gregski said:
Pirates are not CDPR's target audience of potential customers/fanbase. No commercial company doing serious business is strategically targeting "grey areas" of the market. I don't see phone operators trying to attract people that are not paying their bills.
That analogy doesn't work - there's no piracy issue in telecommunications on such scale. Also phone companies don't have fan-base. Games, on the other hand, do - so it's much easier to hurt your image. Moreover, unless we add DRM into consideration the method off fining 'people not paying bills' is simply does not apply.
And yeah, this 200.000 number - you could have put in something even more random, it would fit anyway. Can you please give us any source for this? Almost 20% of the game sales was made by pirates? n/c
I think my figures are far more probable than 4.5 million CDP Red came up with.
Oh, and these poor people wouldn't feel so THREATENED if they, you know, were legally buying games. Only those with guilty conscience are going to feel threatened.
Ok gregski, I tell you what... You are totally RIGHT. The people I am talking about are indeed
pirates thieves, but they bought the game nonetheless, so that makes them customers. At the same time they didn't cease to be pirates. Guess who are they going sympathize with. From legitimate, legal clients they are turning to none-clients, at all. A loss - no matter how you look at it.
Browse other forums; talk to other people. You will see what I am talking about. You will recognize that the outrage reaches far beyoned what you expect. In a business you simply can't afford to antagonize you audience. You say they are not the target audience. I know they are - because I know people.
Sorry gregski, but after the 'manipulative and twisted logic' part, and 'You just want to prove you point' bit (Yeah, so did you, apparently) - I have that image of noble knight from the Order of Flaming Rose who just has has this ideal in his mind, but can't see that it's not how things work with other people. I know that impression in inadequate, but I can't help it.
The saddest part is, we are fighting on the same side. I am not supporting piracy or making up excuses. But the fact remains - what 227 and others are trying to explain to you is that whether you like it or not, the whole fine business does create bad PR. It doesn't affect you, because you are good person with high moral standards. It does affect others because:
1) Pirates can be turned into paying customers. Not all of them, perhaps not even 50% of them but they can. So this bad PR will influence this subset, however large it may be.
And after reading some of the old interviews with Gop I must say that the whole 'goodies in the box' solution was directed at people who think one box case with just a DVD is not worth $50, no matter how you look at it.
2) The methods the lawfirms are using, albeit legal, are not exactly honest - as I explained earlier. Even for me, a person who does not pirate games, affiliating with such people is morally questionable... it just leaves a bad taste. Especially when you hear about the fine which I find to be excessive for a product of no utility value. One also has to question whether something like controlled provocation and espionage on the net, by third party (i.e. not by unaffiliated with any party police officers from information technology units or organisation delegated for this purpose by the state) are morally justified. If you can do that in case of pirates, could you provoke and spy on all internet users, to test how honest they are? If so, wouldn't it resemble totalitarian state within a state?
I hope that this time around you won't see and 'twisted and manipulative logic' here. I am always interested in discussion, but I would rather avoid insinuations about ulterior motives and bias. Let's treat each other with respect, we both deserve.
