I pirated the shit out of Dreamcast games back in the day. I currently am messing around with FPGA using a MiSTer.
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Have you ever encountered Video Game Piracy? What about Game emulation, have you delved into that?
- Thread starter Iloelemen
- Start date
To risk derailing this thread for a moment, I purchased a copy of Virtual Game Station for my iMac for the convenience of playing my PSX games on it (I had a PS1, but sometimes wanted to play away from the teevee). Loved it, but then Sony bought out Connectix and left it to die.
Like everyone in poorer countries who's involved in games is involved in piracy (whether or not they themselves are poor).
It's probably part of why PC gaming is so popular compared to consoles.
It's probably part of why PC gaming is so popular compared to consoles.
This is kind of a side topic, but I would really like to see intellectual property law changed in the US and abroad. For instance, wouldn't you say, at this point, that Nintendo has been handsomely compensated for developing the original Super Mario Bros? I mean, if they want to sell the bare-bones ROM on the Switch eShop, they're totally within their rights to do so, and no one else should be able to sell that ROM, but at this point, the game should essentially be public domain.
I feel the same way when it comes to fan projects. I feel so bad when projects like Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes get C&D'ed when they're like 99% complete. If Squeenix is so hell-bent on protecting it's ownership of the Chrono Trigger brand, where is the new entry in the series? I can understand not wanting fan projects to be misconstrued as official entries in your IP, but so long as there's always some sort of indication on-screen that a fan project is indeed a non-licensed fan project, it should be OK (so long as the ROM being hacked is sufficiently old enough such that the publisher can reasonably be assumed to have generated all the sales they would have of the original product; say 10 years maybe)
I feel the same way when it comes to fan projects. I feel so bad when projects like Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes get C&D'ed when they're like 99% complete. If Squeenix is so hell-bent on protecting it's ownership of the Chrono Trigger brand, where is the new entry in the series? I can understand not wanting fan projects to be misconstrued as official entries in your IP, but so long as there's always some sort of indication on-screen that a fan project is indeed a non-licensed fan project, it should be OK (so long as the ROM being hacked is sufficiently old enough such that the publisher can reasonably be assumed to have generated all the sales they would have of the original product; say 10 years maybe)
Been reading through the posts and decided to take a chance on posting on the whole subject of piracy and emulation...lol...I am all about making sure that proper compensation is given to those who put in the work of creating a game. My only hang up is with games that can't be bought "new" to give said compensation to the company. Most games are available as "used" and cost a lot of money (and the price is not going down but up) (here's looking at you Sega Saturn, Dreamcast, and pretty much any retro console). How you fix this I don't know the answer...but hopefully it will be fixed one day. Here's my question though considering what the OP asked about piracy. You get search "places" and find where someone is selling a "reproduction" of a game. Maybe it's a Japanese game that has been translated to English. Someone has put in a lot of work creating a new owner's manual and disc art and sells said game. They make it clear that it is a reproduction...is it still piracy?
The piracy I knew in the 80s was friends sharing floppies of games on our computers. I was a dumb kid and I am not even sure I knew it was wrong. I didn't know you could pirate console games until I went to college (this was in the 90s).
One of my friends was from Hong Kong and he pirated everything going back to the NES. This was pre-internet and he also introduced us to a lot of games we had never heard of (like Fire Emblem) and also weird ass hentai games. He always had some chip or extra device or some shit to pirate his Saturn, PS1, Dreamcast, etc. I didn't do any of that shit but when I was younger I didn't think it was wrong to play some cool games I otherwise would not have had access to on his systems. Somehow it didn't click until I was a little older.
One of my friends was from Hong Kong and he pirated everything going back to the NES. This was pre-internet and he also introduced us to a lot of games we had never heard of (like Fire Emblem) and also weird ass hentai games. He always had some chip or extra device or some shit to pirate his Saturn, PS1, Dreamcast, etc. I didn't do any of that shit but when I was younger I didn't think it was wrong to play some cool games I otherwise would not have had access to on his systems. Somehow it didn't click until I was a little older.
Exactly, I also love the people who say they have never pirated anything in their life. Yah I really believe that you have never recorded a song off the radio or a movie off of TV. Every single person in this thread has pirated something in their life (particularly those who grew up in the 80s and 90s). Heck, if you are using an ad block, you are pirating Resetera right now :)
As for myself, I don't recall possessing many pirated games. I do remember getting a copy of NHL 95 from a friend (it was 5 floppies). I think I may have also gotten a copy of The Sims, but I can't remember exactly. Admittedly, the bulk of my gaming was on consoles, so I still purchased my games. Now, with that being said, I did play pirated copies. In school, there was a kid who installed pirated games on the school PCs. He installed Sim City, Decent, and Command and Conquer. Funny enough, I became a fan of all of theses franchises because of what I played. I also had a friend who owned a modded PS1 so plenty of my first experiences of PS1 classics were through piracy.
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There's a crappy 1000-in-1 arcade table in the cafeteria of my workplace. I wasn't sure it was piracy until I saw Mario Bros console titles in the list and there was absolutely no brand name on the table or in the OS.
This is no tiny company either, I'd rather have a legit machine of just 1 game than that trash.
This is no tiny company either, I'd rather have a legit machine of just 1 game than that trash.
When I was a kid everyone used to copy games. Most kids had an Amiga 500, but there were plenty of Spectrums and Atari STs around too. You could get cheap copied games at local markets quite easily, and they would sit alongside legit games which the publishers put out on budget imprints to compete.
Piracy dropped off during the age of carts - I knew that disk copiers existed for cart based consoles, but I never saw one - but then was massive again during the early Dreamcast / PSX days. With the Dreamcast you could easily burn patched discs that would boot - no hardware mod required. I think there was an Action Replay disc that shipped where they forgot to check if the game you wanted to boot was legit, so you could use that to boot unpatched copied games. If memory serves, I think it might even have made it onto a magazine cover disc without anyone realising what it could do. This was also the time that home internet access was becoming mainstream, so if you knew where to look you could easily download anything. Obviously PC piracy was massive then too.
When PSX launched, piracy exploded. There were so many places that would mod your PSX and let you play burned discs; I think it was maybe ÂŁ30 or ÂŁ40 to mod your PSX. Most people knew someone with a CD burner, and so the the trade in copied games continued. I also had a modded Xbox, which I originally bought because you could get them for a little over ÂŁ100 and I knew if you modded it you could put XBMC on it. I ended up playing Halo that came with it, and so started playing console games cos of that. Previously I'd been a PC gamer for over a decade. The fact that you could install games to the HDD on a modded Xbox was the main reason I started playing games on it; I hated the load times on disc based consoles.
Around the same time as all that (late 90s to early 00s), I started getting into emulation. First I was just amazed that I could play the original Gameboy Pokémon games on my PC. Eventually, NES and SNES emulation was good too. By the time the PSX was nearing its end of life, PSX emulation was good enough to play legit games near perfectly. I remember renting a legit copy of FFIX and playing it to completion on my PC.
These days I hear that if one is so inclined, one can find archives floating around of complete console game libraries for download. I also hear that in many cases, those old games running under emulation provide a better experience than some of the official re-releases that have been produced, which seems unfortunate.
The thing that killed my interest in pirated games was Steam. The main reason I would pirate games was always because they were so expensive, and I was broke. When I started using Steam around '08 was about the same time that I pretty much stopped downloading pirated games. Within a year or so I had a backlog of games due to Steam sales which continues to this day.
Now, I don't think kids pirate games as much. I share my Steam library with my nephew because of Steam family sharing, and I also have my PSN account as primary on his PS4 so he can play my digital PSN library. Steam continues to have big sales, and even PSN has regular deep discounts. Between the sales and the fact it's relatively easy and permitted to share legit copies, it's now easier to just buy games than pirate.
So, there you have it!
Piracy dropped off during the age of carts - I knew that disk copiers existed for cart based consoles, but I never saw one - but then was massive again during the early Dreamcast / PSX days. With the Dreamcast you could easily burn patched discs that would boot - no hardware mod required. I think there was an Action Replay disc that shipped where they forgot to check if the game you wanted to boot was legit, so you could use that to boot unpatched copied games. If memory serves, I think it might even have made it onto a magazine cover disc without anyone realising what it could do. This was also the time that home internet access was becoming mainstream, so if you knew where to look you could easily download anything. Obviously PC piracy was massive then too.
When PSX launched, piracy exploded. There were so many places that would mod your PSX and let you play burned discs; I think it was maybe ÂŁ30 or ÂŁ40 to mod your PSX. Most people knew someone with a CD burner, and so the the trade in copied games continued. I also had a modded Xbox, which I originally bought because you could get them for a little over ÂŁ100 and I knew if you modded it you could put XBMC on it. I ended up playing Halo that came with it, and so started playing console games cos of that. Previously I'd been a PC gamer for over a decade. The fact that you could install games to the HDD on a modded Xbox was the main reason I started playing games on it; I hated the load times on disc based consoles.
Around the same time as all that (late 90s to early 00s), I started getting into emulation. First I was just amazed that I could play the original Gameboy Pokémon games on my PC. Eventually, NES and SNES emulation was good too. By the time the PSX was nearing its end of life, PSX emulation was good enough to play legit games near perfectly. I remember renting a legit copy of FFIX and playing it to completion on my PC.
These days I hear that if one is so inclined, one can find archives floating around of complete console game libraries for download. I also hear that in many cases, those old games running under emulation provide a better experience than some of the official re-releases that have been produced, which seems unfortunate.
The thing that killed my interest in pirated games was Steam. The main reason I would pirate games was always because they were so expensive, and I was broke. When I started using Steam around '08 was about the same time that I pretty much stopped downloading pirated games. Within a year or so I had a backlog of games due to Steam sales which continues to this day.
Now, I don't think kids pirate games as much. I share my Steam library with my nephew because of Steam family sharing, and I also have my PSN account as primary on his PS4 so he can play my digital PSN library. Steam continues to have big sales, and even PSN has regular deep discounts. Between the sales and the fact it's relatively easy and permitted to share legit copies, it's now easier to just buy games than pirate.
So, there you have it!
Used to be a norm in the 90's and early 00'. PS1/PS2 was bootleg heaven (especially PS1, holy moly). Sucks when you can't buy a genuine copy and piracy is treated like its the only option but I've seen those days.
Here in the UK in the 90s there were "blobby" discs, full of games. Occasionally betas of stuff too (like quake with the alternative end level)...
As a child with no access to cash they were a lifeline to new content.
Even learnt how cd encryption worked using softICE on the few games I did own (pre drm laws).
They kept the passion alive when I couldn't afford anything. Since then I've purchased each of those games multiple times on multiple platforms.
Steam and digital distribution also made acquiring new games far easier than piracy... Except for when games are removed (still want blur on pc).
As a child with no access to cash they were a lifeline to new content.
Even learnt how cd encryption worked using softICE on the few games I did own (pre drm laws).
They kept the passion alive when I couldn't afford anything. Since then I've purchased each of those games multiple times on multiple platforms.
Steam and digital distribution also made acquiring new games far easier than piracy... Except for when games are removed (still want blur on pc).
First time I encountered it was when my friend was playing Pokemon Sapphire on his computer when I was nine. Didn't realise it was piracy at first, just thought the game had a PC version lol. Second time I was 11 and another friend had a DS flash cart full of games and offered to get his uncle to load one for me in exchange for ÂŁ30 which I of course accepted. By that time I knew what it was.
It was common among kids growing up around here after they got a taste of rpgs from Pokemon but then realised most other rpgs were never released in Europe. Burned CDs full of Snes roms and the Japanese version of Pokemon Gold used to be passed around the playground.
Or so I've heard..
Or so I've heard..
As a teenager I used to do it for PC games pretty regularly. I certainly still bought some titles, but I was definitely not above piracy. I think in that era it was just the total wild west with filesharing -- anime took over most of my downloading once I got to the late 90s/early 2000s. I downloaded some Dreamcast games late in its life cycle once I found out how easy that was. I've not done it for any other console because I don't really understand modding (although I did mod my Wii to play Xenoblade which I imported along with Inazuma Eleven for the DS) and obviously as I got older I had more disposable income.
Streaming video and music has made pirating those things not worth the time or effort for me personally. I've been subscribing to some sort of music streaming service for about a decade now. I only really use my PC to play a few games and Steam and the like have made it so buying games is so easy that I don't even consider it. Console games are really my last bastion of physical media and that is just because I still cannot abide by the idea of not getting some trade-in value for them. The practice is too ingrained.
Streaming video and music has made pirating those things not worth the time or effort for me personally. I've been subscribing to some sort of music streaming service for about a decade now. I only really use my PC to play a few games and Steam and the like have made it so buying games is so easy that I don't even consider it. Console games are really my last bastion of physical media and that is just because I still cannot abide by the idea of not getting some trade-in value for them. The practice is too ingrained.
Been emulating games since 1999 and I don't plan to stop any time soon. I have an enormous collection of retro games, and I buy tons of rereleases, used copies, collectibles, Virtual Console games, etc, etc so I have zero guilt about it. If it wasn't for emulation I wouldn't even be a fan of half the series I love and buying their games to this day. Plus I love playing fan translations and rom hacks of games I already love.
As far as full on piracy goes? Only in regards to incredibly hard to find old PC releases. I think I've pirated maybe... 2 PC games? But I mean if I could buy a digital copy Typing of the Dead today I would.
As far as full on piracy goes? Only in regards to incredibly hard to find old PC releases. I think I've pirated maybe... 2 PC games? But I mean if I could buy a digital copy Typing of the Dead today I would.
I've always wondered how do kiosk in malls in America get away with selling those emulator boxes with 50 plus games on it. Is it still illegal if you can buy it in the mall?
Emulation is awesome.
Not only do I back up my games whenever possible, but I also back up all my save data. I usually back up the save data first and then worry about figuring out how to back up the games later.
I can always re-buy the games on the cheap down the road if something happens to them, but there's no getting back those thousands of hours of playtime.
Not only do I back up my games whenever possible, but I also back up all my save data. I usually back up the save data first and then worry about figuring out how to back up the games later.
I can always re-buy the games on the cheap down the road if something happens to them, but there's no getting back those thousands of hours of playtime.
Same here. Piracy was rampant here pretty much until the x360 days.
Mexican here, During the decade of 2000s it was very common to see Arcade cabinets that were modified PCs running MAME full of arcade game roms so you'd just choose a game and run it then insert your coin to play. These were everywhere, wouldn't be uncommon for random mom and pop stores to have a couple of these cabinets and even the [dying] arcade places would have a couple of these among the legit games. At some point even modified Xbox units were turned into these types of cabinets.
Since Arcades are dead by now you don't see them as frequently now.
Since Arcades are dead by now you don't see them as frequently now.
I'm younger than a lot of people here (22) but growing up, I honestly did pirate some games? I was limited in what I could pirate because my PC at the time wasn't that great and I was stuck on dial-up so the newest stuff I'd pirate was like Pokémon games for GBA and stuff.
Honestly while I know now that it's wrong to pirate, considering that my grandparents rarely got me any video games growing up (I'd get like maybe four or five games a year, for Christmas and my birthday) and I didn't get ANY handheld system until a DS in like 2007-ish, a lot of the piracy of GBA games and emulation of older stuff like NES, SNES, GB, etc. was really the only 'games' I consistently had besides flash games and the few cheap PC games for kids that we'd gotten at like thrift stores and stuff.
Also remember when I was like 11 or 12 years old seeing one of those plug and play systems that looked like an N64 controller that had a bunch of NES ROMs on it at a flea market and wanting it really badly. Never got it though.
Honestly while I know now that it's wrong to pirate, considering that my grandparents rarely got me any video games growing up (I'd get like maybe four or five games a year, for Christmas and my birthday) and I didn't get ANY handheld system until a DS in like 2007-ish, a lot of the piracy of GBA games and emulation of older stuff like NES, SNES, GB, etc. was really the only 'games' I consistently had besides flash games and the few cheap PC games for kids that we'd gotten at like thrift stores and stuff.
Also remember when I was like 11 or 12 years old seeing one of those plug and play systems that looked like an N64 controller that had a bunch of NES ROMs on it at a flea market and wanting it really badly. Never got it though.
Pirated games throughout my entire life since the Atari 2600 200 in 1 consoles, NES, SNES, Genesis, PS1, PC, PS2, up until Steam finally made it possible to buy legit games on PC and retailers started importing legit PS3 games around.
Steam is the primary reason that I've gone legit.
Steam is the primary reason that I've gone legit.
Wow, I'd completely forgotten about Blobby discs. The guy that produced them got sent down for it IIRC.
Emulation is not piracy. A lot of games I have in my "emulation" collection come from raw dumps distributed with specific releases that -- shock! -- are being run in emulators themselves. I just tend to prefer to use them in other emulators (Fusion, ). I have so many games at this point that there's not much reason to do a piracy.
And of course it's not particularly hard to back up most of my game data since I have means of doing so for just about anything from the PS1 onward, with GBC and N64 games being the exception. I should look into getting a retrode...
And of course it's not particularly hard to back up most of my game data since I have means of doing so for just about anything from the PS1 onward, with GBC and N64 games being the exception. I should look into getting a retrode...
And also why the PS1 sold so much more than any cosole up until that point (and why the PS2 continued the trend).
Every time people say "piracy doesn't impact sales" I feel like they're intentionally neglecting to take into account every non-Western country.
I'm a console guy so piracy isn't really something that's even an option. But I have friends who are PC gamers who haven't paid for a game in years.
Back in the late 90s, I used to download lots of games to play in emulators, but since I've "grown up" I just like to buy everything I play. It feels better to me.
I don't even like downloading roms of games I already own either, and like, every rom I have on my PowerPak is something I dumped myself. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to dump all my NES games (Damn you Dr. Mario!) so there's really not that many games on that CF card.
Speaking of emulation, I use Dolphin pretty often too, and I love how easy it is to dump your Wii and Gamecube games using a Wii with homebrew. I messed around with that 360 emulator too, since it's easy to get your games on a usb drive, but it's... it doesn't really feel ready for prime time just yet.
I don't even like downloading roms of games I already own either, and like, every rom I have on my PowerPak is something I dumped myself. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to dump all my NES games (Damn you Dr. Mario!) so there's really not that many games on that CF card.
Speaking of emulation, I use Dolphin pretty often too, and I love how easy it is to dump your Wii and Gamecube games using a Wii with homebrew. I messed around with that 360 emulator too, since it's easy to get your games on a usb drive, but it's... it doesn't really feel ready for prime time just yet.
Nope. Other than playing AAI2 which wasn't going to come over in the forseeable future (and I bought a cart anyway just in case my image failed) emulation and piracy always seemed like way more work than I wanted to put in. Sure, I could say how it's immoral and illegal even though kid me gave zero fucks about that, but at the end of the day I'm a lazy motherfucker who just wants to plug in a game and play, and I wasn't going to go through hoops 1-10 to do that.
I grew up when Commodore 64 and Amiga 500 was the hottest thing on the planet. Kids openly swapped games on the school yard. There were parties for meeting people to swap games. Nobody thought it was strange. Even the magazines printed comic strips that made fun of the politicians that attempted to highlight that it wasn't legal. Several youngsters that later on became profilic devs had it's origin in the cracker intro demo scene.
So... Of course not! ;)
So... Of course not! ;)
Ah you're right, the game never released in NA, only in Europe and Japan. I'm glad those days are long gone.
Are region restrictions still a thing today?
I "encounter" videogame piracy from street vendors on the street I live in every day when I go to work.
People I knew had modded PS1s and burned games. I saw them, but don't know if I ever used them. I never modded any of my consoles, and that's the truth.
I have tried a couple of emulators, but that was a looooooong time ago. I checked out a Game Boy/Color and SNES emulator. Hardly used them because I didn't like playing those games with a keyboard or find that they were that good.
I have tried a couple of emulators, but that was a looooooong time ago. I checked out a Game Boy/Color and SNES emulator. Hardly used them because I didn't like playing those games with a keyboard or find that they were that good.
