Oh i been hopping about this topic since it started. Someone's werid skewed take on life, and not yours for once (we are growing!) has been boring me.

Pirated houses indeed.

   People here in Jakarta City of 16 million, choose to live under bridges because houses are too expensive and they can't be priated. If you are a pirate and live in a house, then we could call it a pirate house.

Urbanized, it is.

There are two classes of citizens on our precious Planet; those who are succesful by luck or otherwise and those who struggle to BECOME succesful as much.

I respect the latter. I envy the former.

The poor will be rich. -- Jesus.

Biggest.  Understatement.  Ever.

Though, I was surprised to see this on the news.  Usually, it's how games are responsible for a whole manner of social ills or somesuch bull.

As for the pirates.  Well dammit, do any of them have any idea the harm they are doing to gamers who don't pirate?  I suspect they do and just don't give a hoot as long is they get it for free.  Bastards.

Gas Powered Games is the developper behind Demigod. Ironclad is the one behind Sins of a Solar empire. Both are published by Stardock.

ROFLMAO

Any game with an exe file and internet access can potentially do it. However, noone sends an executable code in real-time, it's inefficient. Executable code is not generated real-time so client already has all the required code beforehand and server sends and recieves data only.

Do you even understand what are you talking about? Say, every MMORPG processes data server-side yet noone of the millions of users says about "security issues" because of it. I don't care about you, you may live in your delusions as much as you want, but please don't spread your bullshit ideas on public forums. Someone may actually believe you, and that will be bad.

Some people don't realize the extent of economic difference between US and some other countries. Let's consider Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity

Graph:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/PPP2003.svg

There's a strong correlation between piracy and wealth of people. Last time I heard some estimates, Poland was supposed to have 70% software piracy ( PPP: 50% ) while Russian Federation had 90% piracy ( PPP : 20% ). PPP estimates how much an average person from a country can buy (comparing to US). Try to imagine that for someone from Russia a $50 computer game costs equivalent of $250 . People from two countries adjacent to mine - Ukraine and Belarus - have even lower PPP, lower than 20% .

The reason I think it is completely fine for them to illegally copy software is  1) they aren't depriving anyone of anything 2) they can't afford it anyway. It's easy to sit in US, earn 5x as much as an average person in Russia, make definite statements, and be full of yourself.

And that reasoning would work fine for essentials like food and medicine etc. Computer games, however, are a luxury item. You don't need computer games. So if you can't afford them, you don't get them, simple as that.

Sure if your family is starving and you steal a loaf of bread that you can't afford to feed them, you get my sympathy. If, however, you want to play a game but you can't afford it and pirate it, you get my contempt.

I stand corrected (sorry, concentration & left-hand pains), nevertheless if it's any indication of strategic alliances (current, upcoming or yet to be announced after some key negotiated partnerships) for superbly efficient development & distribution... StarDock is on the verge of polymorphic associations worth BETTER products by anyone else smart or daring enough to jump on the bandwagon before it's too late.

The industry is reacting finally, thanks to Brad Wardell's intuitions & proven track record.

Darn, here we go again.

Here's the equation; Education, Work, Food, Shelter, Relationship, Transportation (be it individual or collective), Leasures (TeeVee, portable Phones, Computers, gimmicks, addictions...), Luxury (Games or not), Investment (Retire from the chaos of personal ambitions & adulthood responsabilities or keep the standard of living you've worked VERY hard to obtain), looping back to first item in the list.

Cope with it. Anywhere on Earth.

(PS; Interesting link to PPP, though... comparing goods & services in the ENTIRE scope of industrialized conditions might give you a better grasp over the true "situations" since salary & revenues are matching expenses in more ways than GNP figures or productivity in specific regions.)

So, these people in Russia you mention can afford to pay lots of money for a PC to play these games but must resort to thievery to get PC games? Or do they steal their computers too?

PC's aren't copyrighted information, they have actual physical property to aquire.  It's simple necessity.  You can take the software without paying for it, you can't take the hardware.  So they spend what money they have to spend on the hardware and take everything else that makes it worth having to begin with.  It's great for the hardware companies, neutral for the software companies.

Some of you need to learn the difference between passing a moral judgement on someone and placing blame on them for an actual effect.  There is no benefit to the programmer if someone doesn't buy a computer to begin with.

You missed my point. b0rsuk was complaining that these people can't afford to pay for games because they don't make the kind of money the people in the US do. Yet somehow they can afford to pay for the computers to run the games on.

You don't have a point to miss.  What would be odd is if people with little to spend weren't blowing it on hardware to run the pirated goods.

A single guy making 20k a year has a couple thousand dollars of discretionary money in this country depending on where he lives.  That has to be split up amongst whatever discretionary activities he wants to do.  That's enough to justify a computer every few years.  You can spend around a third of it on the hardware and software and stay relatively up to date with plenty of things to do.  A guy with 500 bucks is in an entirely different situation, the hardware alone will take up half of his discretionary spending  If he passes on paying for the software, it's a purchase with excellent utility.  If he pays for the software, he doesn't get to eat out, see movies, buy music, all the wonderful things that people spend their discretionary spending on.

It's mind numbingly obvious.  Take how much money you spend on hardware and software, and then get rid of all the software expenses and add on all the stuff you wish you got but didn't have the money for.  The hardware is worth far more to the guy with 500 bucks to spend than it is for the guy with 2k, as long as he doesn't mind a little copyright infringement.  Which explains why hardware costs more in pirate countries than it does in rich yuppie countries.

Why does it bother you that someone can get something for free without doing any harm to anyone or their property ? (remember, we're talking about people who can't afford games anyway). A lot of people benefit from piracy. One of them is Bill Gates (and Microsoft in general)

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-212942.html

And he's not the only microsoftie with this view.

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2007/03/microsoft-executive-pirating-software-choose-microsoft.ars

Long story short, Microsoft is able to compete with Linux and extend monopoly in China thanks to piracy.  And it seems to have payed off. This time Microsoft is pirating Vista 7:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9132389

In the end, people who don't embrace piracy will end up frozen in amber as an example of 20th century economy. Everyone else should consider alternative business models, such as this:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124094416078864595.html