I got tracked downloading movies. And 2 warning letters from my ISP. My torrents are going a lot slower now, but the letters don't mention anything about it. What's wrong?

Who is your ISP out of curiosity?

I doubt they would mention anything about throttling downloads or the like but if you've recieved warnings now might be a good time to stop eh? :P

BigPond. It was a "courtesy" letter from my isp saying that the owners of the copywrited made a complaint...are there trackerless torrents? Mabye I should change my port or something?

Use Peer Guardian, it blocks unwanted ISP's from connecting to you.

Sounds good, i'll give it a look see tonight hopefully. :D

I'm kind of caught in the position of a retailer here - I downloaded games, movies and music (when i was too young to be prosecuted for anything) and ultimately had a really good 56k time of it. Oh man, the Roadster Netcomm II was LEET!

These days though, I see the other side of it with emails to Gamehead simply reading "Why on earth would I buy games when i can just download them lololololololololol are you retarded?!1?".

And to be honest, I'm just sitting there wishing I could strangle them to teach them that the game they're downloading was made at a cost of millions of dollars as a major investment in time by dozens to hundreds of people representing years of extremely intensive work for everyone involved - they deserve their recompense for it. The fact is, not many people work harder than games designer, particularly those with small or independent studios.

I can halfway sympathize with the situation of some people who pirate a game under the pretense that they were never going to buy it anyway, therefore the designers haven't lost anything.

Ultimately though, when i think of that mode of thought I come back to the fact that it's not unlike stealing a car because you didn't particularly want to buy it.

People go to extremes and set up their own pirated online networks for online gaming, PCs clearly have mainstream pirating problems but in the mainstream online FPS do not, as people wish to compete in the competitive online arena, not in some niche pirate community. It's one small positive I suppose?

I've never downloaded a game, mostly because the only game I play on PC is Counter-Strike which is damn near impossible to play with a legal copy let alone a pirated version.

I only download TV episodes. which I'm still trying to decide on whether or not is ethical. The purpose of TV episodes are to get you to watch their ads. But recently popular shows like Heroes and Prison Break have had their shows available for download online, but only to US residents. They can do this because the revenue they receive from the online visitors, however as a fan I often visit these websites, therefore they are still getting their money worth. In the age of the web, a popular website can make far more money than the revenue from the ads screened during a television episode, because unlike a television show where the ads screen for 20 mins in total, the ads on the web are visible whenever a visitor arrives.

Sorry for the rant, but I'm doing this in my ethics course at uni.

I think you might be on to something, however I came across an interesting statistic just recently - I have a sneaking suspicion it was actually in either PCPowerplay or Hyper...

In any case, more than half of all copies of Unreal Tournament 2004 that have ever been purchased have never been used online - this being a game specifically designed for online play. This leads me to believe that while the desire to play online with the community at large may be a factor in reducing FPS piracy, it may actually be less effective than you'd think.

The mindset of "free is better than paid for, no matter what" is pretty common these days.

*Opens up itunes and firefox to listen to free samples while browsing IMDB for pulp fiction trivia*

It was in PC Powerplay.

It was on the subject of the bot AI being so good in UT2K3/4 that the game could stand alone as a single player title.

This is something that simply does not happen in other MP focused games... Epic have always had something of a deathmatch AI love.

Ah, I'm sure you'd know :)

It's certainly true though that epic have always invested way more care in the multiplayer aspect of their titles than the majority of developers, but it still makes me curious as to exactly how far this trend goes.

All my friends pirate PC games but won't bother pirating console games? Even if there was absolutely zero chance of ever being caught having an pirated copy I would still buy a game legitimately. When it comes to pracy movies and music are my bag. :D

The only games I've downloaded since we got broadband have been the Need for Speed games, and the only reason I downloaded them was cause I'd already purchased them on a console.(Underground on GCN, and Uunderground2 and Most Wanted on the Xbox)
The way I see it is that I've already payed for the game once, so why should I have to pay for it again when I want to play it on my PC?
I recently bought Resident Evil 4 for the PC, and I had bought RE4 on release back when it came out on the GCN. I never go to finish it, and by the time I'd got around to playing it again, I'd moved my Cube into my room, and it looked like shit on my widescreen monitor.(the GCN version is letterboxed, not genuine 16:9, and I could only use it through composite) So I waited for the PC version to come out, and got it on that since it'd look heaps better on the PC, and would be at native resolution...
$50 later, and I'm not impressed, it's quite the shitty port.
While looking for a dll file to run the damn thing, I find that it was leaked to the net about a month before release.
This pissed me off, since I'd purchased the game back in 05, I wasn't too happy bout paying $50 to play it on my PC, and would have rather just downloaded the bastard.

My point? I don't seem to have one cept that I like to pay for a game once, and leave it there...once they have my 100-odd bucks, I don't want to give them any more. (I mean, games in Australia cost more than the US anyway)
Is that too much to ask?
I am morally bankrupt? Or am I within my rights?(obviously I'm legally not, but you know what I mean)


There is one solid point here that I've made...don't bother woth PC games that have been ported from Consoles. :P

Bad RE4 port? You mean like this:

Top one is PC, bottom one PS2
Somehow they forgot things like lighting and shadows





Oh and the video configurations were awesome weren't they?! :P



I'll admit I've downloaded the odd PC game but anything that I end up liking, I purchase. Demos end way too soon and can usually differ from the final product (that's my excuse anyway) ;)

I pretty much buy anything I download as far as games go, unless it's crap.

Holy crap, RE4 on PC was pure dog shit. I'm glad I didnt buy or download that. :lol:

The only time i pirate a game is when its very old, and extremely hard to find/out of my price range, I was going to do that with Symphony of the Night, but not i have it on XBL. Praise the gaming gods.

Urgh, RE4 on PC makes me cry, the game looked amazing on GCN, looking at that is heart breaking!

Yeah I want my $50 back.

Serves you right for not buying through rent-a-game EB.

Also, what do people think about expansion packs? Me, unless it's an online game (BF2) or really good expansion (Generals: Zero Hour) most expansion packs are fairly crap, or really add very little (FEAR Extraction Point).

Shit, sorry for supporting a local buisness! :P

Go through EB, return, then support mum-and-pop buisnesses.