Can you justify using pirated software.

[Sephiroth81]

Retro is interesting.
You can make the argument that downloading and playing roms of games is fine, because you'd otherwise be buying secondhand games that the original owner isn't receiving money for anyway.

Of course, when you can buy those games in digital form then it's wrong to download them. People who say things like £5 is too much for a snes vc are just trying to justify it to themselves.

Not everybody owns or wants a Nintendo Wii to purchase these games legitimately though. So they are left with the choice of paying £100 for a used copy of Secret of Mana off ebay (providing they still have a SNES), or downloading the ROM for free and playing it on ZSNES et al at far more convenience.

[stayAwhile]

ok so we all have pirated floppies ect but chipping your xbox is a BIG no just buy the game I only have so many pirate Amiga games as they came with the console and I would assume they would now be shareware but to pirate a NEW title whats the point you get a badly printed cover a plain white disk with HALO 4 written on in felt tip thats smudged and your xbox gets a ban. I also hate online cheaters/modders on Xbox ... its illegal and drains the fun away

[psj3809]

Retro is interesting.
You can make the argument that downloading and playing roms of games is fine, because you'd otherwise be buying secondhand games that the original owner isn't receiving money for anyway.

Of course, when you can buy those games in digital form then it's wrong to download them. People who say things like £5 is too much for a snes vc are just trying to justify it to themselves.

Not everybody owns or wants a Nintendo Wii to purchase these games legitimately though. So they are left with the choice of paying £100 for a used copy of Secret of Mana off ebay (providing they still have a SNES), or downloading the ROM for free and playing it on ZSNES et al at far more convenience.

Thats my issue. I've got an iphone, would love proper licensed retro Gameboy games for example on it, i cant buy them. I 'have' to buy another system if i want to do that legally. We've had this chat before, probably wont ever happen in a million years but if Nintendo sold some of their older games in a 'retro package' or download they could make millions. Instead i've got a gameboy emulator on my phone to play these old classics. Is it legal/right ? Not really. Do i feel guilty ? Nah

Would i download a DS emulator and download roms for that ? No, to me that systems too 'current' but i dont feel guilty downloading/playing 25 year old Gameboy games or 30 year old Speccy games

Again without emulators i dont think Retro Gamer would exist

[markopoloman]

Retro is interesting.
You can make the argument that downloading and playing roms of games is fine, because you'd otherwise be buying secondhand games that the original owner isn't receiving money for anyway.

Of course, when you can buy those games in digital form then it's wrong to download them. People who say things like £5 is too much for a snes vc are just trying to justify it to themselves.

Not everybody owns or wants a Nintendo Wii to purchase these games legitimately though. So they are left with the choice of paying £100 for a used copy of Secret of Mana off ebay (providing they still have a SNES), or downloading the ROM for free and playing it on ZSNES et al at far more convenience.

I'm not sure Darran was suggesting going out to buy every console because retro stuff may be re-released. If something came out on the PS3 and I had the rom on my PC, I'm not going to buy a PS3! I think VC was just an example.

[RodimusPrime]

thing is with roms, most companies have made their money already on the game. its not like they have spent a fortune creating a new game from scratch.

Take sonic for example, I bought it for the MD, I bought it when it came free with those crappy blaze consoles, I bought it on sonic jam for the saturn, I bought it when it was on the ultimate MD collection, and I bloody bought it on XBLA

I think Sega have more than gotten the moneys worth out of the original game.

To me its a different story to a developer spending a fortune to develop a brand new game and needing sales to cover development costs. and then people pirating that game.

[psj3809]

But lots of companies re-issue these old classics, put a new coat of paint on them on a menu and package a few together.

If someone already has the 3 roms from a website they're not going to spend x amount on a new compilation so thats money lost to the original company. Over on iOS DotEmu are well known for publishing old retro games, they've released R-Type and many others.

If someone has a R-Type rom for MAME or PC Engine they might think 'nah i'm not spending 4 dollars on this official version'. So that rom download has potentially lost that sale for that company who might have spent x amount acquiring the rights to release the old classic on this platform.

Sega might have made tons already from original games but perhaps all those sales of a new compilation might help release a new game in the future due to the profits they've made this year etc due to re-releasing old games.

But again i'll be honest, i dont feel guilty playing 25-30 year old games on an emulator. Said it many times before, most of these games were gathering dust and doing nothing until emulators arrived and people started playing these old games again. Then the devs suddenly thought 'hold on all these old games and IP we've got which was doing nothing for years might be worth something, lets re-release it again'.

[RodimusPrime]

But lots of companies re-issue these old classics, put a new coat of paint on them on a menu and package a few together.

If someone already has the 3 roms from a website they're not going to spend x amount on a new compilation so thats money lost to the original company. Over on iOS DotEmu are well known for publishing old retro games, they've released R-Type and many others.

If someone has a R-Type rom for MAME or PC Engine they might think 'nah i'm not spending 4 dollars on this official version'. So that rom download has potentially lost that sale for that company who might have spent x amount acquiring the rights to release the old classic on this platform.

Sega might have made tons already from original games but perhaps all those sales of a new compilation might help release a new game in the future due to the profits they've made this year etc due to re-releasing old games.

But again i'll be honest, i dont feel guilty playing 25-30 year old games on an emulator. Said it many times before, most of these games were gathering dust and doing nothing until emulators arrived and people started playing these old games again. Then the devs suddenly thought 'hold on all these old games and IP we've got which was doing nothing for years might be worth something, lets re-release it again'.

Thats just it though isn't it. most people who have emulators have had them for years and were playing games that were simply no longer available. the games have long since mad the money for the original developers. who knows if any of the games on emulators will ever become available again.

thats a far cry to someone seeing a game in a shop thats available and thinking I really want to play that, I think I will just pirate a copy instead of buying it.

[Gigifusc]

Ok, so it looks as though the point being made is that there is a difference for a company that re-releases an old game on a new format. Fine. Nintendo re-release Zelda on the DS and Wii or whatever. Sega re-release Sonic on XBLA, WiiU, iOS whatever.

Well, I haven't pirated that version of the game. I've got the rom for an old 20 year old game that is on a discontinued format that doesn't sell anymore. Nintendo and Sega are trying to make money from their new versions of the game. Well I'm not playing those versions I'm playing the originals. Is that enough of a difference? Is that wrong?

If a music company re-release a 40 year old song on iTunes then I go an listen to a pirated copy I've got of that song from 40 years ago on an old tape and play it through a tape emulator on my PC. Is that enough of a difference? Is that wrong?

If a film distributor puts an old movie on Blu ray and I go to my garage and dig out an old pirate copy I had on Beta max. Is that enough of a difference? Is that wrong?

[gman72]

If someone already has the 3 roms from a website they're not going to spend x amount on a new compilation so thats money lost to the original company.

This was precisely the point i made in the piracy thread and certain persons took such umbridge with it that they created an entire thread to prove me wrong. To be fair the result of the poll in that thread in very conclusive but I don't believe it to be accurate. I do not believe that people who have been using emulators for years and downloading or using entire romsets have purchased every single one of those roms that was subsequently re-released on xbla/psn or in a retro compilation. I made this point in that thread and it was ignored which tells me that we may cling to ideal of what we should be doing rather face the facts of what we are actually doing and just living with it.

[Megamixer]

I think a large part of people pirating software, or anything else for that matter, is the fact that you're extremely unlikely to be prosecuted for it. How many people that are pirates would steal a game, CD, Blu-ray, etc from a shop? That's my personal view.

This is a really good point. Pirating something rather than paying for it is no different to walking into GAME and stealing a physical copy from the shelf. In both cases you end up with the product you wanted and haven't paid for it. The ONLY difference is that people somehow feel comfortable with the former but would no way in hell decide to grab a game from a store shelf and leg it out the door with alarms blazing, security chasing etc.

I said it in another thread (may even have been this one...there are quite a few on the go!) but I think it would be interesting to see people's stance on pirating games if they were as likely to be caught and prosecuted for downloading as they would be for shoplifting. Both methods of acquiring the item have exactly the same end result, exactly the same cost (i.e. £0) but just different likelihoods of getting caught. But does the fact that you won't get caught mean that downloading is somehow more acceptable than pilfering from a physical store?

Bear in mind that the above only really applies to stuff that is still available to purchase new i.e. modern pirated games.

[RodimusPrime]

Excellent point. For those people that have used the excuse that games are too expensive and its only because I can't afford them, or if a games crap they dont deserve money.

If piracy did not exist, would they say its ok to shoplift a copy.

I mean what about the " try before you buy " brigade. whats wrong with shoplifting a few copies anhd going back and buying the one you like. is that ok.

[Sel Feena]

See this is interesting as well. If a filter made a game look better i'd go with the better version, but I can't think of any examples where a filter improves the look off hand.

Not a filter, but the 2.5D mode for R-Type is pretty amazing.

If someone already has the 3 roms from a website they're not going to spend x amount on a new compilation so thats money lost to the original company.

This was precisely the point i made in the piracy thread and certain persons took such umbridge with it that they created an entire thread to prove me wrong. To be fair the result of the poll in that thread in very conclusive but I don't believe it to be accurate. I do not believe that people who have been using emulators for years and downloading or using entire romsets have purchased every single one of those roms that was subsequently re-released on xbla/psn or in a retro compilation. I made this point in that thread and it was ignored which tells me that we may cling to ideal of what we should be doing rather face the facts of what we are actually doing and just living with it.

Disagree strongly, if something I like is repackaged and released on a different format, and I have that format, I'll buy it. Most recently, did this with Gunhound - had it on PSP, got it on Steam.

For ROMs, obviously the Sega Megadrive compilations and such. That Monster World compilation was smashing, too. Would KILL for some classic shmups like Batrider to show up on XBL.

It's silly to generalise, everyone's going to be on a spectrum.

[stvd]

No I can't. And I don't feel the need to.

Some of the "attempts " at justification are quite good though.
Old roms = ok
New stuff = bad

[flatapex]

without an everdrive, i could never play lemmings 2 when it was finally released for the master system. i know the original developer was happy with this, he gave the rom to the community. you dont get more legit than that

I can justify roms
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/04/2 ... s-illegal/

not my article, but my argument in a nutshell

[flatapex]

No I can't. And I don't feel the need to.

Some of the "attempts " at justification are quite good though.
Old roms = ok
New stuff = bad

agreed, emulate to preserve, if you can go out and buy it brand new for a current gen console, thats not preservation