Wouldn’t it be sad if we had ten times more music because they weren’t their to steal their 95% that they “deserve” because they are just so wonderful?

I know, I know, the caged bird wouldn’t sing without the cage.

So lets talk brass tacks. Let’s not mince words. Established music companies like EA ruthlessly exploit talent… including just outright theft in the case of Infinity Ward.

You got mouth, bet you never had anyone talk back.

The problem is, they have never been able to prove that anybody who pirated their game would have become a customer if piracy had not been an option. It is only a lost sale if somebody was going to buy it in the first place.

Nor do they ever talk about the conversion rate for those who pirate as a “try before you buy” option.

Hell, those same execs can’t even prove that games with no DRM (i.e. those that are easy to pirate) suffer from piracy more than games which have expensive and draconian DRM schemes ala Spore.

So you’ll pardon me if I don’t exactly take the piracy issue seriously when a company throws money after DRM schemes where the only demonstrable result is annoying legitimate, paying customers. They have already demonstrated that their knowledge on the subject amounts to bullshit and wishful thinking.

And in case you take your own post in some way seriously, here are a couple of “facts”:
- Whatever happened to WAR is certainly not Paul’s fault individually. I’m also reasonably sure that in grand scheme of things there are people who are way, WAY more to blame for WAR problems that Paul.
- Some people learn from their mistakes. Do you have proof that Paul is not one of them?

So yeah. I’m not Paul’s fan either. However accusing Tobold of trolling simply because he doesn’t think Paul is total write-off or because he thinks that RG has made an even bigger joke of himself lately — that looks stilly to me.

Oh yeah, and I’ve played TR. So don’t tell me how “great” it was or what kind of “potential” it had. It was a pretty little shooter with nice moments when you tried to defend a point vs. invading aliens (whatever they were). It was incredibly shallow though (in my opinion).

Piracy has killed much of the computer games industry.

Much of what’s left in the industry is sure fire bets with big hype to get their money back basically in the first month. And corporations are masters of doing this.

Real computer gaming has returned back to the underground, either being gamer focussed (Eve) or quasi-free (LoL, minecraft).