stuff, so think blazblue or guilty gear. recently the blazblue series has appeared on steam and i think it was the second game (that TB reviewed) that was quite bad - but then again this is coming from a studio thats known for doing half arsed ports.

Compare that to Platinum games who did the port for Metal Gear Rising and they did a complete stellar job of it and it was their FIRST TIME porting a game over to PC. They also ported 'The Legend Of Korra' over to PC - from what i gather they did an OK job of it, but the mixed reviews it received were more to do with the game, gameplay and the story itself rather then how it played as a port, but youre obviously limited with what you can do when the game is more or less like a 'cartoonier' version of plants vs zombies or DBZ Shin Budokai on the PSP.

Another example is DICE - They are capable of making GREAT games, I remember playing the shit out of the BF2 demo for 2 or 3 weeks before I went out there and bought the actual game, I also played the BF1942 demo with friends on a LAN and it was a hilarious amount of fun. Its only BF4 which seemed to be complete and utterly broken from the start and still is in a way when you consider ongoing problems with netcode & other bugs etc etc. BF3 had the issue with bullets that curved around corners but that was fixed fairly quickly, People rage about how their never gonna buy another EA, DICE or BF game but how much of the problem was a result of EA pushing DICE to release BF4 before it was honestly truly ready for release? EA wanted to beat CoD to the shelves.


3. a good demo for a crap game leads to a huge public backlash = see above, imo a crap game is just the same as a mediocre game. The way i see it is 'Great game' 'OK game' & 'utter bollocks game' - 'OK game' being the middle ground - neither good or bad and 'utter bollocks' being horrendously bad.

a public backlash is dependant on how much the media, publisher & to a lesser extent the general public/community hype the game. A butt load of fingers are pointing at IGN - because thats what IGN do apart from taking bribes.

I never played Colonial Marines but from what i gather it was bad because you had different developers working on it - Timegate studios were the original people who started working on it, they went bankrupt so gearbox software started working on it again, then sega outsourced the work to two or more different studios yadayadayada and too many cooks spoil the broth.

Sega also had a class lawsuit filed against them claiming that Gearbox and Sega falsely advertised Aliens: Colonial Marines by showing demos at trade shows like PAX and E3 that didn't end up being accurate representations of the final product.

---

So you see, Colonial Marines had a lot of stuff wrong with it which inevitably had a serious detrimental effect on the end product.... Throw in the argument that media as well as Gearbox/Sega were getting people hyped for the game and theres your backlash.

Its no different then a holy prophet (or 'a' messiah or certain messiah) promising to lead his flock (his people~) to the promised lands but then after spending more than 100 years wandering about in the wilderness when most of the original generation have died on the journey from natural causes or sickness, he turns around and says that it was all a lie.

How many times has a friend or member of family promised you something then didnt deliver???

I too would be furious if i was lead around the garden path so to speak - so would anyone one else for that matter.



So my logic isnt as flawed as you think.


Anyway, it took a while to type all this out while i did my research and i do apologise if its a wall of text.
 
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Even good games with a terrible demo will earn reputation quickly.
 

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Even good games with a terrible demo will earn reputation quickly.


thats because there are people who will still buy the game even if the demo is bad. Its all word of mouth really, but a demo should be a close representation of the final product to come. Developers can give you free access to an alpha to demo a game but an alpha is a real loose representation of whats POSSIBLY to come. they could strip out, chop and change anything and everything they want to.


I honestly dont remember playing a bad demo, but at the same time I arrived to the party a bit late - I didnt have broadband or a PC powerful enough to run games properly till around 2000 or 2001 so i literally missed the massive pc gaming boom that started in the late 90s.

without demos, I think people like Total Biscuit are a much needed voice in the gaming industry, none of the IGN rubbish - First and foremost, IGN are supposed to be a gaming reviews site but they are being paid off to hype games.

he's definitely worth the sub if you like to hear about the latest releases & all the news about whats going on in the gaming industry - theres either always a lot of drama like steam's recent take down of a game called HATRED from greenlight and all sorts of interesting news & info.
 
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1. A good game + good demo = win win situation, it also means the developers put more effort into making game because the demo has to leave a good impression with the to-be consumers/players.

2. A mediocre game + good demo, hurts future sales = not necessarily you're forgetting that there are so many variables when it comes to making a game. Maybe the the guy who came up with the original concept for the game decided to leave halfway through development and the guy they got to replace him didnt have the same vision for the game as the previous guy? or maybe a lot of the original team of developers left the studio or got sacked part-way through and the people they hired to finish the game off were either totally useless or had their own way of coding the game which led to glitches and bugs with the finished title.

Providing the game came for a reputable developer, i wouldnt be so quick to judge their releases.

Long story short - Im subscribed to TotalBiscuit on youtube and he reviews quite a lot of pc ports, More often than not there are studios out there whose sole purpose in life is to port games over to PC - they might make the odd small to medium sized game here and there but their bread and butter is porting.....
Now you will get studios that do a horrendous job porting games over then you will get studios that do a decent job.

Some of the worst ports out there is the studio that does all the Arc System Works stuff, so think blazblue or guilty gear. recently the blazblue series has appeared on steam and i think it was the second game (that TB reviewed) that was quite bad - but then again this is coming from a studio thats known for doing half arsed ports.

Compare that to Platinum games who did the port for Metal Gear Rising and they did a complete stellar job of it and it was their FIRST TIME porting a game over to PC. They also ported 'The Legend Of Korra' over to PC - from what i gather they did an OK job of it, but the mixed reviews it received were more to do with the game, gameplay and the story itself rather then how it played as a port, but youre obviously limited with what you can do when the game is more or less like a 'cartoonier' version of plants vs zombies or DBZ Shin Budokai on the PSP.

Another example is DICE - They are capable of making GREAT games, I remember playing the shit out of the BF2 demo for 2 or 3 weeks before I went out there and bought the actual game, I also played the BF1942 demo with friends on a LAN and it was a hilarious amount of fun. Its only BF4 which seemed to be complete and utterly broken from the start and still is in a way when you consider ongoing problems with netcode & other bugs etc etc. BF3 had the issue with bullets that curved around corners but that was fixed fairly quickly, People rage about how their never gonna buy another EA, DICE or BF game but how much of the problem was a result of EA pushing DICE to release BF4 before it was honestly truly ready for release? EA wanted to beat CoD to the shelves.


3. a good demo for a crap game leads to a huge public backlash = see above, imo a crap game is just the same as a mediocre game. The way i see it is 'Great game' 'OK game' & 'utter bollocks game' - 'OK game' being the middle ground - neither good or bad and 'utter bollocks' being horrendously bad.

a public backlash is dependant on how much the media, publisher & to a lesser extent the general public/community hype the game. A butt load of fingers are pointing at IGN - because thats what IGN do apart from taking bribes.

I never played Colonial Marines but from what i gather it was bad because you had different developers working on it - Timegate studios were the original people who started working on it, they went bankrupt so gearbox software started working on it again, then sega outsourced the work to two or more different studios yadayadayada and too many cooks spoil the broth.

Sega also had a class lawsuit filed against them claiming that Gearbox and Sega falsely advertised Aliens: Colonial Marines by showing demos at trade shows like PAX and E3 that didn't end up being accurate representations of the final product.

---

So you see, Colonial Marines had a lot of stuff wrong with it which inevitably had a serious detrimental effect on the end product.... Throw in the argument that media as well as Gearbox/Sega were getting people hyped for the game and theres your backlash.

Its no different then a holy prophet (or 'a' messiah or certain messiah) promising to lead his flock (his people~) to the promised lands but then after spending more than 100 years wandering about in the wilderness when most of the original generation have died on the journey from natural causes or sickness, he turns around and says that it was all a lie.

How many times has a friend or member of family promised you something then didnt deliver???

I too would be furious if i was lead around the garden path so to speak - so would anyone one else for that matter.



So my logic isnt as flawed as you think.


Anyway, it took a while to type all this out while i did my research and i do apologise if its a wall of text.

Apologies not necessary, but you're looking at a couple of examples and extrapolating an industrial trend from them. Replace Video Games with toothpaste, cereal, or anything else and it'll hold true. Furthermore, stay on topic. I agree with you about mixed feeling on ports, but that is another topic. This was about a company releasing a demo of their game prior to releasing the full thing. I, in this instance, don't care about ports. Ports don't get demos.


Continuing on, you need to focus on demos. No hype, no background in the industry, no behind closed doors dealings. I don't care if 50 companies worked on it, all I see is the finished game and its demo. If Aliens had played like the demo at E3, I'd have bought it. That demo was amazing, and the game was mediocre to crap. As a reasonable individual, I am looking at all Gearbox/Sega/Timegate products significantly longer now, as their reputation for quality has been damaged. If you don't agree with me there, I'd ask you how you feel about Duke Nukem. What about Rare products? Bad games with hype make the bad parts of them even worse. Nobody remembers a flop when nothing is expected of it, but everyone remembers things like Superman 64.

I'll acquiesce that there is a sweet-spot. In this sweet spot a truly bad game can become a cult classic, because it is bad in just the right way. I cannot think of a single game like this with a demo though.


That was a huge diversion, but the real truth of the matter is everyone spending time on a demo is one person who is "wasting" the company's money. An executive uses the reasoning I presented above, and looks at market data. Very little potential positives, and a minimal measurable positive impact on sales, means there is no financial reason to release a demo.



If you want companies to release demos you need to remove retail sales. If your game is released on a digital store, and will stay at the same price for 8 months, you need a demo. No publisher can afford an 8 month advertisement campaign. As yet, big publishers haven't taken advantage of this. They focus on the huge sales push, two weeks of sales at full price, then write games off to minor DLC expenses. Changing that attitude might mean that a 30 minute demo would make sense as a very cheap advertising tool. Best of luck actually getting this change to happen.
 
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