Some personal thoughts on piracy (warning - long post)

[mattwestwick]

This chap seems genuinely remorseful for having to pirate this game. Otherwise he wouldn't have posted here.

The most interesting point he makes is that there is no phsyical worth to the game. It's just data, a purely digital object: so doesn't deserve money. To assign worth to something digital you have to counterbalance it with something more traditionally assosciated with worth: status!

You can't show it to your friends, or watch as someone admires your copy of a game and this is a big part of consumerism. As it stands, Amnesia is a largely solitary creation. You can buy and play it, feeling that no one else knows you have it and that your purchase doesn't matter since there are in theory an infinite number of copies.

The interface in Steam counteracts this by displaying your accumulated wealth of products to friends and onlookers. Although all you have is another copy, it is another copy that someone else doesn't have! and it tells them when you are playing it and they are not! From this comes an emulated form of phsyical worth. Something that you can see! and something that is teased at others without it. No wonder steam is so efficient at digital distribution. They mimic the sensation of buying something shiny but without having to make a phsyical object.

Taking the traditional stance that amnesia should be a physical product is not the appropriate one.
Although hard to rationalise and comprehend: you do not pay frictional for their arrangement of ones and zeros. You pay them for the experience!

Simply because it is easy to steal from them, it does not make it any more forgiveable. It is all the worse that they refuse to take a militant stance on the theft of their creation as it means you are stealing from genuine hard-working people like this poster claims to be.

Pay them their dues. You will be a lot more content with yourself for doing this. It may seem like no big difference but for the sake of a few people typing a few words for you to change your mind, I think it is worth it.