I would like to make a comment on this post. Basically these 6 people mean nothing in terms on how software pirating is really done on the internet.. I''m talking about warez groups. Not that crap ones in irc channels or bots but the release groups that hint down stuff from EB or internal suppliers. If you want to stop pirating, it all starts there. That''s where company revenues are lost since it gets spread like wild fire in a matter of minutes to the fastest and hugest sites in the world. I was a member a long time ago in these groups as a cracker for CLASS. As a game developer, I regret it greatly but I look at it this way. 1. It tought me how to protect games. 2. I got lots of experience in coding and debugging.. especially assembler programming. Either way, this is where they must attack... but I forgot. There is alot of advocation too. Some companies like it. It provides huge advertising hits for them and most of the 10 yr olds couldn''t afford it anyway. I don''t advocate this excuse, but its the truth in most respects. Other use this to make CD''s to sell them.. Usually all the group memebers do this for personnal business. Every group memeber gets leech access on all the affiliated sites and possible t3 shell boxes. Lots of employees would give away the software before the publisher even had a chance to package it. it would be the final version and be set to go, released to the public. Even betas would provide intelligent ways to crack the final release. They used to have provide channels on efnet protected by a few group bots and they were left alone. I rememeber group leaders for release used to get together and discuss and I''m sure some people from game companies or the government were in on it too... that''s why you have scene rules and regulations. I''m sure the warez community needs to be controlled like any business, but rules govern how they are spread. The best way to take them down is become a member and shut down as much stuff as you can. That takes alot of effort. Usually when a site goes down, its because 2 group memebers were in an arguement. It was a huge politicial world and that''s why I got out.. not to mention the time involved. these crackers were at the top of their league.. beowulf, grudge, dumdi (or the infamous idmud) back in the day when I was doing it. I don''t see the concern with 6 people when this is still going on... I''m sure everything has doubled in speed and companies like AT&T are hosting sites for them at ludricous speeds. Its just so insane. Personnaly I wish it would stop... but it never will. Even dvd''s are cracked so nothing can really stop cracking. There is always someone smarter. Oh well.. I can''t even remember my point of this.. go figure.. I guess you have to try and derive it Later and thanks for listening email = egervari@mnsi.net

Wow, that''s pretty interesting to know! What do you mean by pirating starts at places like EB, though? Could you elaborate a bit more on that point? From what I''ve heard, most of the problem comes from internal leaks at publishers, etc -- which is how you see games on Warez sites even when they haven''t been released yet. Is that true? Or is it generally from other sources?

Also, how easy is it for the average consumer to access warez games? I''m curious, because I''ve always wondered how big an effect the warez sites really have.

--TheGoop

TheGoop You really wanna known...

Go on irc on undernet, go in channel

#warezwarez
#warez4free
#freewarez.....
search for warez or gamez on irc search, you will see what egervari mean.


Go on t50.comor t100.com,....
Lots of PopUp, but there''s pirated games anywhere !!!

That a dumb fucking thing, if no one had start pirating. The price of a game would be the half of what it''s today !!


LowRad

Electronic''s Boutique or other stores.. actually in some areas around the world, they get it faster than others.. and if the guy who owns the stores wants into warez, its easier. I forgot which places in the states are first.

I already stated internal suppliers from software companies in my last post. There was alot in paradigm, razor, and class... that''s why certain groups got stuff from the same companies over and over again... razor = westwood and paradigm = ea sports.. etc. That''s typically the best way to do it. You also have inside information on how to crack it.

really easy if your motivated enough to learn and put time into it... harder if you want to make it in the big time groups.. I took me over a year to get to class/rise/vengence... rise was a really good applications group that only gave out high quality cad apps.. really expensive stuff and venfence was a brand new courier group at the time that rocked everyone for over 2-3 months... they topped risc/devotion/mellinium etc.. those were the big ones in my time.

quote: Original post by LowRad
That a dumb fucking thing, if no one had start pirating. The price of a game would be the half of what it''s today !!

That really is an oversimplification and you shouldn''t believe this.

Firstly, if you aren''t selling enough copies due to your competition being free (which happens, in this case, to be exactly the same software), market forces would dictate that the price goes down, not up, to sell more copies. If you raise the prices, you increase the chance of software being pirated, as fewer people can buy the software legitimately. People''s morals will usually say that they will happily pay $5 for some software. Slightly fewer will pay $25 when they can crack it. Fewer again will pay $45, $65, etc... So this is a cyclic effect and gains the software companies little. If they carry on like this, the end result is companies selling their software for $500,000 a go, and hoping they can get the 3 or 4 customers they need to make a profit.

Secondly, pirating software doesn''t technically -cost- the software house anything. Someone got something for free, but no-one woke up one morning with ''less'' money. There is a difference between incurring a cost, and losing a -potential- sale. As I said in another thread, if I go to McDonalds for a burger, instead of Bruger King, Burger King doesn''t have to keep raising its prices because it is losing sales. On the contrary, it has to lower them to entice customers in. And Burger King hasn''t lost money simply because I chose not to buy anything from it. It has just failed to gain money.

One major misassumption, perpetuated by anti-piracy groups, is that if they made all software non-piratable, everyone who has an illegal copy would buy a legitimate one. They like to pretend that $300bn (arbitrary figure) of cracked software equals $300bn lost. This is obviously not true. If you couldn''t copy Photoshop, there would just be more purchases of PaintShop Pro. In fact, given the modern climate of open source, freeware, and easily downloadable software, it''s not too wild a proposition to think that the main benefactors of killing piracy would not be the companies complaining about piracy, but freeware and cheap shareware authors.

Now, I am not saying it''s right to take someone''s work and not reward them for it, if only for the reason that I am a developer myself, and I would like to be able to make a living out of it. But in all the time I have been in computing, through the days of the 8-bits and 16-bits, right up to now, there has been a lot of misinformation thrown around, generally by software companies who look for some way to justify their high prices.