In civilised countries, you're innocent until proven guilty. The burden of proof is on the accuser. It's the same as with god - saying "prove god doesn't exist" proves nothing. You can't prove that Invisible Pink Unicorn doesn't exist, either. And there are two proofs that Invisible Pink Unicorn exist. By logic - since we can't see her, she must be invisible. By heart - in our hearts we all know Invisible Pink Unicorn exists.

About "getting for free = stealing". Ask a child at kindergarten and he/she will point out holes in your reasoning. I'm overqualified to respond to this.

About OnLive - this is just silly. Let's assume for a moment you're right, and all client-side games magically disappear. What do we have now ? A vacuum. Demand for client-sided games. If demand is high enough, someone would pay for it. This is how freeware games are made today - someone pays for development of a game that's released for free.

In a way, Stardock had it coming because they made the game in such way that playing is only possible on official servers. If servers were decentralized quake1-3 style, players (including pirates) would set up their own servers and wouldn't overload official servers. But that's an inconvenient truth.

Companys say it's stealing because they claim they lose revenue because people that download it don't buy it. This ofcourse is complete bullshit.

1.) People that download games would by no means have bought the game if it was not possible to download.

2.) Being able to check out the game before buying works like advertisement, unless ofcourse the product is crap and the company should STFU in the first place. (This is the thing they are trying to protect themself against, because let's face it, most games that come out these days are utter shite, demigod excluded ofcourse)

3.) Since we have alreasy established that people who download do not count as people who would have bought the game otherwise there is actually no stealing involved because it concerns a copy of something.

I bought this game and am still waiting to be able to play online simply because of some retarded design flaw in the ordering system, making it so if a friend bought the game for you, the cd-key is registered to his account and not mine.. WTF does someone need 2 cd-keys for?

Can't prove a negative. It's your burden to prove that it is. You are admitting you can't prove that it is then.

Okay, i'll be bothered and fooled around with one more time.

JoeSchmo walks into eBay building downtown LA, sits at a computer, logs onto it and buys an auctioned item. Uses his legal Paypal account and sends the money out.

Six months later he still hasn't received a copy of that SOFTWARE he bought.

After contacting eBay, he gets the address of the thief. Jumps in his car, drives allllll the way to San Francisco, knocks at the door. Nobody is there, it's an empty floor expect for a portable computer plugged in.

Who spent money for nothing? Who got away with theft?

That's my proof, take it or leave it.

Some people are dumb enough to fall in such traps.

Go troll another gaming site. I'm through with criminals such as you and while you're in your cells serving jail times THEY must restrict access to the real & honest web.

Look to me its clear that no one here discusses the issue they just attack devils advocates and people that admitt they have pirated before.

I have to admitt some of you are good at debating but the fact still remains you can't stop piracy plain and simple, you can however take measures to make piracy less desirable than actual purchase of the game.  However as it stands with DRM it is LESS desirable to actually buy the game because you are stuck with a copy of the game infested with sometimes highly over-reaching software.

(ok now take your potshots at me instead of discussing the realivance of my statement.)

Sadly enough that line of reasoning holds no water with SD products - the original topic of this thread.

Onlive is a soon to be dead, very bad joke.  It's as much the future of gaming as I am the future world dictator.  I like the idea of exterminating half the population and ending the nonsense we've been putting up with since colonialism fucked everything to hell, but even I wouldn't give me the job.  Between the utterly ridiculous bandwidth requirements, the immutable reality of latency, and the massive server farm they'll need to run the shit, it's DOA.  That dumb fuckers with too much money to spend are going to try anyway isn't something new.  They might even make money off the disaster if their compression system is as advanced as they claim.

Assuming piracy is actually a problem, remote gaming isn't going to be the solution.  I've yet to actually see the supposed lost sales in a continually expanding industry that's still making money hand over fist in a world wide recession, so I think they're just full of shit to begin with.  If anything it's a saturated market.

The theft argument...  Again...  Stupid shit like this is why the pirates win just as many arguments as they lose.  I know, I'll make a STFU list!

If you're going to say someone with no money is costing a company money by not spending no money, STFU.

If you're going to whine about how it's just not fair and thus must be wrong anyway after the idiotic above statement has been thoroughly shredded, STFU.

If you're going to equate copyright infringement with physical theft despite the obvious lack of a physical object to steal, STFU.

If you're going to be just as retarded and say intellectual property is the same thing as property, STFU.

Just because someone doesn't deserve something, and this is about as subjective as subjective gets, doesn't mean you have to play wounded gazelle and bawl about it till someone rips your throat out to shut you up.  Envy is envy, get over it.  Stick to reality and you wont look like a bigger prick than the pirate, unless you have diplomatic skills in line with mine.  In which case you are a prick, and it's a pleasure to meet you.

Probably. But it illustrates that such technology is possible.

Agreed, I don't want to see this solution happen.

Let's not pave the way to that future.

No.

Take a deep breath, walk around the block once, have a good deep cold drink, rest in bed for 10 min while clearing your mind - and come back and re-read your post and what you just said.

Onlive is a failure, simple as that. Why? Easy good luck not going over your bandwidth cap, and people will not catch on with onlive, I know many people who would rather have a actually console or computer to play on. Also good luck with mods with Onlive, I see you fail at thinking things through.

And once agian you prove that piracy is not actually stealing, your example involues a PHYISCAL item. So again, tell me how torrents is stealing? It's not. You just fail.

The answer is for games companies to stop wasting money. E.G. Demigod Maps. They don't have to be that detailed. Then, you can retail your game for less, given that it's impossible to recover that money.

DRM promotes piracy, not by any other method, but simply how you can't sell your game. I would sell World of Warcraft, BioShock, a bunch of them. Now, I won't put my money down for any game. If you buy a DVD or Blu-ray, there's even less stopping you pirating it. But you don't get a CD-key with your DVD. I bought Transformers blu-ray, didn't like it. Price went up, and I'm going to re-sell it for a profit. Next time I go to buy a Blu-ray, I'll take that chance. Games? Forget it.

Frankly, buying Demigod has taught me, why I don't buy new games anymore. Broken multiplayer. Poor balance. But I can't recoup any of that.

A great example of how it should be done is Valve and their free weekends for games like UT3 and L4D. That's a chance to really play the game before putting money down. That's how it should be done. I played UT3 for the free weekend, didn't really enjoy it, didn't buy it. I played L4D on a free day or weekend, enjoyed it, bought it. 

I bought Supreme Commander and FA, and it turned out great, so I thought that perhaps I could start buying again. But no.

Ahehe, in my opinion, one way to start stoping the piracy, and start calling it what it really is-THEFT.

I've never understood why they use a "fancy" term like Pirate for Thief.