I support Piracy and I support GoG. Ive pirated many games that I've latter bought and sometimes piracy has helped me recover games I've owned in the past and that i technically own a license to.

I dont mind helping anyone who needs help

Not sure why you used Todd McFarlane in your argument. He did work for hire and was able to sell his drawings of any and all MARVEL characters privately and publicly at comic book conventions. Hell he created Venom so he has all right to sell Venom and any related characters he worked on for MARVEL.

I don't work for MARVEL and yet if I wanted to I could sell my own illustrations of those characters privately and at public conventions. MARVEL Comics has never had a problem with non hired illustrators selling illustrations of their characters. You can't publish them as your own which is a totally different thing.

Let's also not forget the story of Stanley Leibowitz who acquired the rights to all the characters he co-created at MARVEL. Although he screwed over Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko in the process.

Also hi Alex Jones.

McFarlane did work for Marvel, which was why i selected him. I think some of the work included The Hulk, and as you mentioned Venom. But he doesn't own those.

Course most of my knowledge comes from a particular video on the topics. and little more.

But i associate McFarlane with Spawn. And that is wholly his. I really don't see Todd selling posters or comics that are published by Marvel. But i can see him selling his own artwork although possibly including other superheroes. How all that works, I'm not quite sure, maybe he makes an order through Marvel and gets prints made of ones so they already get paid and then it's just selling the poster/art separately.

Your own illustrations yes, which i assume aren't part of any of their sold merchandise. I also assume these aren't whole comics, just single sheets.

Of course other than who's the artist, it's basically free advertising for Marvel.

Though if he does too much, Disney may push lawsuits because of how they are assholes, and how they are hurting for money right now.

And based on Nintendo's lawsuits and DMCA's on utterly stupid things, safe to say it's company to company of how lenient they are.

Can't say i'm familiar with Stan Lee's history. I only have a mild familiarity with a handful of characters, Primarily through the Daredevil, X-men 1&2, and Deadpool 1&2 movies, and the 90's cartoon show. Beyond that, no clue.

There really exists a subset of GOG users that can't take a friendly hint.
Showing some courtesy to the creator of a thread, by respecting his wish to not further derail his thread, is an utterly alien concept to that group.

Neither FPS in movies/TV shows, nor the copyright of (family) paintings, or the rights to a comic have anything to do with the topic of this thread (the request to not support software/games piracy).

This is not the first thread I see deliberately getting derailed by some, in the hope to get it locked that way, simply because they don't like the topic discussed.
But I will not stand idle by to see it happen.

If you don't have anything to add to the topic at hand - then abstain from commenting!

=======================================
From GOG's CoC:

1. GENERAL RULES:
1.3. Stay on topic, don’t intentionally derail the discussion, don’t troll, and don’t spam.
-----
2. WE DON’T TOLERATE:
2.12. Forum thread bumping, hijacking or posting comments that are unrelated to the original topic and make it difficult for others to follow the discussion
=======================================

If you feel the actual need to discuss "the average monthly growth of toe nails" (or whatever else floats your boat), then that's totally fine by me - but then create your own thread for it.

EDIT (thanks to paladin181):

There's an option available for all, to do that.
Upper RIGHT corner - > ORANGE + sign "new topic".

Feel free to use it.

Does the forum code of conduct apply when you are trying to change the forum code of conduct by imposing additional rules on regular users?

Nobody in this thread has replied to someone who has 0 games in their account, but this is not good enough for you?

Copyright is always an inherent tangent when discussing piracy. I find it relevant to the conversation despite the fact that my contributions to it have been minimal, and honestly, I don't consider it to be off topic personally. You do. Cool. You'll cite the GOG COC, but you should have read a little further since you missed the part where you're not supposed to engage rule breakers, and instead report them. If you don't like what they're doing, and it's against the rules, the moderation will clean it up if you report it. If not... Well, you just kind of have to live with it. You have no special privilege here; you're a user like everyone else.

=======================================

ALSO FROM THE GOG COC:

3. HOW WE MODERATE:
3.1. If you see a person breaking the rules, don’t attempt to moderate – let GOG Staff or GOG Community Moderators know and ignore the post(s), threads, etc.

=======================================

And right is =>. Upper right, not left corner is where the new topic button is, and it is an orange cross, not green (as shown in the snippet screen you posted).

You're right.
I was thinking, I could address the issue without having to go the report route (apart form that one guy who already explicitly asked for it).

But obviously - that's not how things can be done with the GOG forum crowd.
That would require a certain level of maturity, which simply does not exist here.

I will now expand my ticket accordingly, and add those users which I left out so far.

Thank you for the hint.

EDIT: done.

Right again.
No clue how these errors came to pass.

It is indeed the upper RIGHT corner, and the + sign is indeed ORANGE.

Thanks for the correction.


EDIT 2: actually I do know how one error came to pass.
Because inside a thread, that + is green.
Only the words are "new post" - as opposed to the General Discussion main page, where the + is orange, and the words are "new topic".
And since I was looking at the thread, when I wrote my post...

Still not 100% sure about the left/right error, though...shrug

Ultimately, nobody will want to engage in a discussion with you, dear BreOl72, if you keep going down that road.
That is how such issues are peacefully and civilly addressed in real life, speaking of maturity.
You don't own neither the forum nor the thread nor the topic.
It is your choice, I respect it and wish you the best.

Well corporations barely matter to my gaming at this point anyway. Pirate something like BG3 or Graven and you're taking money away from hard working developers who have earned it, not corporate suits.

That aside though, I think there's truth in your words to some extent but $5 for a season of high budget TV like House is a ridiculously small amount. Want to see reasonable terms then you need to bring them to the table yourself. Considering games much cheaper to make cost $70 in the 90s, and the frequent sales, I don't think games today are overpriced at all. If you're feeling squeezed you're probably buying games you shouldn't be buying.

I'd rather purchase directly from a dev or company and have them get as much from me directly, than give 30% to say valve and another 30% to a publisher. Wouldn't be the first time i've done that. Though that doesn't quite cover ownership, but it does give those that made the product the actual money.


Perhaps. Though through successive replays they will eventually make their money back on TV. On disc, if the discs are cheap, then people are more likely to buy a lot more of them. I often don't buy any discs at all because i don't think it's worth it, even at $5 at walmart for a movie, much less $20 for a new one. Even 3-4 movie packs for $8 i have trouble justifying unless i like everything i see (and often i don't). I do see a lot of movies for $1 at a couple stores i go to, dollar tree, they wouldn't sell it for that if you couldn't make money on it still.

Personally I can't justify buying even 1 game a month with the 'current' prices of games ($80+) never mind the hardware and internet required. But i could justify getting several lesser of they are in the $5 or less range.

DVD's physically cost about 5 cents to press and make... They typically put 4-5 episodes per disc, an episode being 22-24 minutes. Assuming 3 episodes per disc, and a season is a usual 12 episodes you're talking 4 maybe 5 discs... Less than $1 in total cost. Hell if you put 2 episodes per disc that's still at $1 in the worst case. Getting a 5x return is good enough right? Oh sure paper sleeve and transferring and upcharging from stores, let's assume a 3x return instead of 5x.

I don't suppose you watched the atari documentary? In there they went on about the price of games, and how the corporate heads decided to charge $40-$50 for games... then the programmers found out how much they were making and how much it cost to actually produce the cartridges. Naturally Atari gave them the finger, and half of the Atari group left to make Activision. Then the board members realized how much talent was going to be leaving and opted to shave what looked like 1-2% of their profits for the programmers to get a share of sales, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I'm not saying games that came later didn't cost more money to make vs the 8k cartridges. The price of games was way overinflated to start with, and then as it got more expensive the price didn't change, though the number of customers did increase over time. I'm saying they dug themselves into a hole chasing a trend that is the wrong target.

Personally i think the scale of the games they are trying to make, in detail and system requirements is way too high, and should be scaled back to the PS2/360/gamecube era of games. Those looked phenomenal, didn't take a ton to run, and had tons of titles for. Games were also not astronomically expensive either. Them chasing the 'ultra realism' 'open world' 'always-online' 'dlc / micro-transaction' and making fairly weak titles. With the engines that were out there, you should be able to repurpose the engine for Dragon Quest, or Blue Dragon, or Disgaea, or a ton of other ones to make further roleplaying games and action games while only having to worry about story/music/animations/models and not having to worry about building from scratch. CompileHeart seems to have taken this to heart with Fairy Fencer series and other games they've released, using the same engine over and over again and having what looks like a fairly quick turnaround of games.

You'd be a perfect addition to the World Economic Forum. You could be Klaus's butt buddy.

"Hello Reddit, my old friend, you've come to visit me again"
----------------------------------------

*What?!? dot jpg*

You DO know that in such cases the lower level employees who actually make the
game usually get paid salaries whether or not the game sells/gets pirated, right?

You DO know corporations are in favour of unpaid internships, lower than industry standard wages and... oh wait

Not that I believe in trickle-down economics, but there is the undeniable fact that if the bosses and businesses don't find a venture profitable, they'll give up shoveling money into the investment. Hence the small jobs vanish - studios shrink or get sold and merged into others. Redundancies are made by poor profits more often than they are when bosses trim the fat out of their workforces. So, yeah, it may not be a direct correlation between the money you spend and what the low-level coders get, but you'll hurt the industry nonetheless with piracy.