Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[dogstile]

Hey, whoever thinks you always seed when you use bittorrent or something similar, you can actually disable it.

You get throttled so the downloads slower when you do so, but you can do it. Just a heads up

[Vel]

Yes, it's entirely possible to download via bittorrent without actually uploading.



Hilariously, that is literally my ISP's stance on downloading things like movies --- 'here are some instructions about how to disable uploading on a few of the more popular torrent clients, WHELP, WE DID OUR JOBS'.


Edit - To clarify, my ISP doesn't give a flying **** if you download movies, they just get annoyed when internet watchdog groups pester them about you uploading them.

[Farseer]

By the way, if you get onto an ISP that has under 500,000 customers, they are not legally required to police their users usage. A lot of business quality lines are like this.

[Megaman]

Don't talk about torrenting games on commercial websites. It's bad for business.

[Frumple]

Um, actually, hasn't torrent distribution increased profits in a number of cases, without getting into the issue of actual pirating? Haven't a number of business folks came out and outright said that pirating was good for business? We had a mention along those lines on the page of the discussion before this one, and the examples come up pretty regularly in this sort of discussion.

Obviously, torrent distribution in and of itself would most likely be a benefit, by cutting bandwidth costs for the distributing company in question.

Or are you holding the position that simply discussing torrent distribution on a commercially-backed forum impacts profits negatively? That'd be an interesting thing to test...

[Farseer]

This may undermine my argument, but: The only reason I bought my Paradox games was, quite honestly, because I'd "tested" them beforehand. I would never have bought them if I hadn't played them and known they were quality games. I bought them off Steam during the winter sale.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

Downloading a game you already own should be fine. Note the "should" because laws are never quite like they "should" be. As long as you are using the game yourself and not going out and spreading it to all your friends you should be fine. The Steam thing could be tricky but for a game you had on a CD what difference would there be in the installed game if you installed it from your CD or just happened to have an ISO of it lying around? Nothing, that's what as long as you use your key from the CD.

[dennislp3]

I remember when I downloaded a copy of Medieval total war (the first one) cause mine was destroyed.

I got an email from My ISP and some watchdog group...I replied by stating I wasn't uploading and I have every right to download said game cause I have a working CD key (downloading IS NOT illegal....uploading is)....never heard from em since and my ISP retracted there claim that I pirated....

[eerr]

I've got a torrent of rock-raiders, as I can't be bothered to find my ancient disk.


(It crashes sometimes, but still works on windows xp!)

(but will I do when I no longer have a non-xp machine? torrent xp?)

[Farseer]

I've got a torrent of rock-raiders, as I can't be bothered to find my ancient disk.

Dear god, I remember that game. I think I've got the disc sitting on my desk at home. :p

Is it as good as I remember it?

[eerr]

It was pretty fun to play again!

But the AI is very mediocre,
Does not take distance into account, rock raiders run across the map to clean up rubble, running across huge piles of ore-filled rubble nearby.

(a landslide has occured!)

You might need to do something to get it to run, I'm not sure.(possibly did this a long time ago)

[Gabeux]

Don't talk about torrenting games on commercial websites. It's bad for business.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My guess is that, like someone else said, it's more about ethics than anything else.
You already own the game, you don't need to feel bad about downloading the game because you already paid for it.
Also I'm not expert in this subject, but I'm really interested about it, and as long as you don't seed the game (as your intention is actually to get a working copy), it should be okay.

About posting on forums, they (and all other commercial forums) probably think talking about torrents will lead to links for pirated versions of the game, thus leading to less sales...."It's bad for business".

I personally think sharing is cool, because releasing broken games, not releasing demos at all (forgot this one), or saying that you don't have intentions to patch to a game you just released (sorry for poor sources) and all that crap seems to be a trending in the gaming world.

And I don't wanna sound like a fanboy, but Minecraft was (IS) my best game buying-experience of all time.

[dogstile]

Hey, perfect timing escapist!

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/107233-iPhone-Game-Dev-Credits-Piracy-for-Doubling-His-Sales

[SeaBee]

I'm sensing confusion about torrent technology and "downloading" a game. When you download something with a (non-hacked, standard) torrent client, you aren't just flipping bits on your hard drive; you're uploading while you're downloading.

That's the key. You're distributing copyright material, not simply downloading it. This is when the legal teams get hot and bothered, more than anything else.

Copyright enforcement is broken anyway. Huge waste of resources. Sue a grandma, sue a printer, sue a ten year-old, sue some dead people. Look like a douche in front of consumers everywhere. Piracy is the scapegoat of choice for failure and weak profits. The corporate phallus is immense, smug and uninformed. DOWN WITH THE MAN!

Sorry, I forget myself. Don't feel bad about grabbing the game somewhere else. Feel bad for the ludicrous line of thinking that goes into treating one of your paying customers like a criminal fringe element.

[Soulwynd]

Hurray for another mostly biased anti-piracy article.

Despise all the good sharing did, they still wont admit it openly.

Cowards.