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From: Centarius Software Co.
Subject: Re: Software Pirates are cool
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic
Date: 1995/07/23

In <DC546z.rr@freenet.carleton.ca> ar551@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Kevin
Spiess) writes:

>
>+ another thing. If piracy stopped tommorrow (which it never will ) do you
>think the software publishers would lower their prices? I doubt it.
>

Of course not. It's the same question as "If people stopped having
accidents, and no one ever stole again, would your car insurance go
down?" Publishers would simply pocket the 45% increase in profits.

You have to keep in mind the number of hands that game goes thru to get
to your retail shelf. Each game sold pays the salary for dozens of
people. Of course, if sales were higher, maybe these stores could hire
a better quality employee. (see thread on Software Etc. prices)

I was in a computer city store a while bach where I swear the person
trying (badly) to explain computer features to me had a carrer choice :
Make a burger or sell computers. She knew the same about both - nada!
I mean, are ibm PS2's macintosh compatable?????

Anyway, we're a publisher who has read thousands of posts here in te
Usenet newsgroups. We're basing a marketing idea on what we've seen
thousands of people post. We don't have the large profit margins
companies like EA have, so we can't afford to have our games stolen by
software pirates. In all honesty, I'm not worried about the guy who
has 100 Gig's of bootlegs colecting dust. I worry about the guy who
will copy the game, play it for 40+ hours and not pay for it. I mean,
be honest. If you are still playing a copy of Civilization after 2
years, and haven't payed for it, you're a thief. (Now if you copied it
2 yrs ago, and archived it, and haven't seen it since you did so, I
don't quite consider you a thief, just a bit wasteful on your disk
space maybe? ;) )

In summary,

Try the demo's, buy the game from stores and companies with friendly
return policys, and if you like the game, pay for it. If the
programmers, and designers don't get paid for their work (which can be
80-120 hr work weeks, for upto 3 years, without pay!), why should they
continue to create new games? If you worked that hard on something,
wouldn't you like to have your labors justified and be paid
accordingly? I would.

My 2 cents.

Bob Hubbard,
President - Centarius Software.